Looking for a Good Grants alternative? Start with the right questions.
AwardScience runs awards, grants and scholarships on one AI-native platform: describe your programme in plain language, review what the AI drafts, and keep every decision with your own people.
Why grant teams look for an alternative
Grant programmes rarely stay still. A funder adds a category, eligibility rules shift, a second review round appears halfway through the cycle. The question that matters when choosing a platform is not which features exist, but how much your own team can change once a round is already open.
The second question is what you are left with afterwards. When a board or a regulator asks why one applicant was funded and another was not, the answer should take seconds and come with a record.
Compare them side by side
Software changes constantly, so rather than describe someone else’s product, here is what AwardScience does and what to verify with any vendor on your shortlist.
| What to compare | AwardScience | Good Grants |
|---|---|---|
| Setting up a programme | Describe the programme in plain language and AI drafts the workflow, forms and campaign site for your team to review and adjust. | Ask how a new programme is created from scratch, and how much of it your own team can do unaided. |
| Changing it mid-cycle | Stages, forms, conditions and deadlines are edited visually and republished, with form version history you can roll back. | Ask to watch a stage being added and republished live during the demo. |
| AI and who decides | AI proposes a score with written reasoning; the score a judge submits is their own. Every AI feature can be switched off per programme. | Ask what the AI does, whether its reasoning is visible, and whether a person confirms every outcome. |
| Data and AI training | Customer data is never used to train any AI model. Hosting in the EU, US or Asia-Pacific, fixed by contract, with recovery in the same geography. | Ask where data is hosted, whether the region is contractual, and get the AI training position in writing. |
| Evidence and audit | A time-stamped audit log of every action, form version history, access-control visibility and an AI usage ledger, all exportable. | Ask to see the audit log itself, not a description of it. |
| Running it again | Copy a season and the flows, forms, pages and templates carry over. Editing the new cycle never touches last year’s records. | Ask how next year’s round starts, and what happens to the previous year’s data. |
Eight questions worth asking any vendor
- Can your team change the workflow mid-cycle, without the vendor? Ask to watch it happen live.
- How long from first login to a working programme? Ask them to build a stage during the call.
- What does the AI actually do, and who decides? A proposed score with visible reasoning is very different from an automated outcome.
- Is our data used to train AI models? Get the answer in writing, in the contract.
- Where is the data hosted, and can we choose? Ask whether the region is fixed contractually.
- What does the audit trail show? Who scored what, when, against which form version, and who had access.
- What happens to last year’s programme? Ask how cycles are separated.
- What does it cost when entries spike? Ask what happens if you exceed a tier mid-round.
Where AwardScience is different
Two things stand out in practice. The first is that AI drafts the programme, so a team goes from brief to working workflow in days rather than weeks of configuration. The second is that people stay accountable for every decision affecting an applicant, with the record to prove it.
See it working in the video library, check the controls in the Trust Center, or read our Responsible AI commitments.
Switching: frequently asked questions
Can we move historic applications across?
Yes. Historic data can be imported, and AwardScience exports your data in full at any time so you are never locked in.
Can we run one programme on each platform first?
Yes, and we recommend it. Run a smaller grant round on AwardScience alongside your existing tool for a cycle before committing.
How long does it take to get a programme live?
Describe the programme, review the AI-drafted workflow, adjust the forms and publish. Most teams have something to test the same week.
Do we need developers?
No. Forms, stages, roles, review rounds and the public site are all configured without code.
Book a live demo and we will build a stage of your actual programme during the call.