Looking back, looking forward: 2023 in review and a glimpse of 2024

As we usher in a new year, it’s time to celebrate the milestones and advancements that defined Good Grants in 2023. Our commitment to empowering grantmakers has taken centre stage, with a relentless focus on enhancing ease of use, security and functionality. These pillars have guided our product strategy, ensuring that every user’s experience with Good Grants is not just productive but truly exceptional.

Over the last year, we implemented 25 new features and made 151 product enhancements to help you work more efficiently.

Keeping your grants and scholarship data secure is foundational to Good Grants. Continuing our commitment to security, we earned another security certificate in 2023. Backed by the UK government and overseen by the National Cyber Security Centre, our Cyber Essentials certification is not just a milestone but a continuous assurance, as we undergo annual assessments, to uphold our commitment to the highest security standards. In 2023 alone, we implemented 16 product security enhancements, further strengthening our platform and reinforcing our customers’ trust.

For a quick recap, here are some of our most exciting 2023 features and product updates!

New features that defined 2023

In 2023, Good Grants rolled out a suite of new features, each contributing to the platform’s growth and adaptability. These features include:

• For sophisticated grant management
• For ease of use
• What’s ahead in 2024

For sophisticated grant management

1. Grant reporting

For grantmakers with post-award reporting requirements, we developed a robust set of reporting tools to help streamline the management of awarded grants, maintain reporting compliance and keep funding on track.
Powered by Good Grants’ secure online forms, grantmakers can create an unlimited number of grant report forms to solicit programmatic, financial, KPI or other pertinent information, at any time and as often as required.

Read more: Stay on top of post-award performance with grant reports

2. Documents and document templates

Grant managers can upload documents and create templates in Good Grants to make it easy to apply documents to a wide swath of users in the system, complete with merge tags for personalisation. Documents can be monitored and managed with automatic notifications to alert recipients of new and updated documents.

Read more: Feature focus: How to use documents to organise your grantmaking

3. API updates

In 2023, we continued to expand the Good Grants API with several new endpoints available to support both payment tracking and grant status. We also added new webhooks for communicating grant status changes.

For ease of use

4. Home page updates

The home page has been revamped for a more intuitive and useful experience, ensuring users can access critical information at a glance. Here’s a quick list of the home page improvements:

• An exciting redesign of the layout 
• Easy navigation to the home page for logged-in users
• Streamlined registration and login 
• Options to display grant opportunity forms and categories 
• Optional display of about page content and new menu
• A new language preference selector

Read more: Streamline your application experience with our new and improved home page

5. Form copying

Grant managers can now duplicate forms effortlessly, saving time and streamlining the application process.

6. Form calculations

We added a new formula field in our forms so grant managers can calculate, format or transform information provided by applicants or grantees on a form, automatically.

Read more: Unlock the power of formulas with Good Grant’s new formula field

7. New user roles

Bookkeeper and auditor roles are available with specific, customisable workspace permissions.

What’s ahead in 2024

As we look to the future, Good Grants is gearing up for even more exciting developments. Here’s a sneak peek into what lies ahead:

8. Collaborative editing

Team members will be able to seamlessly collaborate in real-time on the same application or grant report submission simultaneously, fostering a more dynamic and integrated grant management process. This feature will also streamline the process of inviting and managing permissions for multiple users, enabling them to view, edit, and submit a single submission with ease.

9. Entering multiple categories with a single application

Simplifying the submission process, users will be able to apply to multiple categories with a single application, enhancing efficiency and reducing redundant work. #TimeSaver

10. Account configuration copy 

Customers with or in need of multiple Good Grants accounts will find it much easier to configure accounts with the ability to copy configurations, ensuring consistency and saving time.

As we turn the page to 2024, our commitment at Good Grants remains resolute – to provide a platform that not only meets but exceeds the dynamic needs of our users. Your continued support and collaboration have been the driving force behind our innovations. We express our heartfelt gratitude for being integral to the Good Grants journey. Here’s to the shared successes of 2023 and the promising endeavours in 2024. Thank you for being an essential part of our story in 2023, too!

Want to learn more about the Good Grants software? Sign up for our free 14-day trial!