How do foundations and charities manage grant applications?

Foundations and charities use dedicated platforms like Dapple to create branded application forms, screen for eligibility, route applications to review panels or trustees for scoring, and communicate funding decisions to applicants in bulk — all from one dashboard.

What should charities look for in a grant application platform?

Charities should look for a platform with low or discounted fees, customisable eligibility screening, dedicated review panels for trustees or assessors, and clear applicant communication tools — without the cost or complexity of enterprise-grade software built for large institutions.

Do charities and non-profits get discounted pricing?

Yes. Dapple offers discounted platform fees for registered charities and non-profits, so more of your funding can go towards your mission rather than admin overheads. Please get in touch for more information.

Can Dapple help manage payments after a grant is awarded?

Dapple currently covers the full application and review process. Post-award functionality — including disbursement, variance reporting and contracts — is coming soon as part of Grant Management. Join the waitlist for early access.

What software do foundations use to manage grant applications?

Many foundations, charities and non-profits use platforms like Dapple to manage grant and funding applications, with discounted non-profit pricing, customisable forms, review panels and built-in applicant communication.

What is Dapple and who is it for?

Dapple is a submissions and workflow platform built primarily for the creative industries. It helps organisations collect, review, manage, and report on submissions, applications or entries in one place without relying on inboxes, spreadsheets, or outdated application tools. Dapple is for creative organisations such as art institutions, publishers, literary magazines, awards bodies, agencies, festivals, academic institutions and teams running open calls, contests, or applications. It's also designed with creators in mind, making submissions clearer and more transparent.

How does Dapple help reduce admin?

Dapple centralises everything—submissions, reviews, communication, statuses, and reporting—into one structured workflow. This removes manual tracking, cuts down on repetitive tasks, and saves teams hours of administrative work in the process.

Can multiple people review submissions?

Yes. Dapple supports collaborative reviewing with clear permissions, allowing multiple reviewers to assess submissions independently and remotely.

Is Dapple suitable for small teams?

Absolutely. Dapple is designed to scale with you—whether you're a small team managing a few hundred submissions or a larger organisation handling thousands.

How is Dapple different from other submission platforms?

Most submission platforms were built for generic workflows and bolted onto the creative world as an afterthought. Dapple was built from the ground up for organisations running awards, open calls, contests, and grants — and it shows in every feature. Where other platforms charge applicants fees just to submit their work, Dapple has no application fees. Payments go directly to your Stripe account instantly minus small transaction fees. Intuitive judging and visual kanban boards let your admin team move submissions through review stages the way creative teams actually think — not buried in spreadsheets or clunky list views. Combined with next-level filtering that lets you cut and sort entries by any field, attribute, or status, your team can go from hundreds of submissions to a shortlist in minutes rather than days. It's a modern, sleek platform that makes complex workflows feel simple. See how Dapple compares feature by feature on our competitors page.

Do applicants need an account to submit?

Yes, however, it's very quick and simple to create and can be done in a matter of seconds. When a creator opens a form, they will be prompted to create a free account. They can either use their Google/Microsoft account, or they will be sent a link via email to confirm. Once created, they will be able to use their account to track the status of all their submissions, any messages, payments made and download any attachments.

Can I communicate with applicants through Dapple?

Yes. Dapple has an inbuilt messaging platform enabling you to manage communication in one place, keeping inbound/outbound messages organised and linked directly to each submission. You are able to send single or bulk messages to multiple applicants, create message templates and configure whether an applicant can respond.

Yes. Dapple is built with modern security standards and role-based permissions to ensure submissions and data are handled safely and responsibly.

Is there a free trial?

You can create an account for free with no credit card details required. We allow this in order to try the system out, see how it works and set everything up in advance of setting your forms live. As soon as you want to make your forms active, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Please note that there is a 'demo mode' feature enabling you to create different projects and workflows, make test payments and submissions without affecting your live data.

I'm stopping submissions for a while. Can I pause my account?

Yes! You have the option to pause your account on every plan. We'll keep your account on ice, keep your setup complete and data safe so you can come back later.

Foundations, Non-Profits & Charities

Running a grants, bursary or funding programme comes with a lot of moving parts — eligibility checks, deadlines, multiple review stages, panels of trustees or assessors, and a constant flow of applicant queries. Through the simplicity of a centralised, end-to-end solution, Dapple is specifically designed to help your team spend less time on admin and more time on mission and impact.

Grant application software dashboard for foundations, non-profits and charities

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What is grant and funding application software?

Grant and funding application software is a platform that lets foundations, charities and non-profits collect, review and decide on funding applications in one place. It replaces email inboxes and spreadsheets with a single workflow covering everything from the application form to the funding decision.

How does grant application software work?

