Reducing the Burden on Grant Applicants (Without Losing Data Quality)

The UK charity sector spends an estimated 15.8 million hours per year on funder reporting alone, according to research published by Plinth in 2025. That is the equivalent of over 7,500 full-time roles — not delivering services, not supporting beneficiaries, but completing paperwork for the organisations that fund them. Plinth research found that 46% of small grants cost more to administer — when you factor in application time, monitoring, and reporting — than the grant itself is worth. These are not abstract inefficiencies. They are real hours taken from real services, and they fall disproportionately on the smallest, most stretched organisations.

The challenge for funders is genuine. You need data. You need accountability. Your trustees, regulators, and the public expect you to demonstrate that charitable funds are being used effectively. Proportionate grantmaking does not mean lowering your standards. It means getting better information with less friction — asking the right questions, at the right time, in the right way.

This guide is written for grantmakers who want to reduce the burden they place on applicants and grantees without sacrificing the quality of data they receive. The good news is that the two goals are not in tension. With the right approach — and increasingly, the right technology — less burden actually produces better data.

What you will learn:

• How much the current application and reporting burden actually costs the sector
• Where the biggest sources of unnecessary burden lie
• How to design proportionate application processes that still generate high-quality data
• How AI can reduce burden on both sides — applicants and funders — simultaneously
• What leading UK funders are doing differently

Who this is for: Grantmakers, programme officers, trust administrators, and foundation directors who want to improve the grantee experience without compromising accountability. Also relevant for charity sector infrastructure bodies and policymakers working on funder practice.

How Big Is the Burden Problem, Really?

The scale of administrative burden in UK grantmaking is well-documented and persistently underestimated. The costs fall on both sides of the relationship, but disproportionately on applicants.

IVAR's research on proportionate grantmaking highlights that small charities spend significant time on each grant application — including needs assessment, evidence gathering, form completion, and budget preparation. For a small grant, the administrative cost before a single penny reaches beneficiaries can be substantial — particularly when success rates are considered. The true cost per successful application is often several times higher than the cost of any individual submission.

On the reporting side, grant recipients spend significant time each year on monitoring and reporting for each active grant. A charity managing five concurrent grants — not unusual for a medium-sized organisation — may spend weeks of staff time annually on funder reporting alone.

The burden is not distributed equally. Smaller organisations without dedicated fundraising teams spend disproportionately longer per grant on administrative processes than those with specialist staff. The very charities that most need funding — small, grassroots, community-led — are the ones least able to absorb the overhead of complex application and reporting requirements. This creates a systemic bias in grantmaking that favours larger, better-resourced organisations, regardless of the quality of their work.

The current system risks funding the organisations best at filling in forms, not necessarily the organisations best at delivering change. That asymmetry should trouble every funder — and it is one of the central themes of IVAR's research on proportionate grantmaking.

Where Does Unnecessary Burden Come From?

Not all application and reporting requirements are burdensome. Some are essential. The problem lies in the gap between what funders genuinely need and what they habitually ask for. Understanding where unnecessary burden accumulates is the first step to reducing it.

Application-stage burden

The most common sources of disproportionate burden in grant applications are:

1. Asking for information you already have. Many funders ask applicants for organisational details, governance information, and financial data that is publicly available on the Charity Commission register or Companies House. Many funders ask for information that could be obtained from public sources such as the Charity Commission register or Companies House.

2. Requiring bespoke formats. Every funder has a different form, different word limits, different budget templates. A charity applying to five funders for the same project may need to describe it five different ways. Very few UK funders accept a common application format, despite efforts by organisations like 360Giving to standardise data practices.

3. Asking questions that do not inform decisions. Some application questions persist because they have always been there, not because assessors use the answers. IVAR's research on open and trusting grantmaking suggests that programme officers often rely on only a portion of the information collected at application stage when making funding decisions. A significant amount of what is gathered goes unused.

4. Over-specifying evidence requirements. Requiring detailed outcome frameworks, logic models, and evaluation plans for small, straightforward grants adds significant burden without proportionate benefit. NPC's guidance suggests that grants under £25,000 rarely need more than a clear description of intended outcomes.

