Create a grant round

A grant round is what applicants apply to. Backed calls it a Grant by default: the sidebar item, the list and the buttons use your organisation's own term if you've renamed it.

Before you start

You need a registration template before you create your first grant round. If you have none, the Grants page says Set up a registration template before creating your first funding round and links to Plan › Form templates. See Registration templates and types.
Have an application form ready under Plan > Form templates > Applications, or create one while you set up the round.

Create the round

Select Plan > Grants, then New Grant.
How do you want to start? asks you to choose:
- Blank: an empty grant you set up step by step.
- A starter: Council community grants, PAF partnership, Research fellowship or Member distribution. Each card says what it is for and whether it has 1 stage or 2 stages. See Start from a starter.
Work through the steps. The caption shows where you are, for example Step 1 of 6 · Details. Every change saves as you go and the page shows All changes saved. Use Back and Next to move between steps.

Details

Title, Description and Funding Category (or Create a New Grant Category).
Grant type: Public Grants, which every applicant can see and apply for, Private Grants, which only the applicants you invite can see, or Test round, which only staff and the testers you list under Testers can see. For a private grant, add people under Invited applicants by searching registered applicants or inviting by email address. See Test a round first.
Eligibility screener: see Eligibility screener.
Application title: From a form field names each application from the Application Title field of its form; Pre-formatted text gives every application the text you enter.
Video Submission Field: assessors see the file uploaded to this field as a video. Choose the application form first.
Classification: choose which of your classification taxonomies the round uses, whether applicants code their own application, and whether staff coding is required. Under each chosen taxonomy, pick the round's codes in each dimension (for CLASSIE, Subjects and Beneficiaries) and select Save codes. Each new application in the round starts with these codes as a proposed staff coding. See Classification.
Advanced Settings holds Eligible Types of Applicants (Both, Companies or Individuals) and Allow applicants to add collaborators. While Allow a prefix per Grant is on under Settings > Profile and terms, it also holds Number prefix: up to 10 letters, digits, - or / that replace your organisation's prefix for the round's new application numbers. Leave it empty to use the organisation's. If the next number is already in use, the field says Application number … is already in use. Change the prefix or padding. Numbers already issued never change. See Organisation settings. Advanced Settings also holds Offer letter and Decline letter: None, or one of your decision letter templates. A funding decision on the round then starts its Select a Letter Template step with the letter for its outcome already selected, and you can still change it. See Funding decisions. Advanced Settings also holds Decisions, with Require rationale: None, Declines, Approvals or All. It sets which applications in a funding decision on the round need a decision rationale before the decision can be sent. A declined application always needs a decline reason. You need permission to edit and publish the grant to change it. Decisions also holds Hold declines for: a whole number of days from 0 to 90 that a sent decline waits in the decline queue before the application is declined and its letter goes. 0 sends declines at once. See Decline queue. Advanced Settings also holds Applicant help, off by default. Ticked, signed-in applicants can ask about the round from its published landing page and guideline files while it is open, and every answer cites the passage it comes from. A question the documents don't answer is pointed to your organisation's support email instead. It also needs the Applicant help capability switched on under AI assistance. You can switch it on or off after the round is published, from the grant's Details tab. Advanced Settings also holds Stale drafts, off by default: remind applicants about a draft nobody has edited, remind them again up to a maximum, and optionally withdraw it a further number of days after the first reminder, or when an Information Request goes unanswered. It saves on its own with Save stale drafts, so you can change it after the round is published. See Remind and withdraw stale drafts.

Application Form

Choose the application form from Application templates, or select New Form. Search all form templates to find one. Select Edit to change the chosen form. The form must have an Application Title field, unless you chose Pre-formatted text under Application title on the Details step.

Tick Allow copy from previous Applications to let applicants start from one of their earlier applications, keeping every matching answer. Tick Copy file uploads too to copy their uploaded files as well; it is available only while copying is allowed. Fields marked Do not copy in the form stay blank either way.

Attach PDF to submission confirmation (on by default) attaches a PDF of the submitted application to the email the applicant receives when they submit.

If the form asks for referees, Applicants can view references lets applicants open each completed reference, and Show references to assessors lets assessors read them. Both are off by default. See Referee requests and references.

Funding Type

Currency comes first: the currency the round's applications, decisions, contracts and payments are in. Your organisation's currency is first in the list and chosen for you. Nothing is converted. Once an application to the round has been submitted the currency is fixed, and the field says so. See Currencies.

