The modern alternative
to Award Force

One platform

Yes. With Award Force, awards and grants live on two separate products, Award Force and Good Grants. Dapple runs awards, prizes, grants, fellowships, residencies and open calls side by side, so your team learns one tool and pays for one plan.

• One project hub: Every award, prize, grant and open call on one screen.
• Each programme set up your way: Its own form, categories, fees, stages and review rounds.
• Fund management: Track grant budgets, awards and payments on Growth and Pro.
• Duplicate projects: Copy last year's award, categories and judging in one click.

Entry fees

Yes. Award Force Growth is built for free-to-enter programmes, so taking entry fees means moving to Pro at £4,600 a year. Dapple takes entry fees on Growth at £179 a month, and on every other Dapple plan, paid straight into your own Stripe account.

• Included on Growth: Entry, submission and application fees, with no need to upgrade.
• Paid instantly: Fees land in your own Stripe account as entrants pay.
• Baskets and discount codes: Several entries in one payment, with early-bird and member discounts.
• Simple fee: 2% + £0.20 per payment, with a transaction fee cap on Pro and Stripe's processing fees separate.

Visual workflow

Every entry appears as a card on a board, with its image, category and status visible at a glance. You move entries from received to shortlisted to winner, one at a time or in bulk, so the whole programme is visible in one view rather than spread across lists.

• Visual boards: Image previews make photography, art and design awards easy to scan.
• Unlimited stages: From received to longlist, shortlist and winner.
• Bulk actions and tags: Move, tag or message many entries at once.
• Automations: Tag, move and message entries automatically when they reach a stage, on Growth and Pro.

Your forms, your way

Yes. Every Dapple plan includes fully branded entry forms, where Award Force keeps full brand theming for Pro. Build your form yourself, or describe your award to the AI form builder and get a ready-to-use form in seconds.

• Fully branded: Your logo, images and styling on every plan.
• AI form builder: A ready-to-use entry form from a sentence or two.
• Large files: Up to 1GB on Growth, against 10MB on Award Force Growth.
• Conditional logic: Show the right questions for each category.
• Draft reminders: Automatic nudges bring unfinished entries back.

Judging

Judges get their own login and a clear list of the entries assigned to them. They view each entry at full quality, score it against your criteria and check their scores before submitting, so most start judging without any training.

• Customised review rounds: Create as many rounds as your programme needs, from a first sift to a shortlist and a final round, each with its own judges and scoring.
• Rubric scoring: Weight several criteria into one clear score, on every plan.
• Anonymous judging: Hide entrant names or any other field, on every plan.
• Averaged scores: Each judge scores privately, and Dapple averages the results.
• Unlimited judges: Invite as many as you need on Growth.

Communication

Message entrants from your own Dapple dashboard, as a group or one to one, and let Dapple send the routine messages for you: confirmations, notifications, reminders and updates when an entry moves stage. On Award Force, bulk email to entrants is a Pro feature. Every reply is tracked against the entry, so nothing gets lost in an inbox.

• Bulk and 1:1 messages: Write to every entrant, a stage, a category or one person, whenever suits you.
• Automated messages: Send a message automatically when an entry reaches a stage, such as shortlisted or winner, on Growth and Pro.
• Notifications: Entrants get automatic confirmations and updates, so they always know where their entry stands.
• Reminders: Automatic draft reminders bring unfinished entries back before the deadline.
• Replies tracked: Every conversation sits against the entry, and entrants can chat with your team while they enter.

Intelligence

Dapple takes care of the admin that slows every awards programme down. As each entry arrives, it's checked against your rules, anything missing or in the wrong category is flagged, and it's summarised, tagged and sent to the right judges.

• Eligibility checks: Every entry checked as it's submitted, on Growth and Pro.
• Problems caught early: Missing information and wrong categories flagged before judging.
• Summaries, tags and routing: Entries summarised and sent to the right judges.
• Reports in seconds: Connect Dapple to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to analyse entries.
• You stay in control: AI is optional, and people make every decision.

Security and support

Dapple is Cyber Essentials certified, runs on SOC 2-certified AWS hosting and is compliant with UK and EU GDPR. A range of permissions lets you tailor exactly who can see and do what, so everyone gets the access they need and nothing more.

• Tailored permissions: Give administrators, managers, members and judges exactly the access they need.
• Judges kept separate: Judges only see the entries assigned to them, with no access to your dashboard or final decisions.
• Free onboarding: Our team helps you set up and move over from Award Force, where its onboarding service costs £1,600.
• Single sign-on: Included on Pro, where Award Force sells it as an add-on.
• Human support: In-app chat on every plan, onboarding calls on Growth and an account manager on Pro.
• Peace of mind: 30-day money-back guarantee, and 10% off annual Growth and Pro for charities.