The Digital Divide in Grantmaking

Grantmaking has gone digital. Online application portals, electronic reporting templates, and cloud-based monitoring dashboards have become standard practice across UK trusts and foundations. For well-resourced organisations with dedicated fundraising teams, reliable broadband, and current hardware, this shift has been largely positive. For many others, it has created a new set of barriers that are every bit as exclusionary as the paper-based systems they replaced.

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 found that 68% of small charities are still in the early stages of digital adoption, with nearly a third at the earliest "curious" stage of digital maturity. At the same time, Ofcom's 2025 research confirms that approximately 2.8 million UK adults remain entirely offline, and 4% of the adult population relies exclusively on mobile data for internet access. These are not abstract figures. They represent real communities — often the very communities that small, grassroots charities exist to serve and from which their staff and volunteers are drawn.

When funders move their processes online without considering who gets left behind, they risk creating a system that funds the most digitally capable organisations rather than the most impactful ones. The digital divide in grantmaking is not just a technology problem. It is an equity problem, and it requires deliberate action from funders to address.

What you will learn:

• The scale and shape of the digital divide among UK grant applicants
• Which groups are most affected by digital-only processes
• How digital barriers interact with other forms of exclusion
• Practical steps funders can take to make grantmaking more accessible
• How technology can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem

Who this is for: Grantmakers, programme officers, trust administrators, and foundation directors who want to ensure their processes do not inadvertently exclude the organisations they most want to reach. Also relevant for charity infrastructure bodies, digital inclusion practitioners, and policymakers.

How Wide Is the Digital Divide Among UK Charities?

The digital divide in the charity sector is wider than many funders realise, and it is not closing as fast as headline figures suggest. While overall internet access in the UK has plateaued at around 94% of adults (Ofcom, 2025), the picture for small charities and the communities they serve is considerably less encouraging.

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025, based on responses from 672 charities, found that just 32% of small charities have a digital strategy in place, compared with 44% of charities overall — and the proportion with a strategy has been declining each year since 2022. Only 36% of small charities are classified as "advancing" or "advanced" in their use of digital, compared with 74% of large charities. Meanwhile, 69% of charities cite strained budgets as the single biggest barrier to digital progress.

This divide maps directly onto grantmaking. A charity without reliable broadband, without staff who are confident using online forms, or without a device newer than five years old faces a fundamentally different experience of the grant application process than one with a full-time fundraiser and a suite of digital tools. The Good Things Foundation's Digital Nation 2024 report found that 9% of UK households struggle to afford mobile connectivity and 8% struggle to afford broadband — costs that are invisible to funders designing processes on fibre-connected office networks.

The result is a systemic tilt. Organisations best equipped to navigate digital systems receive a disproportionate share of funding, while the grassroots organisations closest to the communities funders want to reach are filtered out before their work is even considered.

Who Is Most Affected by Digital Barriers in Grantmaking?

Digital exclusion does not affect all organisations equally. The barriers cluster around specific characteristics, and understanding who is most affected is essential for designing genuinely inclusive processes.

Small and micro charities. Organisations with annual incomes below £100,000 are far less likely to have dedicated fundraising or administrative staff. The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 found that charities with incomes of £10,000 to £100,000 are the least likely to access digital funding, with only 32% having done so in the past year, compared with 37% of small charities overall and 48% of large charities. These organisations often rely on volunteers who may not be confident with complex online portals.

Community-led organisations in deprived areas. The Good Things Foundation's 2024 research identified a strong correlation between deep poverty and digital exclusion. Communities with the highest levels of deprivation are the most likely to lack affordable broadband, current devices, and the digital skills needed to navigate online processes. The charities serving these communities are often drawn from them and share the same constraints.

Organisations led by and for marginalised groups. Charities led by people from ethnic minority backgrounds, disabled people, refugees and asylum seekers, and other marginalised communities often face compounding barriers. Language, literacy, confidence with technology, and access to devices intersect to create challenges that a single "accessible portal" cannot solve.

