Application Update: New SmartyGrants Features & Application Forms

By Kate Caldecott

SmartyGrants Application Forms

Unless you’ve changed your program guidelines, it’s likely that you are recycling your application form from round to round. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it saves a lot of time. However, a number of new features have been added to SmartyGrants over the past 6 months, making this a good time to revisit your forms and see if they need to be updated. The obvious place to begin this review/update is with your application form.

Several of the newly released SmartyGrant features will allow you to create better application forms. These include:

• Ability to show or hide pages or sections using conditional logic
• New address formatting and functionality
• Bank details contact field
• Updated grid questions

Using Conditional Logic in SmartyGrants Forms

Your application form might begin with a page that tests for eligibility. (This is recommended as AIGM research recently found that many would-be applicants were spending time working on applications for grants they were not eligible for.) Or perhaps you have a section for collecting financial information from an organisation that is serving as an auspice for a non-incorporated applicant.

SmartyGrants has always allowed you to enable or disable form sections or pages based on the answer to a choice question. What’s new is that now you can make the disabled sections/pages completely invisible. The advantage of this is that it makes your form simpler and less cluttered for the applicant. A simpler form is an easier form and an easier form will likely elicit better responses.

To use the new functionality, create conditional logic on your sections or pages just as you did before. Once you’ve saved your form, go to Form Settings. Next to the heading Conditional logic settings, there’s a button which will allow you to show or hide the parts of the form that aren’t applicable.

New / Updated Contact Fields

SmartyGrants has added a new contact field for recording bank details and has upgraded address functionality. Address questions are now displayed as one line. Predictive text will offer applicants likely answers once they start typing. More importantly, you now have the option of displaying addresses on a map.

If you have a predefined (and not always obvious) geographic eligibility area, this feature can be useful.

Better Budget Grids in SmartyGrants

Finally, if you’ve been using your form for a while, it probably has the old style of grids on the budget page. You’ll want to replace those with those with the new grids.

Old SmartyGrants Budget Grid

The new grids load into your form with a separate section for totals. This is important because it makes the totals reportable. Simply add a new grid question and delete the old one.

New SmartyGrants Budget Grid

Refreshing your application form is a simple way to make things easier for your potential applicants. Don’t be afraid of using the features SmartyGrants offers. If you would like assistance updating your application forms, please contact me at Kate@katecaldecott.com.au or 0447 227 598.