Common Grant Application vs CommunityForce

Common Grant Application is a customizable web system for managing grant and scholarship lifecycles, including online and paper-based applications. Grantmakers can create reusable forms for applications, recommendations and reports with text, document and media fields. Review workflows support evaluation steps, reviewer groups, scoring or ranking, notes and controls over evaluation visibility. Grantmakers can manage agreements, reports and payment amounts, then export payment information to a spreadsheet. Each application can contain up to two grant agreements and eight grant reports. Applicants pay nothing; grantmakers pay a monthly subscription starting at $175 a month. The Low Complexity plan covers one to two administrative users and 1–50 applications annually. Medium Complexity costs 250.00 USD monthly, and High Complexity costs 450.00 USD monthly. The browser-based service requires no installation and supports Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. Setup, support and training are included.

CommunityForce is a web-based awards management platform for grants, scholarships, fellowships, and research funding. It supports programs from funding discovery and applications through review, awards, disbursement, compliance, reporting, and closeout. Application tools include conditional forms, eligibility screening, shared applications across opportunities, and applicant dashboards. Reviewers can collaborate using scoring and rubrics, while administrators can manage bulk awards, renewals, and post-award requirements. Phoenix searches Grants.gov, IRS Form 990 filings, and a curated list for opportunities matching an organisation’s funding profile. Its AI features can summarize applications, suggest reviewer scores, flag AI-written essays, and answer questions using live platform data. The platform provides ad hoc reports, dashboards, exports, and embedded Microsoft Power BI dashboards. Integrations include Salesforce, DocuSign, Stripe, Twilio, SendGrid, SMTP email, and Google Translate. The company says each organisation has a separate database and file storage in a private Microsoft Azure environment. It states that it is FedRAMP certified and SOC 2 Type II, and supports Section 508, FERPA, and PCI-DSS requirements. Pricing is available on request; the product pages direct prospective buyers to request a demo or speak with an expert.