Rural organisations. Broadband coverage in rural areas remains significantly below urban averages. A community group operating from a village hall with patchy 4G and no fixed broadband faces practical barriers to completing lengthy online forms that their urban counterparts do not.

What Does Digital Exclusion Look Like in Practice?

To understand the digital divide in grantmaking, it helps to look at what the application process actually involves for an organisation on the wrong side of it.

Consider a small community group in an area of high deprivation. Their coordinator works part-time, uses a personal smartphone as their primary device, and accesses the internet through mobile data. When they discover a relevant grant opportunity, they face a series of compounding challenges.

First, the funder's website may not render well on a mobile device. Many grant portals are designed for desktop use, with long scrolling forms, multiple file upload fields, and session timeouts that punish slow connections. A form that takes 45 minutes on a desktop with fast broadband may take two hours on a phone with intermittent 4G — if it works at all.

Second, the application requires multiple document uploads: governing documents, accounts, safeguarding policies, equalities statements. These documents may exist only as paper copies. Scanning, converting, and uploading them requires equipment and skills the organisation may not have.

Third, the language of the application assumes familiarity with funder terminology. Words like "theory of change," "outcome framework," "match funding," and "due diligence" are commonplace in the sector but alienating to organisations that have never applied for a grant before. IVAR's research on open and trusting grantmaking highlights that complex guidance and jargon are significant barriers, particularly for first-time applicants.

Fourth, there may be no way to save progress and return later. A session timeout or a lost connection means starting again from scratch — a frustration that is annoying for well-resourced organisations and a genuine barrier for those with limited time and connectivity.

The cumulative effect is that many eligible organisations simply do not apply. The barrier is not that they lack good ideas, strong community connections, or the ability to deliver. The barrier is the process itself.

How Do Digital Barriers Interact With Other Forms of Exclusion?

Digital exclusion rarely operates in isolation. It compounds and is compounded by other forms of disadvantage, creating intersecting barriers that are greater than the sum of their parts.

Language and literacy. For organisations led by people whose first language is not English, digital barriers are inseparable from linguistic ones. An online form in English, with character limits that assume fluency and jargon that assumes sector knowledge, creates a double barrier. The UK government's own research on ESOL provision highlights that digital exclusion and limited English proficiency frequently co-occur, particularly among refugee and migrant communities.

Disability and access needs. Online application forms that are not compatible with screen readers, that use poor colour contrast, that rely on mouse-only navigation, or that impose tight time limits create barriers for disabled applicants. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set clear standards, but many grant portals do not meet them. A 2024 review by the Government Digital Service found that a significant proportion of public-facing government digital services failed to meet basic accessibility standards — and grant management portals are rarely held to even that level of scrutiny.

Economic disadvantage. The Good Things Foundation found that 9% of UK households struggle to afford mobile connectivity and 8% struggle to afford broadband. For a small charity operating on a shoestring, the cost of a laptop, a reliable internet connection, and the electricity to run them are not trivial. These costs are invisible in funder budget templates but very real for applicants.

Time poverty. Small charity staff and volunteers are often stretched across multiple roles. The time required to navigate unfamiliar digital systems — learning a new portal, troubleshooting technical problems, reformatting documents for upload — is time taken from service delivery. IVAR's research consistently highlights that disproportionate administrative requirements fall hardest on the organisations with the least capacity to absorb them.

The implication for funders is clear: addressing the digital divide requires more than making an existing online form slightly easier to use. It requires thinking about the full range of barriers that different applicants face and designing processes that account for them.

What Can Funders Do to Close the Gap?

Closing the digital divide in grantmaking does not require abandoning digital processes altogether. It requires designing them with inclusion as a core requirement rather than an afterthought. The following steps are drawn from IVAR's open and trusting grantmaking framework, the ACF's good practice guidance, and practical experience across the sector.

Design mobile-first, not mobile-last

If a significant proportion of your potential applicants access the internet primarily through smartphones — and the data suggests many do — your application forms need to work well on small screens. This means short, focused questions; single-column layouts; minimal file uploads; and generous session timeouts that account for intermittent connectivity. Test your forms on a mid-range Android phone with a 4G connection. If the experience is frustrating, redesign.

