Funding decisions

A funding decision approves or declines a set of submitted applications from one grant round and sends each applicant a letter, or defers them to decide later. Decision, Application and Grant are your organisation's own terms if you've renamed them.

Create a decision

Select Decide > Funding decisions, then Create Decision.
Choose the grant round. Every application in a decision belongs to one grant round.
Work through the steps. Changes save automatically.

You can also start a decision without choosing the grant round:

Create Decision on an application opens a decision on its grant round with that application already ticked.
Record decisions on a meeting's Minutes tab opens a decision with the meeting's agenda applications for that grant round already ticked.

The draft decision is made first, then the applications are ticked. If one can't be ticked, for example because it's no longer decidable, the page says why and offers Open the draft. The draft is kept: open it, fix the selection on the Application step and carry on.

Decisions

Choose the Outcome: Approve, Decline or Defer. It applies to every application in the decision. Give the decision an optional Title to tell it apart from others for the same grant round.

Defer puts the applications off to a later decision. A deferral sends no letter and notifies nobody, so a Defer decision has three steps: Decisions, Application and Record Deferral.

Application

Tick the applications to decide. Only applications that are submitted, or pending board approval, without a sent decision can be decided.

To decide an assessment round's shortlist, enter its tag under Tags (such as shortlisted) and select Search. While a tag is entered, the tick box at the top of the list ticks the applications on that page only.

Notification Details

For an approval, choose How are the Applicants notified?:

Offer Notification: the letter tells the applicant they are approved. They have nothing to accept.
Offer & Decision: the letter makes an offer the applicant accepts or declines.

Each application shows its Recommendation: Approve, Review or Decline, with who recorded it and when, or No recommendation. If you can access funding decisions, select Record recommendation to record or change it, with an optional rationale of up to 2,000 characters. The recommendation belongs to the application, not the decision: it is internal, the applicant never sees it, and it shows on the decision register. If a rationale is already recorded, type it again to keep it; saving a blank rationale records none.

Set the Amount granted for each application beside its Requested Amount. A decline letter has no amount. For any application you can Add personal message, added to that applicant's letter email only.

If your organisation has Administrator drafting switched on, an open message offers Draft with AI. The suggestion appears in a card: Accept adds it to the message, Edit lets you change it first, and Discard drops it. Accepting sends nothing and saves nothing; the message is saved the way anything you type here is.

Each approved application has an Amount type: Cash, or In-kind for goods or services. Choose In-kind and enter What is given, Quantity, Unit and Declared value instead of an Amount granted; an in-kind award grants no cash. A line keeps its amount type once the decision is sent. See In-kind grants.

For a decline, choose each application's Decline reason. The list is grouped by category and holds your organisation's active reasons (see Decline reasons). Every declined application needs one before the decision can be sent.

Each application also has a Decision rationale of up to 2,000 characters, which records why the decision was made. It is internal: the applicant never sees it, in a letter, an email or the portal. Whether a rationale is required depends on the grant's Require rationale setting. The step lists the rules this decision must meet under Before this Decision can be sent.

To give several applications the same reason or rationale, tick them and select Apply to selected. Leave the reason or the rationale as it is to keep each application's own.

Once a decision is sent, its reasons and rationales can no longer change. Add an internal comment to the decision instead.

Select a Letter Template

Choose the Letter Template, or create one with New Letter Template. Select Preview to see the letter as the first ticked application would receive it, or Edit to change this decision's letter. See Decision letters.

If the round has an Offer letter or Decline letter under Advanced Settings, the step selects the one for the decision's outcome for you and says Pre-selected from the grant's letter choices beneath the list. Choose another template to replace it.

Send

Choose who to Notify for each application, then select Send Letter of Offer or Send Letter of Decline. Each application moves to its decided status, and only revoking undoes it. If the round holds declines, a decline waits in the decline queue instead, and nothing is sent until it is released (see Decline queue).

If an Amount granted would exceed a budget, Backed tells you by how much. What happens next depends on the budget: an informational budget only records it and the send goes ahead; a budget that warns asks you to tick I understand this Decision exceeds the budget first; a budget that blocks holds the send until you lower an amount or raise the budget.

Check the letters before sending

When a decision sends letters, select Check letters first. Backed renders every application's letter exactly as the send would print it, without storing any letter or emailing anyone, and opens them one per page (Letter 1 of 12, with Previous and Next). Letters with problems come first. Each letter's flags sit beside it, each naming its field or block:

Empty field: a merge field printed nothing.
Default value: a merge field printed its fallback, or the letter still holds placeholder text.
Amount differs: the approved amount isn't in the letter, or a typed amount doesn't match the application's Amount granted.
Missing attachment: an image or the signature is missing or hasn't passed its scan.

Fix the cause (the letter, a personal message or the record) and check again. If a flag is fine as it is, and you can send funding decisions, tick it and any others on that letter, enter one reason and select Waive. A waiver carries over when you check again, for the same application, kind and field. Open letters pages through the last check again without running a new one.

The line above the send button shows the last check, for example Checked 8 Nov 2026, 2:02 pm – 2 waived, 0 open. The send stays unavailable, and says why, until the letters have been checked since the decision last changed (including a Notify tick) and no flag is open. A decision of more than 200 applications is checked in the background, and the letters open when the check is done. If a background check still hasn't finished 10 minutes after it started, the line says so and Check letters is available again: select it to start a new check, which replaces the unfinished one. Each check and each waiver, with its reason, is recorded in the decision's history.

Record Deferral

A Defer decision's last step is Record Deferral, not Send. Select Record Deferral and add an optional reason of up to 2,000 characters: it stays on the decision record for your team, and applicants never see it. No letter or email is sent, and each application stays Submitted. The step then says Deferral recorded. No letter or email was sent. and shows each application as Deferred, with who recorded it, when, and the reason. A deferred application can be ticked in a later decision that approves or declines it.

A Defer decision can't be sent, and an Approve or Decline decision can't be deferred: change the Outcome on the Decisions step first.

Ask for a review

If you do not have permission to send decisions, or an amount is above your Decision Approval Limit, select Request Review and choose the Reviewer. They get a task and an email, and the decision shows Decision pending review. The reviewer selects Approve and Send, or hands it on with Review Request.

While a decision is a Draft, only the administrator who created it can change it.

After sending

A sent decision lists each application with its Status and Letter. Tick lines and:

Revoke Decisions to undo them. Each application goes back to the status it had before the decision was sent.
Resend Letters to email the stored letter again to the same people.
Retry if some letters or their PDFs have not been generated yet.

Select View letter to read a letter, or Download PDF.

A deferred decision reads Deferred, not Sent. It says no letter or email was sent and who recorded the deferral, and lists its Deferred applications with no letters and nothing to revoke or resend. Each line names who deferred it, when and the reason they gave. Below the lines, History lists everything that happened to the decision, newest first: who created it, who was asked to review it, who sent it and who revoked it, each with the time.

Conditions

An approved application can carry conditions the applicant must meet, each with a conditions form and an optional due date. Add them with Add Condition under Decision Conditions on the application. When the applicant submits a condition, Approve it or Request Resubmission.