Most foundations and charities follow the same five-step workflow below when using grant application software.

Build your application form. Use a template or describe what you need and let AI generate the form for you.
Applicants apply. They submit through your branded form, with any required documents attached.
Applications are screened. Eligibility questions flag ineligible or incomplete applications early.
Reviewers score and discuss. Trustees or assessors review, score and comment within dedicated panels.
Decisions go out. Approve, decline, or move applicants through further stages — and notify them in bulk or individually.

Customisable application forms

Get up and running in no time with an account that can be created in seconds, complete with a number of

Pre-built templates: Grant and bursary-ready templates to duplicate or tweak.
AI-powered form builder: Describe the application form you want in plain language and Dapple will generate it for you — fields, structure and all, ready to customise.
Eligibility-ready: Build in screening questions so ineligible applications are flagged early, saving reviewer time.
One-link pages: Add all your funding rounds and resources to one branded URL page for applicants to find everything in one place.
Specific: Set up application windows, visibility and multiple funding rounds where needed.
Any file type or size: Accept any file type, any size and give applicants the option to withdraw their application at any point.

Review at speed

Cut your admin time by viewing each application within the platform without the need to download.

View attachments: Use the in-platform viewer and toggle through supporting documents at speed.
Download: Keep those approved applications by downloading files.
History: See an applicant's previous submissions and tags.
Reviewer scores: View, rank and sort applications by reviewer scores to quickly surface priority cases.
Accept/Decline: Send an application to a customised stage (like approve or decline) in one click.
Automate: Send an application to assessors, trustees or a review panel using stage automations.

Create review panels

Managing trustees, assessors or grant committees can get complex. Ditch the shared spreadsheets and Google Docs — simplify the process by creating different dedicated panels of reviewers for different funds and stages, all within Dapple.

Multiple panels: Create multiple review panels, with clear instructions on how to evaluate.
Personal dashboards: Give every reviewer their own dedicated, customisable dashboard — easy, visual and quick to use.
Scoring & votes: See reviewer scores, comments and decisions in real time in one intuitive dashboard.
Review settings: Set deadlines and minimum/maximum review requirements per panel.
Stages: Assign review panels to different funds and different stages of an application cycle.
Transparency: Keep applicants up to speed on the status of their application with real-time, customised stage messages.

Communication is key

Give your applicants the timely response they deserve! No more frustration, angry chase emails or enquiries as you can keep applications in check.

Templates: Use fully customisable message templates to speed up responses.
Personalisation: Use 1:1 messaging through built-in messaging. Limit whether applicants can respond.
Broadcast: Communicate decisions in one go using pre-built templates rather than multiple individual messages.
Draft reminders: Automate reminder messages to those with draft applications, nudging them to finish.

Built for lean teams and tight budgets

Dapple offers discounted pricing for registered charities and non-profits, so more of your funding goes towards your mission, not your admin tools.

Charity & non-profit discounts: Get reduced platform fees as a registered charity or non-profit.
Low fees: Where funding rounds include an application fee, Dapple's fees are considerably lower than other platforms.
Immediate payments: Using our Stripe integration, any fees collected appear in your Stripe account immediately. No need to wait 30+ days for a payout.
Fee waivers: Create private links for any fee waiver requests, ensuring funding stays accessible.

Manage the journey

Manage your applications thanks to a number of intuitive features to help cut the admin time.

List View: See all your applications across all funds in one, easily navigable list view.
Manage: There are filters, tags, ranking, average scores, voting and a one-click export.
Project Hub: See all your funding rounds and their status at a glance.
Stages: Create an unlimited number of rounds from application to decision and create bespoke actions and automations for each.
Advanced filtering: Filter by your fund, tags, stages, status and even individual form fields and answers.

What's next: from decision to disbursement

Dapple currently supports the full pre-award journey — from application through to funding decision. We're building Grant Management, a post-award add-on that will bring AI-assisted eligibility scoring, Stripe-based disbursement, variance reporting and contracts into the same platform, so the record that decides an award is the same one that pays it.

Join the waitlist Learn more

Early access members will get updates as features are rolled out.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Foundations, Non-Profits & Charities

What is grant and funding application software?

How does grant application software work?

Customisable application forms

Review at speed

Create review panels

Communication is key

Built for lean teams and tight budgets

Manage the journey

What's next: from decision to disbursement

Frequently Asked Questions

What is grant and funding application software?

How do foundations and charities manage grant applications?

What should charities look for in a grant application platform?

Do charities and non-profits get discounted pricing?

Can Dapple help manage payments after a grant is awarded?

What software do foundations use to manage grant applications?

Explore More

Compare Features and Plans

See Pricing

Book a Demo

Got 15 minutes?