Reducing applicant anxiety: Confirmation, notifications and status visibility done right

The grant application has been submitted. The cursor is blinking on an empty page. And the applicant is wondering: Did I do everything correctly? Did my application even go through?

Almost everyone who has submitted a grant application knows this feeling. For grant managers, it can manifest as a full inbox. Questions such as “Did you receive my application?” or “What is the current status?” take up time that would be better spent reviewing applications.

It doesn’t have to be this way: with a few specific settings, you can significantly reduce this uncertainty so applicants know where they stand and your team doesn’t have to spend its time answering follow-up questions and writing reassuring emails.

Where does the uncertainty after submission come from?

There is often an emotional component when applying for grant applications. A lot is at stake for most organisations: staff positions, projects or even the entirety of a program. When applicants hear nothing for weeks, they start to doubt. Some grantmakers regularly take several months to provide feedback after an application has been submitted. Without any updates in the meantime, this silence can quickly feel like a sign that the application has been lost.

The solution is not necessarily to speed up the review process, but to keep applicants informed. A good process starts before submission.

User-friendly systems always provide clear feedback about what is currently happening. People want to know whether their action was successful, what the current status is and what happens next.

The confirmation email: the first reassurance

The confirmation email is a simple yet effective building block. It arrives immediately after submission and directly answers the most important question: Yes, your application has been received.

A good application confirmation includes:

• A clear application or reference number for identification
• The date and time of submission
• A realistic indication of when applicants can expect to hear back
• A note explaining where the application status can be checked at any time
• A contact option for any questions

The tone is important too: friendly, concise and free of jargon. For example: “We’ve received your application and it is now under review. The review process usually takes six to eight weeks.”

This type of message takes some of the pressure out of the situation and sets realistic expectations.

Good Grants allows you to create emails and broadcasts that are triggered by specific events, such as the submission of an application, and sent automatically. This means your team doesn’t have to spend time sending manual confirmations, while every applicant still receives a reliable response immediately.

Automatic saving: Security while completing an application

Uncertainty often starts while filling out the application. Many grant applications are lengthy and require attachments, budget plans or input from several people. Applicants therefore often work on a form across multiple sessions.

This is exactly where automatic saving makes a difference. When an application form continuously saves progress in the background, applicants no longer have to worry about losing hours of work because they accidentally closed a browser tab or their session expired. They can take a break, exchange ideas with colleagues or gather missing documents without having to start over.

From a grant management perspective, automatic saving is beneficial in two ways: it reduces support requests caused by lost entries and increases the number of fully submitted applications.

Status updates that actually help

Once an application has been submitted, applicants enter perhaps the most uneasy phase: waiting. A clearly labelled status indicator turns that wait from a blind flight into a process they can understand and follow.

The key is to phrase status descriptions in a way that applicants can easily understand, without internal jargon. Some proven status messages might look like this:

Draft – the application is still being worked on and has not been submitted
Received – the application has been fully submitted and confirmed
Under review – reviewers are currently assessing the application
Approved – the application has been approved
Declined – the application was not selected for funding

An accessible application portal where these status updates are clearly visible reduces the number of enquiries made by email or phone. You can find more tips and tricks for reducing administrative workload here.

Small settings, big impact

Confirmation emails, automatic saving and clear status updates may seem like technical details at first glance. In practice, they can determine whether applicants feel seen and taken seriously.

Good Grants was developed specifically for this purpose: automated, reliable communication that gives applicants confidence and takes the pressure off your team. If you take a moment to consider these three settings and configure them to suit your program, you can turn a stressful situation into a process that people can trust.

Less time spent answering enquiries also means more time for the actual review process, which can often lead to faster results for applicants. At the West Kootenay Regional Arts Council, this has had a very tangible impact:

Good Grants has saved us hundreds of hours of admin time managing our grants in the last year. It usually takes us approximately three months to get the results out to applicants, and this year we were able to get the results out six weeks early!!

— Lily Andersen, Grants Officer, West Kootenay Regional Arts Council

For your next grant program, take a moment to check: Is your confirmation email informative enough? Does your form save automatically? And do your status labels really tell applicants what they need to know? Small adjustments here can make grantmaking what it should be: simple and fair.