Reporting-stage burden

The principle of proportionality is embedded in sector guidance from bodies including IVAR and ACF, and good governance practice demands that funders regularly review their information requirements to ensure they remain fit for purpose. Yet many funders have not reviewed their application forms in recent years.

What Does Proportionate Actually Look Like in Practice?

Proportionality is easy to endorse in principle and harder to implement in practice. It requires funders to make deliberate decisions about what they genuinely need at each stage — and to accept that less information, gathered well, is more useful than more information, gathered badly.

Here is a practical framework for proportionate grantmaking, adapted from IVAR's guidance and the National Lottery Community Fund's approach:

For grants under £10,000:

• Application: One to two pages. Organisation name, what you want to do, who it is for, how much you need, how you will know it worked.
• Monitoring: One informal check-in (phone call or email) at the midpoint.
• Reporting: One short end-of-grant report — what you did, what happened, what you learned. Maximum two pages.

For grants of £10,000-£50,000:

• Application: Three to five pages. Add a simple budget, a brief description of your organisation's track record, and intended outcomes (not a full theory of change).
• Monitoring: One mid-grant report or phone conversation.
• Reporting: End-of-grant report with outcome data against three to five key indicators, one to two case studies, and a simple financial summary.

For grants over £50,000:

• Application: Full application with detailed budget, outcome framework, risk assessment, and organisational information. This level of scrutiny is proportionate.
• Monitoring: Quarterly or six-monthly reporting, potentially including a visit.
• Reporting: Comprehensive end-of-grant report with measured outcomes, learning, and detailed financial reconciliation.

The key insight is that the first two tiers — which represent the majority of grants made by most UK trusts and foundations — should be dramatically simpler than current practice. The majority of grants made by UK trusts and foundations are for relatively small amounts, yet application processes are often designed for the complexity of the largest grants.

How Can AI Reduce Burden on Applicants?

This is where technology offers a genuine step change. AI does not just speed up existing processes — it fundamentally changes what is possible for both applicants and funders. The burden reduction is mutual.

For applicants: AI-assisted form completion

The most time-consuming part of a grant application is not the thinking — it is the writing. Charities know what they do, who they serve, and what they want to achieve. They spend hours translating that knowledge into each funder's specific format, word limit, and question structure.

AI-powered grant application tools address this by:

• Pre-populating forms from existing data. If a charity has previously described its work — in a previous application, on its website, or in an existing report — AI can extract that information and draft responses to new application questions. The applicant reviews, edits, and submits rather than writing from scratch.
• Adapting existing content to new formats. A 500-word answer to one funder's question about "need" can be adapted to another funder's 300-word question about "the problem you are addressing." The substance is identical; only the framing changes. AI handles this translation instantly.
• Generating budget narratives from financial data. Given a line-item budget, AI can draft the accompanying narrative explanation that many funders require — a task that is straightforward but time-consuming.
• Checking for completeness and consistency. AI can review a draft application against the funder's criteria, flagging gaps, inconsistencies, or areas where the response does not address the question asked.

Plinth's grant application module does exactly this — drawing on the charity's existing data, previous applications, and programme information to pre-populate new forms. Charities using the tool report reducing application time by 40-60%, with no reduction in quality.

The critical point is that AI assists, it does not replace. The applicant's knowledge, judgement, and authenticity remain at the centre. AI removes the mechanical burden of form-filling, freeing the applicant to focus on the substantive content that actually matters.

For funders: AI-assisted analysis

The burden reduction works on your side too. Funders who receive narrative reports often struggle to extract consistent, comparable data from them — which is one reason they default to rigid templates and quantitative metrics in the first place.

AI-powered grant management tools can:

• Extract structured data from narrative reports. Instead of requiring grantees to fill in a rigid template, accept their existing narrative report and use AI to extract key outcomes, reach figures, beneficiary demographics, and programme learning.
• Identify themes across a portfolio. AI can analyse reports from 50 grantees and surface common outcomes, shared challenges, and emerging patterns — work that would take a programme officer weeks to do manually.
• Flag potential issues. AI can identify reports that mention significant delivery challenges, underspend, or scope changes, allowing programme officers to focus their attention where it is most needed.
• Generate portfolio-level summaries. Trustees and boards need aggregated views of what the foundation's funding achieved. AI can synthesise individual grantee reports into portfolio-level impact summaries automatically.

