Grant software splits into two markets that share a name and almost nothing else. One serves organizations looking for grants: prospect databases, funder research, deadline calendars. The other serves organizations giving grants: applications, review panels, awards, and reporting obligations. This page is about the second one, and specifically about programs small enough that a six-figure platform is not on the table.
The lifecycle most tools cover only half of
A grant program has four phases, and the usual failure is software that handles one well and leaves the rest in spreadsheets.
Intake. Applications arrive, usually through a form. Most programs solve this part adequately with a form tool.
Review. Someone scores each application against criteria. This is where it breaks down. Reviewers get a spreadsheet or a shared document, scores come back by email in three formats, and someone reconciles them by hand at midnight before the committee meets.
Award. Decisions get made, amounts set, conditions attached. Usually recorded in a different spreadsheet.
Post-award. Payments are scheduled, conditions tracked, reports chased. This is the phase that runs for years and is tracked worst, because by then the cycle's software has been closed and the next round has started.
The value of running all four in one system is not efficiency in any single phase. It is that an application, its scores, its award, and its reports are one connected record three years later when someone asks what happened.
Modelling a grant program in six tables
Six tables cover most programs.
| Table | Key fields | Links to |
|---|---|---|
| Organizations | Legal name, EIN or registration number, contact, eligibility status | Applications, Awards |
| Applications | Round, amount requested, project summary, documents, status | Organizations, Reviews, Awards |
| Reviews | Reviewer, criterion scores, comments, recommendation | Applications |
| Awards | Amount, decision date, conditions, board approval | Applications, Payments, Reports |
| Payments | Scheduled date, amount, tranche, paid date | Awards |
| Reports | Type, due date, received date, accepted, documents | Awards |
The separation between Applications and Awards matters more than it looks. An application that is declined still needs to exist, because next round you want to know who applied before and what happened. Folding awards into the application record loses that history the moment you reuse the row.
Reviews as a separate table is the other structural decision. One application gets many reviews, one per panel member. Scores live on the Review record, not as ten columns on the application, which means adding a reviewer does not mean adding columns.
Scoring and review panels
Set up your criteria as fields on the Review table. A typical rubric is four to six scored dimensions plus a written recommendation. Reviewers see the application, its attachments, and their own scoring form.
Two things make this work in practice:
Reviewers cost nothing to add. Every plan includes unlimited users, and access is granted per workspace with Read Only, Read and Write, or Admin roles. A twelve-person panel costs the same as a two-person one. Plans are $29, $59, and $129 a month, and none of those numbers move when the panel grows. This matters more than any feature, because per-seat pricing is why review panels end up in spreadsheets in the first place.
Scores aggregate automatically. Because reviews are linked records, the application shows its own reviews. You are comparing structured numbers rather than transcribing them from email.
Be aware of what this does not give you: there is no blind review mode that hides applicant identity, and no automatic conflict-of-interest detection. If your program requires enforced anonymity, you would need to build that into how you structure the data, and it is worth thinking through before you commit.
Post-award: the phase that runs for years
This is where the system earns its place.
Payments get scheduled dates and amounts. A flow can notify finance a week before each tranche is due. Nothing moves money, and that boundary is worth being clear about: InfoLobby tracks that a payment is due and that it was made. Execution stays with your bank or finance system.
Reports get due dates on the Award. A scheduled flow emails the grantee before a report is due, and flags it internally when the date passes without a submission. This single automation is usually the biggest practical win, because chasing reports is the task that quietly consumes program staff and gets dropped first when things are busy.
Conditions attached to an award live as fields or as their own linked records if they need individual sign-off. Either way, they are attached to the award rather than living in the award letter PDF that nobody reopens.
Why this fits some programs and not others
Good fit:
- Foundations, community funds, and grantmaking nonprofits running criteria they defined
- Programs with review panels and board approval steps
- Teams tracking post-award conditions, payment schedules, and reporting deadlines across multiple years
- Organizations where the program shape changes between rounds and the software has to follow
Poor fit:
- Federal award administration. If you need built-in 2 CFR 200 compliance, subrecipient monitoring workflows, or drawdown handling, buy a platform built for it. Euna Solutions and OpenGov both target public-sector grants specifically. Modeling that yourself is possible and inadvisable.
- Grant seeking. If your need is finding funders and tracking your own applications outward, you want prospect research. Instrumentl is the obvious name there, and it solves a different problem from this page.
- Donation processing. There is no payment processing, no receipting, no tax acknowledgement generation. A program that needs to accept donations needs separate software for that part.
Choosing between this and a dedicated platform
Fluxx, Submittable, Foundant, Blackbaud Grantmaking, and Good Grants all give you a configured program on day one, applicant portals with polished branding, and staff who have seen a hundred programs like yours. They also cost accordingly and assume a process shape.
The case for building it yourself comes down to three things: your criteria and stages are unusual enough that configuration fights you, your reviewer count would make per-seat pricing painful, or you want the grant data connected to other things you track. If none of those is true, a dedicated platform is probably the better buy and it is worth saying so.
The limits worth knowing before you start
Two plan limits shape a grants build specifically.
Web forms. Starter includes 2, Team includes 10, Business is unlimited. One application form per program, so a funder running four distinct programs with separate application forms wants Team.
Records. Starter holds 250,000, Team 1 million, Business 5 million. Applications, reviews, awards, payments, and reports across even a large program will not approach these, so records are rarely the binding constraint here. Workspaces are more likely to be: Starter allows 3, Team 10, Business 25.
If you connect your own MySQL server, records and file storage become unlimited on any plan.
Related
- Approval workflow software for the board sign-off step
- Internal tools for operations teams for the other registers a program office keeps
- Custom CRM for tracking funder and grantee relationships
InfoLobby plan pricing and limits, and the competitor claims on this page, were last checked on 2026-08-20. Competitor pricing changes often and varies by region, so confirm current figures on the vendor's own pricing page before deciding. Our plans are on the pricing page.
