5 Proven ways to reduce support costs for online grantmaking

However, an online application with a poor user experience can cause confusion and increase your reliance and hours spent on grantseeker support. 

It’s important to keep grant support costs under control. Evaluators, grantseekers and other program stakeholders require support and guidance throughout the entire grant lifecycle and that’s no easy job. 

So, how can you reduce operating costs for your grant program while improving the user experience? Keep reading to learn five actionable steps you can take to reduce support costs while delivering the best program experience.

Automate a qualifying round  

“Can I apply for this funding opportunity?”

It’s likely a question your support team answers. A lot. Save time on the most common application (and pre-application) questions by creating a qualification round. 

By creating a qualification process, you not only cut down on support requests about eligibility, but you also save time for your assessment team by reducing the number of applications that don’t meet basic requirements. 

Establish clear and concise grant terms and conditions

When setting up your program’s terms and conditions, include everything your grantseekers need to know to apply. Make sure you cover:

• Timeline and deadlines
• Grant funds value (what’s in it for them)
• Opportunity requirements
• Post-grant reporting requirements
• Your program goal and mission

Make it easy for your participants to find your terms and conditions and consider requiring them to read and agree to them before final submission.

By providing clear, accessible and comprehensive terms and conditions, you can avoid any last-minute problems or late-night phone calls from frustrated grantees. 

Golden rule: Always put yourself in your applicants’ shoes.

Offer an easy and delightful user experience

Users expect better and better digital experiences. And by meeting these expectations, you ensure both better quality and quantity of applications and provide a great first impression of what the relationship with you will be like.

Improve your application experience by offering: 

• An easily digestible application form split into multiple tabs or pages
• Field validation with error messaging for phone numbers, email addresses, etc. to avoid typos
• An easy way for your applicants to start, save, and return to the application form 
• One central location to manage all applications and reports

A great application experience will result in fewer questions about your process.

Provide step-by-step guidance and support

Support applicants with help, tips and guidance at every stage of their submission to help them complete their applications with ease. This can be done in your grants system to save your human support team time! For example, in Good Grants, you can: 

• Provide contextual information throughout the application form. Content blocks allow you the flexibility to provide instructions where you need it.
• Give help and hint text at the field or question-level to make sure each question is easily understood. You can also provide expectations or examples.
• Add videos and images to help your applicants through the process, easily available on content blocks across the platform for a richer experience. 

Keep your grant program participants up to date

There’s no such thing as over-communicating with your grantseekers. From notifying reviewers about evaluation deadlines to emailing applicants about program status, there is a lot to communicate–and transparency is key in reducing support requests.

Use email and text messages as often as possible to send program updates so they won’t feel the need to reach out to you.

In conclusion, providing a great user experience for your grantseekers can cut down significantly on support and operational costs for your organisation. And using a grant management system such as Good Grants can help you achieve these results.