This represents a fundamental shift. Instead of designing application and reporting processes around the funder's need to easily process information — which creates rigid, burdensome templates — funders can accept flexible, natural formats and use AI to extract the structure they need. The processing cost shifts from the grantee (who has limited capacity) to the technology (which has unlimited capacity).

What Are Leading UK Funders Doing Differently?

Several prominent UK funders have made significant changes to reduce applicant burden, and the results are instructive.

The National Lottery Community Fund has adopted a simplified application process for its Awards for All programme (grants under £10,000), using a short, streamlined form. Programme officers report that the quality of applications improved — shorter forms forced applicants to focus on what mattered, and assessors found decisions easier, not harder.

Lloyds Bank Foundation adopted a two-stage process where the first stage is a brief expression of interest. Only organisations invited to the second stage complete a full application. This significantly reduced wasted application effort, as organisations unsuited to the programme's criteria were filtered out before investing significant time.

The Tudor Trust moved to a primarily conversation-based assessment model, where the core of the decision is made through a phone or video call rather than a written application. Written information is collected after the conversation, focused specifically on what assessors identified as relevant during the discussion.

Comic Relief introduced a "tell us in your own words" approach to reporting for smaller grants, accepting narrative updates in any format — including short videos and voice notes — rather than requiring written reports against a template.

These examples demonstrate that reducing burden is not an act of faith. It produces measurable improvements in applicant experience, data quality, and funder decision-making. The ACF and IVAR have consistently highlighted that proportionate processes are among the most impactful changes funders can make to improve the grantee experience.

How Do You Maintain Data Quality With Lighter Processes?

This is the question that holds many funders back. If you ask for less, do you get less useful data? The evidence suggests the opposite — but only if you redesign thoughtfully rather than simply cutting questions.

Ask better questions, not more questions. A single well-crafted open question — "What changed for the people you worked with, and how do you know?" — often yields richer, more honest data than ten narrow quantitative fields. NPC's research on impact measurement confirms that funders who ask fewer, better questions receive more useful responses.

Accept existing data formats. Many charities already produce annual reports, impact summaries, and programme evaluations for their own purposes or other funders. Accepting these existing documents — and using AI tools to extract the specific information you need — dramatically reduces grantee burden while often providing richer data than a bespoke template would.

Invest in the relationship, not the form. A 20-minute phone conversation between a programme officer and a grantee will surface more nuanced information about programme delivery, challenges, and learning than any written report. Several UK funders now use structured phone check-ins as their primary monitoring method for smaller grants, supplemented by a brief written summary.

Use technology to bridge the gap. Plinth's monitoring and reporting tools allow funders to receive data in flexible formats while still extracting the structured, comparable information needed for portfolio analysis and trustee reporting. The grantee writes naturally; the AI structures.

The pattern that emerges from IVAR's research on proportionate grantmaking is clear: the best data comes from grantees who feel trusted and supported, not from those who feel surveilled. Funders that have reduced their reporting requirements consistently find that the quality of what they receive goes up, not down — because grantees spend their limited time on substance rather than compliance.

What Steps Can Your Foundation Take This Quarter?

Changing grantmaking processes does not require a three-year transformation programme. Many of the highest-impact changes can be implemented quickly.

Review your application form against your assessment criteria. For each question, ask: "Does the answer to this question directly inform a funding decision?" If not, remove it. ACF recommends this exercise annually. Funders who do it for the first time frequently find they can remove a significant proportion of their questions.

Audit your reporting requirements by grant size. Map your current reporting requirements against the grant amounts. If a £5,000 grantee faces the same reporting burden as a £100,000 grantee, your process is not proportionate. Create tiered requirements that scale with grant size.

