The university program manager’s guide to grant management software

Since 2019, the Aziz Foundation has awarded more than 700 Masters scholarships and invested over £8 million — through a single scholarship program.

Universities often run several such programs at once: doctoral scholarships, internal research funds, travel grants. Each has its own deadlines, forms and committees. Much of it still runs on email inboxes and spreadsheets. This approach can work while a program stays small. After that, it costs time, energy and sometimes fairness. This guide shows what matters when choosing grant management software for universities.

What universities need from grant management software

Many universities run several programs parallel, spread across faculties and committees. A good platform therefore covers these points:

• Several program types in one system: scholarships, fellowships, internal research funding and funding for regional projects.
• Easy, intuitive applications: applicants get through the form without guidance, whether on a computer, tablet or smartphone.
• Review by clear rules: reviewers score against fixed criteria with weightings, and conflicts of interest can be documented and managed transparently.
• Traceable decisions: who assessed what, and when? You should be able to answer and prove this at any time.
• Communication in one place: offers, rejections and queries run through the platform instead of ten inboxes.

Beyond universities: foundations and corporate programs

Foundations also award project funding and grants, companies run CSR and corporate giving programs, and associations offer prizes and scholarships. However different the organisations, the task is similar: collect applications, assess them fairly, decide cleanly and report transparently. A good platform handles all these program types without a separate tool for each.

Lean or heavyweight: which size suits you?

The market offers comprehensive research administration systems. They cover the entire lifecycle of large externally funded projects, from budget planning to final accounting. That makes sense if a central research office needs exactly that.

Many grant managers have a different job, though. They want to collect applications, have them reviewed fairly and document decisions properly. Large systems are often too complex for that. Implementation takes months, and little happens without IT support. A focused platform such as Good Grants’ scholarship management software is configured much more quickly, and without IT support.

Another option is to commission custom software built for your own case. It sounds tailor-made at first, but it has three drawbacks. You become dependent on a single supplier, updates and improvements do not arrive automatically, and you do not benefit from the experience of thousands of other programs. An established SaaS platform, by contrast, keeps evolving, driven by the needs of many organisations at once.

Many programs, one system: the EducationMatters

The principle scales across sectors and borders. The charity EducationMatters in Calgary, Canada, manages more than 100 awards and scholarships in education in a single system. Its requirements are the ones universities know: many programs, many applicants, fixed cycles.

Kathryn Schilman, who is responsible for scholarships and student awards, reports noticeable changes.

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 and to know that making any changes within the system is incredibly easy and takes a matter of minutes.

You can read the full testimonial on our website.

These questions help in demos and conversations with vendors:

1. How long until the first program is live? If it takes several weeks, that is not a good sign.
2. Can we configure forms and workflows ourselves? Otherwise you depend on support for every change.
3. How does the review of applications work? Look for scoring criteria, weightings and targeted assignment of reviewers.
4. How easy is the process for external reviewers? If sign-up is complicated, they drop out.
5. Does the platform support multiple languages? Applicants get through the form more easily if they can complete it in their own language.Multilingualism is also an explicit goal of EU policy. More on this: Does your grant program speak the language of your applicants?
6. Is the application process accessible? For publicly (co-)funded programs, digital accessibility is increasingly mandatory. Accessible applications also widen the circle of people who can apply at all. More on this: Why accessibility is important at Good Grants
7. What about data protection? Check how the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is handled, where the data is stored and who has access.

Data protection and data residency

Undoubtedly, the handling of personal data can be the most important selection criterion. Applications contain sensitive information, assessments reflect careful decisions, and all of it must remain traceable and legally compliant.

Look for three important features when it comes to security and your program data:

• Data residency: where is the data physically stored? Check whether you can choose the hosting region. With Good Grants, multiple regions are available.
• GDPR compliance in practice: consent to the privacy policy, consent to notifications, permanent deletion of user data and a data processing agreement (DPA) should be covered. With Good Grants, the DPA is already built into the standard agreement.
• Access rights and traceability: data residency alone is not enough. Clear roles, transparent logs and controlled access create real data sovereignty and reduce the effort involved in audits and reports.

You can read more on how to protect your program’s data in our practical security checklist for grant programs.

After the decision: payments, reports and impact

The work does not end with the funding decision. The real administrative burden often starts afterwards: paying out and tracking funds, collecting reports from grantees and demonstrating impact. A good platform covers this phase too.

What to look for:

• Report forms: with Good Grants, you can create as many report forms as you like for narrative, financial or KPI information and send them at any point in the grant cycle.
• Automatic reminders: preconfigured notifications to grantees and the team ahead of deadlines and milestones keep everyone on schedule.
• Progress at a glance: a central view shows which reports have been requested, when they are due and what has already been submitted.
• Portfolio-wide analysis: portfolio-level data supports reporting to committees and funders and the planning of future cycles.

That leaves more time for what matters: strong relationships with grantees and real impact.

Less admin, more impact

Good funding programs thrive when ideas and people find each other. Software should make that possible without creating extra work. When application, review and decision all happen in one place, your team has more time for the right projects.

At Good Grants, our aim is to make grantmaking simple and fair. If you would like to see what that could look like for your university, start with a free trial.