Fixed Amount: every applicant applies for the same Amount per application.
Application form field: applicants enter amounts in Currency fields, and the fields you select under Currency fields are added together.

Enter the Total funding amount in the round's currency.

Indexation closes the step: the terms each contract made from the round starts with. Choose None, Fixed rate with an Annual rate (%), or Index series with one of your organisation's series. A choice saves once it is complete. See Index series.

Time & Date

Under When can applicants apply?, choose Always open (applications are accepted until the grant is closed) or Closing date. For a closing date, enter the Closing date and time and, optionally, the Opening date and time; left empty, the round opens when it is published. Times are in your organisation's time zone.

Decisions expected by is optional: applicants see the date beside their application's status once they submit, and are told when it has passed. It can't be before the closing date: an earlier date shows The decision date cannot be before the closing date.

Landing Page

Create a landing page or skip it. Once it exists, Show form preview on the Landing Page (on by default) lets people preview the application form and download it blank before they start. See Landing pages.

Publish Grant

Check the round and publish it. See Publish and unpublish. Below this step, Default split for new grants sets how each application approved later is attributed to your sources of funds, and Co-funders pledges co-funders to the round. See Sources of funds and Co-funders on grants and rounds.

Start from a starter

A starter sets up a working round in one step, so you begin from more than a blank page. Choosing one creates:

a Draft grant with the starter's grant type, eligible applicants and funding type, opened at the Details step;
an application form, an assessment form with scored criteria and weights (a Total Score of 100), and a draft assessment round for the grant with conflict of interest declarations on;
an offer letter and a decline letter, already chosen as the grant's Offer letter and Decline letter.

PAF partnership and Research fellowship have 2 stages: the grant is the expression of interest, and the second stage's form is created too. When you later select Add Stage on the grant, that form and the stage name are already chosen, and you can change both. Research fellowship also turns on blind review for its assessment round.

Each new template is named after the starter and its part, for example Council community grants – application form, with (2) added when the name is taken. Everything a starter creates is yours to change, and is not linked back to the starter.

A starter card is greyed out, with the reason beneath it, when:

you don't have permission to edit templates and to create assessment rounds; or
your organisation has assessment rounds turned off, because every starter creates one.

If your organisation has no registration template yet, choosing a starter creates nothing and shows the same message as Blank, with its link to Plan › Form templates.

Import from your Rounds profile

If your organisation's grants were listed on Rounds before you moved to Backed, you can start a grant from each of them instead of retyping it. On the Grants page, select Import from your Rounds profile, beside New Grant. You see it only if you can create grants.

The list shows each grant Rounds lists for your organisation: its funder, whether it is Upcoming, Open or Closed, its dates and amounts, a summary and Where Rounds found it, a link to the page Rounds read it from.

Create draft grant creates a Draft grant and opens it at the Details step. It is filled in with the grant's title, description and eligibility, its opening and closing dates (or Always open), the amount per application, the total funding and, when it is in Australian or New Zealand dollars, its currency. Choose the application form, check every step and publish it as you would any grant.
A grant you have already imported shows Imported as a draft with Open draft, or Imported and published with View grant. Importing it again opens the same grant; it never makes a second one.

Once you publish the imported grant, its Apply button on Rounds takes applicants to your grant on Backed instead of the page Rounds found it on.

No Rounds profile to import from means Rounds has no profile it knows is your organisation's. If your grants are listed under your organisation's name, ask Backed support to link that profile. Like Blank, importing needs a registration template first.

The grant's page

Select View on a grant in the list to open its page. The Details tab shows the Total round funding, its Program, its opening and Closing date, the number of applications and its landing page. Select Change the closing date to move the closing date of a published round. The Applications tab lists the round's applications.

While Applicant help is on, the Details tab also shows Unanswered questions: what applicants asked that the published landing page and guideline files did not answer, newest first, each with the date it was asked. Who asked is never recorded, and each question is kept for 90 days. Use the list to add what is missing to the landing page or the guidelines. No unanswered questions means the documents answered everything so far. The card also warns you when:

a guideline file contributed no text, naming it. A scanned image can't be searched, so upload a version with real text.
nothing is indexed yet, so every question goes unanswered.

Other actions

The actions menu on a grant offers View, Edit & Publish or Unpublish & Edit, Duplicate, Add Stage, Complete Application on Behalf, Delete Draft Grant or Delete Published Grant, Archive and Unarchive, depending on its status. Generate Bulk Export prepares one download of the round's applications; Backed emails you when it is ready.