Room for Improvement.
September 15, 2022
Room for Improvement.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Submittable
I use Submittable as our grant portal. I create projects, grant applications (AKA forms), receive applications (AKA submissions) from nonprofits, set up the workflows of each project, invite reviewers, train reviewers on using the portal, facilitate the selection process, send decision notifications, ensure checks are sent out to grantees, conduct any other follow-up, provide feedback to applicants, and collect grant reports/conduct the post-award monitoring. Submittable is a more modern and user-friendly option for reviewers and applicants in comparison to our old grant portal.
- Applicant (submitter) experience is positive, user-friendly.
- The ability to message directly with submitters within the portal in relation to their submission is a great feature.
- Application creation is very easy.
- Adding labels to submissions makes filtering simple and customizable to our needs.
- It really is just a submission aggregator and does not make the grants/project management very efficient for program managers.
- Our organization uses our grant application process to deepen our local nonprofit relationships and needs to be able to view & manage nonprofit profiles, not just submissions.
- Need more options for DocuSign fields beside the placeholder tags that are currently available, such as custom fields we've created within a specific form.
- Need functionality for nonprofits that use fiscal agents -- this is why we cannot use the charity check feature to organize our submissions by organization name.
- Pulling reports for reviewer scores is not feasible with the current setup -- we have an agreement with Submittable to pull our scores in a specific format that we are unable to do within the system ourselves. This eliminates some level of efficiency we thought we would have.
- Pulling immediate information from reports is not feasible -- there's a delay of approximately two days for submission information to populate into the advanced report. This creates some manual work for me to be able to process same-day payments for the emergency assistance program.
- Improved applicant experience -- positive response from our nonprofits leads to more positive relationships.
- Improved reviewer experience -- quicker turnaround for completed scoring.
- Faster launch times for applications/projects.
- Better branding customizability.
- Negative program manager experience - more time-consuming, less efficient processing of requests.
- Negative program manager experience related to timely & customizable reporting.
Yes and no. Submittable has helped with grantee relationships by making applications and additional forms easier. But there is much more infrastructure needed to intentionally deepen relationships with grantees.
Blackbaud Grantmaking was more complicated/difficult to use but had more features that enabled project & relationship management. It was also more integrated with our financial management system.
Do you think Submittable delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with Submittable's feature set?
No
Did Submittable live up to sales and marketing promises?
No
Did implementation of Submittable go as expected?
No
Would you buy Submittable again?
No
Using Submittable
10 - Grant program managers, database manager