Fluxx in San Francisco offers Grantmaker, this being their grant management platform for funders, providing clear data exploration tools and customizable dashboard, dynamic workflow with audit trail, and many collaboration and sharing tools.
N/A
Submittable
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Submittable offers tools to launch, measure, and grow social impact programs, locally and globally. From grants and scholarships to awards and CSR programs, Submittable partners with users to make a difference. The vendor states Submittable has supported over 95,000 social impact programs, receiving nearly 20 million applications, and that teams save an average of 12 hours per week and launch in an average of 14 days.
We used SlideRoom for ease of development and quick turnaround time. We didn't have much time to launch the program, so we went with something that was familiar to many.
Fluxx is well-suited for use by both small and large non-profits. Fluxx provides an intuitive interface and accurately houses grant proposal application data. Fluxx may be less useful at organizations where multiple funding layers exist, such as at community foundations which house multiple philanthropic funds. Fluxx has been an excellent product over the 10 years I have worked with it
We love using Submittable for our grant applications. Sometimes, we've run into issues with filters inside the system not clearing -- and we lose access to some of our information. Submittable Customer Service is quick to respond and assist us in solving our problems quickly to get back up and running. We find their training videos to help us learn new ways to use the system.
Advanced reporting is far from advanced. There are SO many limitations and the need to manually do so many things in order to get the report structure you want, and it is not intuitive. The reporting is by far the most frustrating thing about Submittable and actually adds on staff time instead of cutting it down.
PDFs of submissions should include all supplemental files uploaded in the submission. You should not have to do massive exports with zip files and then merge everything manually to get one PDF of submitted content for simplified records or sharing.
We should be able to see the account emails and names of individuals who have started a draft submission. In our former system (GIFTS online via Blackbaud), we could see that information and could reach out personally to applicants to ensure they didn't miss deadlines and could remove emails from our reminder communications from those we knew already submitted and simply opened up an accidental additional draft. When we send reminders in Submittable to draft submissions, without fail, we get 5-10 people who reach out and are upset because they already submitted but think this means they didn't, regardless of how we word the email and tell them they may have an extra draft if they think they already submitted.
You should be able to simply build one report in whatever format you need and be able to switch between different projects that use the same exact form fields. My team has the same exact form used for nine different grant programs because they are the same programs, just for different local communities, but we have to build out the same report manually each cycle for each community.
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
Submittable is very user friendly. Even our less tech-savvy team members were able to navigate Submittable and achieve what was necessary. The single limitation is that it is not easy to move information/documents/applications from the Submittable platform into other platforms, or even to download documents from Submittable into a separate storage system
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
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
I have an assigned rep who is very responsive and is able to answer any questions. Other than that, the technical support has been terrible. I often don't waste time documenting bugs because I know they likely won't get fixed or even followed-up on. Instead, I search for workarounds.
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.
We did not receive in-person training technically, it was virtual but it was one on one with a specialist. They were very patient and skilled - she knew everything about the program and honed in on features that would help make our jobs easier. We are so grateful for the training!
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.
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.
Not included above because it is not in the system is Salesforce Foundation Connect. Again, I am always hesitant with this type of question. We selected grant maker because it offered the best fit for our organization's working style and culture. There is also a personal level of service that Fluxx offers that differed from other vendors (Smart Simple is similar in this way too). At the time we made the selection, one of the main influencers was the number of large foundations adopting the platform. As they invested in features, those features rolled out to the rest of the clients. This offered us access to functionality we would not have been able to afford otherwise. We moved from another vendor whose platform allowed for customization as well, but if they built it for one client, you still had to pay for it and pay ongoing yearly fees. So, the SAAS model adopted by Fluxx appealed to us. This has paid dividends as features have been developed. For example, one large foundation added the capability to track program-related investments alongside normal grantmaking activities within Fluxx. This is not functionality we could have paid to develop, but we have program-related investments that we wanted to track alongside grants and that feature was available to us because the development was paid for by that funder. That said, most of the above vendors have compelling products (as well as others), so be sure you look at your options and talk to users (other than the ones they provide you in the reference list) and check the Idealware guides
When it comes to collecting applications, no one beats Submittable in terms of features and functionality. With other software we used, there were far too many limitations, including having to manually download data, inability to use logic for fields, and no analytics. The other products we used for application collection could not compare to Submittable.
Pricing is fair for the product and support received, and we are content with the billing being annual in order to save overall. Contract terms are fair, and don't seem inflated for any reason. Pricing per application is also fair, and you can actually have the applicant absorb the cost if necessary
We were happy to use this for many projects, but sometimes it can be hard to filter for a specific applicant and see how many of our projects and grants they have applied to without filtering by project. We're also hoping to have the feature added where reviewers can only see one project at a time if they don't have clearance to view all of the projects
