How to choose the best grant applications through quantitative and qualitative review

Making good funding decisions often means wading through a sea of creditable grant applications. When so many are deserving of the funds, it can be challenging to find the standout applicants.

One of the best ways to make good decisions is to rely on a holistic grant review assessment rubric, one that combines critical quantitative metrics and scoring with the nuance, depth and context that qualitative grant review can provide.

Why combine quantitative and qualitative scoring in grant review?

Quantitative scoring is an effective way to provide assessment through predefined metrics in your grant assessment rubric that result in a numeric value or score. Quantitative scoring provides your grant assessment team a way to assess applications objectively and consistently, as well as identify patterns and trends. In a nutshell, it is the hard data assessment of an application.

Qualitative assessment, meanwhile, can offer the “softer” assessment of an entry. It’s the look, the feel, the feedback and comments of an application. It goes beyond numerical scoring to offer a holistic assessment. This type of review can help find the best applications in a more subjective grant review, or grants where you are looking to award funding to multiple grantees.

Each assessment method on its own can present limitations or not capture the full scope of a grant application. Used in combination, however, quantitative and qualitative review can add well-rounded context that numbers alone can’t capture. It balances the hard and soft aspects of a grant application, providing objectivity with expert opinion from your review team.

When to use quantitative assessment

Quantitative assessment is ideal for when you want your reviewers to use a pre-defined rubric to score varying criteria in an application.

When using quantitative scoring, you might ask reviewers to rate each relevant field in your application form on a defined numeral score. This could be from 1-5, or 1-10, or any numeral scoring system that works for your program.

Scoring criteria will vary depending on your grants program and industry, but could include measurables such as:

• Impact: How impactful is the planned result?
• Budget: How much funding will it take? Is there a budget?
• Scalability: Can the idea be expanded or grown?
• Execution: How feasible is the plan for funding?
• Collaboration: How many people will be involved?
• Evidence and data: Will the grantees be able to provide regular reports on progress?
• Sustainability: Will the impact last over time?

When to use qualitative assessment

Qualitative assessment works wonderfully when you’re looking to recognise the intangibles in grant application. This could mean providing feedback and review on the authenticity of an applicant or project, or even the narrative surrounding the project or funding prospect.

This type of review can be very effective for granting opportunities where the assessment might be subjective, and where you want to encourage reviewers to reflect contextually on an application or proposal. These won’t necessarily require a numerical rating—instead, reviewers can provide narrative feedback or recommend specific standout applications.

Criteria for qualitative assessment could include:

• The reviewer’s opinion: Based on your experience, what insights can you offer about this grant application?
• Contextual insight: Does the applicant demonstrate a strong understanding of their potential impact in the community?
• Values alignment: How well does this application align with the spirit or purpose of the funding mission?
• Ethics and integrity: Does the applicant demonstrate social responsibility?

Create multiple review rounds to streamline quantitative and qualitative assessment

It’s ideal to provide your review team with a streamlined review process that won’t get overly complicated, and make it easy to recommend the best applications.

Consider creating multiple review rounds for the grant assessment process. You might be doing this already, for example, if you have a qualifying round where you weed out weaker applications.

You might want to start with a quantitative scoring round, where you create a pre-defined rubric for your reviewers to use based on various criteria. Scores can then be tallied and the strongest applications will then move forward.

In the next round, you could create a qualitative round, where you ask your reviewers to dive in deeper, and provide their opinions and insights into each application. While the qualitative assessment does not have to be scored, you could also assign numeral values to review, then add it to your first round of scoring.

Weighted scoring can be very helpful. For example, you might want to weight the quantitative assessment at 70% and the qualitative at 30%.

When creating your grant review assessment process, here are a few important tips to keep in mind:

• Use descriptive labels in the scoring scale so your reviewers understand what the numbers mean.
• Ask the review team to provide feedback, especially helpful in qualitative assessment. You might want reviewers to add internal comments for grant managers only, which can be helpful in serving as tie-breakers or providing background on the assessment.
• If you require feedback, use built-in reminders for the reviewers. Let them know if the comments will be public or internal-only.
• Show applicants their scoring to add credibility to the review process and boost trust. This way, all participants will walk away with insights and value from the experience.

Use Good Grants to simplify your grant review process

Looking to save time but still offer a sophisticated review process? Good Grants helps you streamline your grant assessment processes with ease. Use qualitative and quantitative scoring, along with an entire grant review suite, to help you make good granting decisions.