CATALYST Abstract Management Software vs. Sogolytics vs. Submittable

One of the most significant benefits of using Sogolytics is its robust reporting capabilities. The platform allows us to generate comprehensive reports with clear visualizations, making communicating our results to funders easy. This has greatly enhanced our transparency and accountability, demonstrating the effectiveness and impact of our programs.As a nonprofit organization, we are incredibly grateful for Sogolytics' support to organizations like ours. The platform's accessibility and user-friendly interface have made it an indispensable tool in our efforts to provide quality programs to schools and students in need.

Submittable is great for grant management, grantmaking, and scholarship awards. It's a very useful tool also when there are multiple reviewers and committees involved in the assessment of the application. The table feature is helpful, but to download the information in a usable report is a pain. Overall a very useful tool for funding.

Incentivized

• Easy to use - easy to create surveys, send to participants and review the results
• The library of ready to use templates is so helpful!
• The large variety of question types helps to keep the survey interesting for the participant.
• The "smart" question logic is amazing. I love having a follow up question appear depending on how the participant answers a previous question.

• Form-logic: Allows application forms to adjust based on answers to crucial questions (if-then-else) so that all applications don't have to see extended questions that may not apply to them or their situation.
• Messaging Platform: This platform allows interactions with applicants or internal review teams to be associated with the specific submission, allowing for an easier, complete view of an application being considered and as an audit trail.
• Good Voting/Polling Management: It makes it easier to record the latest vote/feedback from assigned team members and allows customization of the vote/feedback review as a form. It also summarizes the votes for easy review in a submissions dashboard view.

Incentivized

• Providing users the ability to follow along a specific question example (eg. placeholder text in questions that users can see what the answer might look like)
• Better media management and implementation (eg. placing images/videos/gifs/etc. as standalone assets in the survey)
• Making the images added into a survey responsive to the screen they are being viewed on (eg. any images added to a survey do not adjust to the size of the screen, consequently showing up very small on mobile/tablet view)
• Exporting the survey to Word looks horrible - we'd love if the survey could be exported the way it looks when live into a similar-looking Word document or template

• We are some of the earliest users of employee volunteerism, so there have been some things to work out. However, because of that, we've gotten a lot of one-on-one support to help make minor tweaks to the system in a way that works for us.

Incentivized

Will definitely use the software again as soon as we need another survey to be conducted.

Incentivized

We use this software annually to help with our grant processes. Without it, I'd be so lost! Our team relies on the data from our past years to sift applications and we try to prioritize those who have applied and been a finalist but perhaps didn't win in years prior

Incentivized

Everything on the platform is laid out logically and in a manner that even our less technical administrators can go onto the system and create/manage any surveys or feedback questionnaires. The options for distribution of these surveys are also simple and straight forward with all available choices showing. Our users don't need to know the ins and outs of the system to be able to use it.

A submittable requires a great deal of thought to set up. It would be best if you really did an outline and flowcharting. Once you have a detailed plan and set up the system, you have to think of the process that you would manually do step-by-step to deal with the what-ifs; it’s beautiful. The ability to Clone events is invaluable. The onboarding can be complex, but the ease of use afterward is worth it.

Incentivized

We have thankfully never experienced an outage nor been affected by a technology issue on Submittable's side that has delayed our grant process. We have instead been able to distribute over $6M in donated dollars to AAPI small business owners because Submittable is trustworthy and available

Incentivized

We've had a quick and efficient submittable experience that has always been easy to use. When we need a report it downloads within seconds, even the larger reports are 30 seconds or less to download. Pages are quick to load and reports complete in a more than reasonable time frame

Incentivized

I had an issue whereby I used a free trial that ended, locking me out of my account. I contacted their customer service to help with this issue, which they resolved in under half an hour. I was extremely impressed with their speed and quality of service, which led me to filling out this review!

I think that they are good at answering our questions and solving our problems. We occasionally get reports from applicants about problems the Submittable team has not solved, but I do not know what the applicant has done to get the problem solved.

Incentivized

We have been using this for many years but my memory is that we had a
human walk us through how to use basic features. We also used the
resource library to learn about specific topics or issues as they came
up.

Incentivized

10/10 because we were able to meet virtually and still get all of our questions answered! Online was effective too because we could easily record the sessions and review them later. Since we had to onboard our reviewers virtually, it was actually convenient that this was the same method we learned how to use the entire program virtually too.

Incentivized

I would say, provide Submittable as much detailed information on your planned use of the platform and your desires with the platform as possible, and the implementation will be tailored to accommodate your organization with minimal lag time and issues/problems.

Incentivized

I evaluated several different products, including SurveyMonkey. SoGoSurvey appeared to have the most features at the best value. Unfortunately, the "free" service didn't satisfy our needs and we had to upgrade during the first survey. I found SurveyMonkey and SoGoSurvey to be very comparable.

Incentivized

Submittable isn't in the same league as these other platforms. It's trying to get there but it's been a rocky road. Neither customer support nor the account people we've dealt with at Submittable seem particularly knowledgeable about how the product actually works for foundations and can't provide detailed recommendations for how to use the product more effectively. The decision to use Submittable was made before I came on board. We are moving to another platform next year, probably SmartSimple.

Incentivized

I wish we could choose our own number of applications we want for the year and have the price be changed because we are in-between buyable numbers and always have to add more applications at the end of the year

Incentivized

We have been easily able to grow. Not only are we able to process different applications, but Submittable makes it easy to add applications onto our plan. Additionally, their eligibility form before the application does a good job of screening applicants so we do not pay for extra applications.

Incentivized

Very professional

Incentivized

• Cost. The software is very reasonably priced when judged against its functionality. The cost and risk of deploying paper surveys, coupled with the additional time it would take to input the data before analysis, means we have a lot less to worry about, have saved time and money.
• Data and reputation. Security of data is important to us. Using this software has enhanced our credibility with clients. We're serious about data security and this software shows that we are.
• Ethics and reputation. We are also serious about achieving the highest ethical standards in research, and nothing in this software impedes our ability to meet these standards.
• Speed. The online training, all of which has been 1-2-1, helped me get to grips with the software and deploy it quickly. The quality of training is very high indeed.

• Time is money! Submittable has eliminated many tasks I used to do manually, thus freeing my time for other work.
• Decreased support calls and emails from applicants- Our applicants are able to successfully access and apply for our grants.
• No internal IT support needed to use this platform. That team is able to focus on their larger business projects and needs.

Incentivized