Essential tips to reviewing grant applications

Essential tips to reviewing grant applications online

Reviewing grant applications is essential to the success of running an online grant program. As a grants program manager, it’s important to think about the experience and process for non administrators such as the applicants and the review committees.

When it comes to creating a review or evaluation process, it’s important to focus on developing a review workflow that fairly and accurately defines who the grant recipients are – but also in a way that is user friendly and engaging for the committee. Here is a sneak peak at how Reviewr powers this process.

In this webinar we discuss:

• Who is Reviewr?
• Leveraging technology to work smarter, not harder.
• Picking a review workflow that actually makes sense.
• One stop shopping – a centralized review workspace.
• Mixing and matching – combining scores with deliberation

Leveraging technology to work smarter, not harder when reviewing grant applications

• It’s 2020 – embrace the digital experience with an emphasis on experience
• Think of technology as your toolbelt is to a carpenter. It won’t build the house, but it can’t be built without it.
• Dedicated tools (like Reviewr) exist for a reason. Often combining tools in ways unintended will cause more harm than good for your program.

Picking a review workflow that actually makes sense when reviewing grant applications

• The most common options:
  • All review members and judges review all submissions
  • Review teams are formed as committees to evaluate groups of submissions
  • Submissions are randomly assigned to review members
  • Submissions are assigned to review members based on the volume of entries
  • Role based – review members are assigned to submissions based on qualifications
• How can you accurately and efficiently create these workflows and mange them?
• Benefits of a multi-phase review workflow
  • Avoid overworking the review teams
  • Internal review and vetting narrows the pool of entries.
  • Higher quality and specific reviews
• Think about the entire process
  • Tabulating results
  • Reassigning review teams to submissions
  • Progress tracking
  • Communication
  • Deliberation
  • etc

One stop shopping – a centralized review workspace when reviewing grant

• Dedicated review team portals
  • Submission data
  • Online evaluation and feedback
  • Access to supporting documents and files
  • Review team collaboration
• Side effects of a disconnected or offline process
  • Increased time spent on task
  • Inability to track progress
  • Lost data and forgotten reviews
  • Inaccurate results reporting
• Think long term – big picture
  • Additional reviews
  • Reporting
  • Archiving
  • Feedback sharing

Mix and match – combing scores with deliberation when reviewing grant applications

• Why is this important?
  • Do scores tell the full story?
  • Are all evaluations and review teams the same?
  • Scores help power a review team deliberation
• What does this workflow look like?
  • Multi-phase
  • Share data in advance of deliberation meeting
  • Data powered conversations