CommunityForce vs GrantsNow

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.

GrantsNow is a cloud-based platform for managing pre-award and post-award grants, due diligence, ethics, and contracts. Its Opportunity Scanner searches funding opportunities from sources such as UKRI, Horizon, and Grants.gov; a separate funder scanner covers more than 200 global funders, with filters, alerts, and conversion of call data into funder templates. Proposal tools let institutions configure forms and approval workflows, add peer review, and flag outstanding actions. Costing supports multiple budget scenarios, full economic costing models including FEC and Horizon, and recalculation. After awards, teams can manage setup, budgets, milestones, changes, compliance, and reporting integrated with ERP systems. Ethics and due diligence workflows include custom forms, automated approvals, collaboration, and centralized risk, compliance, governance, and document management. Contracts tools cover creation through renewal, with tracking, reminders, and digital signatures through DocuSign or another third-party application. Integrations include Oracle systems, Unit4, TechnologyOne, and SAP. Pricing is on request; the maker offers a free demo and says its team can assist with implementation and system integration.