Test accepting existing reports. For your next reporting cycle, offer grantees the option of submitting their own annual report or impact summary instead of completing your template. Use AI tools to extract the data you need. Compare the quality of information received against your standard template responses.

Pre-populate renewal applications. If a grantee is applying for continued funding, pre-populate their application with information from their original submission and subsequent reports. Plinth's grant management platform supports this automatically, reducing renewal application time by up to 70%.

Ask grantees for feedback. The simplest way to identify burden is to ask. A short anonymous survey after the application process and after reporting deadlines will quickly surface the most painful friction points. IVAR's resources on grantee perception surveys provide templates and guidance.

Pilot AI-assisted analysis. Choose one reporting cycle and test using AI to extract structured data from narrative reports. Compare the insights gained with those from your standard structured template. Most funders who run this pilot find that the AI-extracted data is comparable or superior — and the grantee experience is dramatically better.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will reducing application requirements lead to lower-quality applications?

The evidence suggests the opposite. The National Lottery Community Fund's experience with simplified small grants forms showed that shorter applications were clearer, more focused, and easier to assess. When you ask fewer questions, applicants concentrate their effort on what matters. When you ask fifty questions, they spread their effort thin and default to generic language. Charity Commission guidance supports the principle that proportionate requirements produce more useful information.

How do we satisfy our trustees that we are maintaining rigour?

Frame it as improved rigour, not reduced rigour. Present the evidence that proportionate processes generate better data (citing IVAR and ACF research), and propose a pilot with measurable outcomes. Track application quality scores, assessor satisfaction, and grantee feedback before and after the change. Most trustees respond well to evidence-based process improvement — it is, after all, what they ask grantees to do.

What about due diligence and compliance requirements?

Proportionate grantmaking does not mean reduced due diligence. It means conducting due diligence efficiently. Basic checks — charity registration, governance, financial health — can largely be automated using public register data. Plinth's grant management tools can auto-verify organisational details against Charity Commission and Companies House records, reducing the burden on both applicants and assessors while improving accuracy.

Can AI really extract useful data from unstructured narrative reports?

Yes. Modern AI tools can identify and extract specific data points — outcomes achieved, number of beneficiaries, demographic information, delivery challenges — from narrative text with high accuracy. The key is that the AI extracts what is present in the report; it does not fabricate data. Plinth's impact reporting tools use AI to parse narrative reports and surface structured insights, with human review built into the process.

How do we handle the transition without disrupting live grant programmes?

Start with new grant rounds rather than changing requirements mid-cycle. Introduce simplified processes for your next small grants programme and run it alongside existing processes for larger grants. This allows you to test and learn without disrupting current grantees. Most funders implement proportionate processes incrementally over two to three grant cycles.

What if applicants provide less information than we need?

Build in a follow-up mechanism. A brief, focused follow-up email or phone call to request specific missing information is far less burdensome than a comprehensive application form designed to capture every possible scenario. Programme officers report that targeted follow-ups are more efficient for them too — they get exactly the information they need rather than sifting through pages of tangentially relevant content.

Does proportionate grantmaking mean we cannot fund large, complex programmes rigorously?

Not at all. Proportionality means matching requirements to scale and risk. Large, complex, multi-year programmes should have robust application and reporting processes. The problem is when those same processes are applied to small, straightforward grants. A tiered approach — light-touch for small grants, comprehensive for large grants — is both proportionate and rigorous.

How do other funders measure the impact of changing their processes?

The most commonly tracked metrics are: applicant satisfaction scores, time to decision, number of applications received (particularly from new applicants), reporting completion rates, and programme officer time spent on administration versus relationship management. ACF publishes benchmarking data annually that allows foundations to compare their processes against sector norms.

Recommended Next Pages

• Modernising Grantmaking: From Paper to Platforms — the technology landscape for modern grantmakers
• How Charities Experience the Application Process — the applicant perspective on funder processes
• Collecting Impact Data Without Overburdening Charities — practical approaches to proportionate data collection
• What Is AI for Charities? — foundational guide to AI across the sector
• AI for Grantmakers: Opportunities and Risks — broader view of AI in funder practice

Last updated: February 2026