Managing grants efficiently is a critical task for non-profits, research institutions, government agencies, and other organisations involved in the grant-making process. From application submission to fund distribution and compliance monitoring, the intricacies of grant management demand robust tools that streamline workflows, ensure transparency, and maximise impact.

In this two-part series, we focus on how Flexi-Grant – our grant management platform – can revolutionise grant management processes for organisations of any size.

In this first part, we introduce you to the key features our grant management software, including its streamlined application forms, progress reporting, and in-built CRM system. In part two, we will delve into the implementation process, user experience, support services, integrations, and more.

So, join us to discover how the UK’s leading grant management platform can elevate your processes to the greatest level of efficiency.

How Cloud Based Software Improves Grant Management

Flexi-Grant is hosted on Microsoft Azure as a fully managed Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) platform. There are many benefits of using cloud based grant management software – such systems offer superior accessibility, flexibility, scalability, cost-efficiency, as well as automatic updates. In fact, Flexi-Grant updates are automatically deployed on a monthly basis; you also get full backups of your data every day.

Other benefits:

• 95% to 99.995% uptime rate
• Access from anywhere for remote collaboration
• Easy scalability to meet evolving needs (Flexi-Grant is built to accommodate any number of grant schemes – something that any funder needs during a recession.)
• Robust security measures to protect sensitive data, providing a much higher level of protection compared to on-premise, legacy systems.
• Flexible integration with other systems
• Robust disaster recovery and backup solutions – data is stored in secure off-site locations, minimising the risk of data loss due to hardware failures, natural disasters, or human errors. In the event of any disruptions, data is quickly restored and operations can resume, ensuring operational

In essence, a cloud based system lets you focus on your mission and leave the complexities of infrastructure management to us; a cloud based system makes expensive server maintenance a thing of the past.

Key Features of Flexi-Grant

Flexi-Grant provides a multitude of features that overcome the challenges of manual and paper-based grant management processes. In fact, our software is designed to address the pain points associated with such outdated methods, offering a user-friendly and comprehensive platform that simplifies the entire grant lifecycle.

Streamlined Application Forms & Templates

Flexi-Grant makes the application processes as easy as pie with modern, easy to use, accessible forms. This enables funders to collect all the information they need from applicants without overwhelming them, ensuring a positive experience for grant seekers.

Applicants can also attach supporting evidence within the system, eliminating the need for sending emails back and forth.

What’s more, Flexi-Grant comes with all the templates you could ever need – however, you can create your own custom templates if needed.

Question Bank

Another time-saving feature of our cloud-based grant management software is the question bank. No need to re-create questions for new grant schemes – users can simply access existing questions from their library. The question bank also allows you to govern and control the type of questions used across all your grant schemes.

Shortlisting Tool

Flexi-Grant comes with an intuitive shortlisting tool, helping to automate the recording of outcomes for applications and saving significant time and mental energy. The tool allows staff to shortlist, reserve, move applications on to the next review round and roll-back applications.

Eligibility checking

Quickly identifying and prioritising applications that meet the eligibility requirements and align with your objectives helps them reach the review stage swiftly – and reviewers can focus their attention on a narrowed-down selection of highly qualified applicants.

Central Dashboard

Flexi-Grant is equipped with a central dashboard. This is an invaluable tool within grant management software, providing quick visual access about how your grants and applications are progressing.

It acts as a centralised hub, offering a comprehensive overview of all ongoing grants, deadlines, and key milestones, enabling administrators to easily track and manage multiple grants simultaneously. Of course, this ensures timely and efficient decision-making.

Budget Tables

Budget tables streamline the creation of detailed and accurate budget breakdowns, presented in a structured, readable format. They simplify the process of managing and tracking budgets throughout the grant lifecycle, as users can easily update and modify budget information and track actual expenditures against the planned budget. Users can also create a payment schedule against each award and allocate funds to specific expense categories.

Roles & Responsibilities

Ensuring users only have access to the information they’re authorised to is essential for maintaining security and data privacy. That’s why our solutions let users delegate access, so you can control exactly who sees what.

CRM System

Having a built-in Customer Relationship Management system lets grant makers effectively manage relationships with applicants, grantees, and other stakeholders throughout the grant lifecycle.

Centralising all contact information, communication histories, and interactions in one system streamlines workflow processes, allowing users to efficiently track and manage interactions, tasks, and follow-ups, which ultimately fosters better relationships with applicants and grantees.

It also makes collaboration easier, as multiple members of staff can access the same communication history – no need for separate email threads or wasting time asking who’s handling what.

Bias Detection

Flexi-Grant features tools for monitoring diversity and tracking conflicts of interest. These tools help to identify and mitigate potential biases that may arise due to unconscious preferences or subjective judgements, promoting fairness, equity, and transparency in the grant review process.

Reporting

Comprehensive data reporting is available at the click of a button with Flexi-Grant, making compliance easier than ever. In fact, every form field captures data that can be used for reporting purposes – that’s every field on every application and monitoring form, so that data is captured throughout the application and award processes.

You can also fast-track the scheduling of progress reports with powerful bulk processing tools, providing real-time insights into the finer details of your grant schemes.

The platform captures detailed financial information and supports full traceability and audit of all financial activities.

In Closing

As you can tell, Flexi-Grant takes the stress out of grant management, reducing the administrative burden to its minimum. A range of additional features are also possible thanks to our 10+ years of development.

To witness the power our solution has to transform your grant management processes, contact us today to book a demo.