From blank page to live program: How to create a grant program in Good Grants

You’ve got your funding, your goals and a clear sense of who you want to reach and your desired impact. Now comes the fun part: turning all your ideas and content into a live, working grant program. One that’s easy for applicants to navigate, efficient for your team to manage and ready to produce the decisions that matter.

If you’re new to Good Grants or setting up a program for the first time, we make it easy— despite a multitude of configuration options. Our Help Centre offers a complete guide on getting started.

EducationMatters, a Calgary-based education trust, moved to Good Grants in 2022 when they needed a more cost-effective software solution. They were nervous about the change, said Kathryn Schilman, Grants and Student Award Officer at EducationMatters.

“Prior to Good Grants, I honestly dreaded and almost had panic attacks at the thought of having to create new applications or make any changes to an existing application in the platform we were using. It is SO nice to have that stress removed…I love how easy Good Grants is to use and how easy it is to get things set up year to year.”

Getting started with your grant program shouldn’t be stressful. Here, we walk you through the process, offer tips, and go over best practices to help you go from that blank canvas to your open call for applications.

Step 1: Set up your program structure

The first thing you’ll do in Good Grants is create your grant opportunity and define its basic parameters. This includes your program name, funding amount, open and close dates, and the type of program you’re running, whether it’s an open competitive grant, a closed or nomination-based program, a scholarship, a fellowship or a corporate giving initiative.

Good Grants is built to handle all of these program types within the same platform, so your configuration options are flexible from the outset. You can also set your program to run in multiple languages and multiple currencies at this stage, which is useful if you’re managing international grants or working with a multilingual applicant pool.

Step 2: Build your application form

With your program structure in place, it’s time to build your application form. Good Grants’ online application form builder gives you full control over the questions and the field types you want to include, from short text and dropdowns to file uploads, optional AI fields, rich text responses and budget tables.

A few things worth thinking through at this stage:

• What do you actually need to collect? Keep your form focused on the information that will genuinely inform your review decisions. Shorter, well-structured forms tend to produce better quality submissions.
• Do you need conditional logic? Good Grants lets you show or hide fields based on applicant responses, ideal for eligibility screening or tailoring the form to different applicant types without creating multiple separate forms.
• Will you use multiple stages? You can structure your program as a single application or a multi-stage process, for example, an expression of interest followed by a full application, so that you’re only asking for details from the applicants who make it through the first round.

Step 3: Configure your review process

This is the step that often gets underestimated, and where Good Grants offers some of its most powerful functionality.

Before you go live, you’ll want to configure how applications will be assessed. Good Grants’ reviewing fast start wizard walks you through this process step by step, helping you set up scoring criteria, assign reviewer roles, define panels and configure how applications progress through each stage.

Key decisions to make here include whether reviewers will score independently or collaboratively, what your scoring rubric looks like, and whether you need conflict of interest management in place.

Getting this right before applications open is one of the single biggest time-savers in the grant management lifecycle.

Step 4: Set up automated communications

Applicants expect to hear from you at every stage of the process, and manually sending status updates to hundreds of applicants is not a sustainable approach.

In Good Grants, you can configure automated email notifications tied to specific triggers: submission confirmation, status changes, reviewer assignments, decision notifications and more.

Setting these up before you launch means your communication runs on autopilot throughout the program, freeing your team to focus on the decisions that require human judgment.

Step 5: Customise your applicant-facing interface

Good Grants lets you brand your applicant portal with your organisation’s logo, colours and language so your applicants land somewhere that feels like your organisation.

This is a small detail with a meaningful impact on applicant confidence, particularly for first-time applicants who are assessing whether your program is credible and worth their effort. You can add guidance notes and videos, FAQs and help text directly within the platform, so applicants have the context they need without needing to contact your team.

Applicant experiences are important, and Good Grants provides a myriad of opportunities to give that positive experience.

Step 6: Test before you go live

Before you publish your program, take the time to go through the full applicant journey yourself. Submit a test application, check your confirmation email, review what the submission looks like on the manager side and verify that your automated notifications are firing correctly.

It sounds obvious, but it’s a step that’s easy to skip when you’re working under a deadline. A broken link in a confirmation email or a missing required field can undermine applicant trust before your program has even begun.

And the great news is that Good Grants is here to help, providing our free (and very popular!) pre-launch program check for grant managers, which includes:

• A technical check of the program configuration, excluding reviewing
• The submission of one test application
• Notes on how to improve the program and application form for applicants and reviewers
• Additional recommendations that may be helpful
• A PDF report summarising all findings

Step 7: Publish and monitor

Once you’re happy with your configuration, going live with your program in Good Grants is straightforward. From the moment applications start coming in, your grant management dashboard gives you a live view of submissions, review progress and key metrics, so you always know where your program stands.

Ready to get started?

Setting up a grant program doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right platform and a clear sequence of steps, you can go from blank canvas to open for applications quickly and with confidence. Start your free 14-day trial of Good Grants and see how straightforward it can be.