Likelihood to Recommend As I mentioned, cost is prohibitive for us. Because it is highly customizable, it is very powerful, but if you are looking for an intuitive, easy to use solution right "out of the box" solution because you have few staff and no IT dept. this may not be the best fit (unless they develop some lower cost / less customizable options?). That being said, we have managed to implement successfully with no IT. I completed the implementation, code the application and online reporting forms (using HTML) and use Blueprint to customize what we need, but it has been a big learning curve and an investment of time to manage the back end of the program. I will say that training new general users is pretty straight forward so their ability to search for information they need and quickly is greatly enhanced. The automatic customized reports and reminders are pretty great, and the overall integrity of our processes and data are greatly improved. Sometimes we wonder if it is overly complex and if there is a way e could "hide" more of the aspects that are not relevant to us, or that we are not using, so we can have a cleaner interface.
Read full review Submittable is a great platform for collecting entries for review in various settings. Whether it’s grants, awards, contests, or such events, It offers security, vetting of people to a high degree, and a non-destructive history, which can be essential if you are audited. The platform is easy to set up and can be used in simple or complex ways for judging and reviews. I am unsure in what cases the platform would be unsuitable; it just works.
Read full review Pros We like to create our own numbering system and Blackbaud Grantmaking allows us that flexibility. When we were having issues with items being in numerical order the tech support was amazing. Creating your own forms is very important for us. We have several different donors and we have a grant application form and a report form for each one. They are easy to create as well as update and access. Alternative ways to hunt for information. I can access a grant by the organization name, project name, grant number or even the name of the person who submitted the grant application. This is critical in a case where the program officer has a nickname for the grant (you can include that as well in the profile) and can't remember anything else. Read full review Great customer service. Reviewers are able to see all documents on one screen instead of opening multiple windows in order to review the application. Applications are easy to build and edit. The review portions is user friendly. Applicants find the forms easy to use. Read full review Cons Application linking process is time consuming System enhancement ideas must be submitted to a community portal and other users must take the initiative to vote on their favorite ideas instead of vendor programmers collecting received ideas and doing the work themselves. Lack of conditional logic in online application Communication with other Blackbaud products notably Employee Volunteering and Engagement (fka AngelPoints) Read full review It really is just a submission aggregator and does not make the grants/project management very efficient for program managers. Our organization uses our grant application process to deepen our local nonprofit relationships and needs to be able to view & manage nonprofit profiles, not just submissions. Need more options for DocuSign fields beside the placeholder tags that are currently available, such as custom fields we've created within a specific form. Need functionality for nonprofits that use fiscal agents -- this is why we cannot use the charity check feature to organize our submissions by organization name. Pulling reports for reviewer scores is not feasible with the current setup -- we have an agreement with Submittable to pull our scores in a specific format that we are unable to do within the system ourselves. This eliminates some level of efficiency we thought we would have. Pulling immediate information from reports is not feasible -- there's a delay of approximately two days for submission information to populate into the advanced report. This creates some manual work for me to be able to process same-day payments for the emergency assistance program. Read full review Likelihood to Renew As long as there is continued development in the product allowing us to create efficiencies, streamline operations, deliver on our reporting requirements and the usability for internal and external partners remains strong we would have no reason to look elsewhere from a systems perspective. If costs changed substantially we'd have to look at different options to meet our cost savings objectives.
Read full review We use this software annually to help with our grant processes. Without it, I'd be so lost! Our team relies on the data from our past years to sift applications and we try to prioritize those who have applied and been a finalist but perhaps didn't win in years prior
Read full review Usability There is room for improvement and the development of the software seem slow. As customers, we hear a lot about what's in development and promises of new features rolling out. However, it feels like those developments take a really long time to show up in they system for my day-to-day use.
Read full review Submittable is very user friendly. Even our less tech-savvy team members were able to navigate Submittable and achieve what was necessary. The single limitation is that it is not easy to move information/documents/applications from the Submittable platform into other platforms, or even to download documents from Submittable into a separate storage system
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have thankfully never experienced an outage nor been affected by a technology issue on Submittable's side that has delayed our grant process. We have instead been able to distribute over $6M in donated dollars to AAPI small business owners because Submittable is trustworthy and available
Read full review Performance We've had a quick and efficient submittable experience that has always been easy to use. When we need a report it downloads within seconds, even the larger reports are 30 seconds or less to download. Pages are quick to load and reports complete in a more than reasonable time frame
Read full review Support Rating When it was microwaves they were a lot more Hands-On assistance, but since merging they have better tracking of the issues.
Read full review I think that they are good at answering our questions and solving our problems. We occasionally get reports from applicants about problems the Submittable team has not solved, but I do not know what the applicant has done to get the problem solved.
Read full review In-Person Training We have been using this for many years but my memory is that we had a human walk us through how to use basic features. We also used the resource library to learn about specific topics or issues as they came up.
Read full review Online Training 10/10 because we were able to meet virtually and still get all of our questions answered! Online was effective too because we could easily record the sessions and review them later. Since we had to onboard our reviewers virtually, it was actually convenient that this was the same method we learned how to use the entire program virtually too.
Read full review Implementation Rating Preparing and cleaning up your data prior to implementation, will make the process much smoother and easier. Garbage in, garbage out.
Read full review I would say, provide Submittable as much detailed information on your planned use of the platform and your desires with the platform as possible, and the implementation will be tailored to accommodate your organization with minimal lag time and issues/problems.
Read full review Alternatives Considered At the time that I used GrantedGE, the product was in the development stages and there were a lot of bugs and issues with functionality. The customer service didn't have the bandwidth to quickly respond to issues. BlackBaud's customer service and history in the field are advantages
Read full review Submittable isn't in the same league as these other platforms. It's trying to get there but it's been a rocky road. Neither customer support nor the account people we've dealt with at Submittable seem particularly knowledgeable about how the product actually works for foundations and can't provide detailed recommendations for how to use the product more effectively. The decision to use Submittable was made before I came on board. We are moving to another platform next year, probably SmartSimple.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model As I said earlier, it is frustrating when new features are introduced and we hear about them on the quarterly check-ins, only to find they come at an additional cost. I think new featured should be grandfathered into existing contracts and then renegotiated.
Read full review Scalability We were happy to use this for many projects, but sometimes it can be hard to filter for a specific applicant and see how many of our projects and grants they have applied to without filtering by project. We're also hoping to have the feature added where reviewers can only see one project at a time if they don't have clearance to view all of the projects
Read full review Professional Services Very professional
Read full review Return on Investment It has increased our return on reaching our business objectives. It has moved us (or started to move us) to a better place in reporting and transparency. It has helped us transition from an act of corporate giving to a goal of social change. Read full review Ease of training new employees with the system, simple interface and similar to other CRMs, etc. We can launch a new grant fairly quickly now that we have the processes down and templates created Ability to respond quickly to provider questions/needs Read full review ScreenShots Blackbaud Grantmaking Screenshots