Offer alternative submission routes

Not every applicant can or should complete a digital form. Offering phone-based submissions, video applications, or in-person conversations as genuine alternatives — not grudging exceptions — widens your reach without compromising the quality of information you receive. Comic Relief's acceptance of video updates for smaller grants demonstrated that alternative formats can produce richer qualitative data than written templates.

Use plain language throughout

Replace jargon with plain English. Instead of asking for a "theory of change," ask "What do you expect to happen as a result of your work, and why?" Instead of "outcome framework," ask "How will you know if things have improved?" The Charity Commission's guidance on public benefit reporting recommends similar approaches. Small changes in language can make the difference between an accessible form and an excluding one.

Provide supported application routes

Some funders now offer telephone or in-person support for applicants who need it. Local infrastructure organisations — such as Councils for Voluntary Service (CVSs) and volunteer centres — can serve as access points, providing devices, connectivity, and guided support for applicants who would otherwise be excluded. Budgeting for this support as an essential programme cost, not an optional extra, signals genuine commitment to inclusion.

Build in proportionality

The level of information required should reflect the size and complexity of the grant. A £2,000 community grant should not require the same application depth as a £200,000 multi-year programme. Tiered application processes — with lighter requirements for smaller grants — reduce the burden on all applicants and disproportionately benefit those with the least capacity. For more on designing proportionate processes, see our guide to reducing the burden on grant applicants.

How Can Technology Help Rather Than Hinder?

The irony of the digital divide in grantmaking is that better technology is often part of the solution. The problem is not digitisation itself but poorly designed digitisation that treats digital as the only channel and fails to account for the diversity of applicants' circumstances.

Well-designed grant management technology can actively reduce barriers in several ways.

Pre-populated forms. If an applicant has applied before, or if their organisational details are available from public registers such as the Charity Commission or Companies House, there is no reason to ask them to re-enter that information. AI-powered grant management tools can pull data from public sources and previous submissions, reducing the amount of manual input required and eliminating one of the most frustrating aspects of online applications.

Mobile-native data collection. Tools like Plinth support mobile-friendly data collection and allow organisations to capture evidence — including photos and voice recordings — directly from a smartphone. A community group can photograph a paper attendance register and have AI extract the data, or voice-record a conversation with a beneficiary and have AI generate a structured case study. These capabilities are particularly valuable for organisations that lack the time or skills to produce polished written reports.

QR-code-based uploads. Plinth's mobile upload feature allows users to scan a QR code and upload files directly from their phone — photographs of documents, signed forms, or evidence of activities. This removes the need for scanners, email attachments, or navigating complex file upload interfaces.

Flexible reporting. Rather than requiring every grantee to complete the same rigid template, platforms like Plinth allow funders to accept data in multiple formats and use AI to extract consistent, comparable information. This means a grantee can submit a brief narrative update, a set of photographs, or a voice recording, and the funder still receives the structured data they need for portfolio analysis and trustee reporting. For more on this approach, see our guide on collecting impact data without overburdening charities.

Free-tier access. Cost is a genuine barrier to digital tools for small charities. Plinth offers a free tier that gives small organisations access to core grant management and reporting features without upfront cost — removing one of the most common objections to adopting new technology.

How Should Funders Measure Progress on Inclusion?

Designing more inclusive processes is a start. Measuring whether they are actually working is what turns good intentions into sustained change. Yet most funders do not systematically track who applies, who is awarded grants, and who is missing from both groups.

Monitor application demographics. Track the size, type, geography, and characteristics of organisations that apply, including whether they are new or returning applicants. If your applicant pool does not reflect the communities you intend to serve, your process may be filtering out the organisations you most want to reach.

Track conversion rates by applicant type. Are small organisations applying at the same rate as large ones? Are they succeeding at the same rate? If success rates are significantly lower for small or grassroots organisations, examine whether your assessment criteria inadvertently favour organisations with greater capacity to produce polished applications rather than greater capacity to deliver impact.

Gather accessibility feedback. Ask applicants — including unsuccessful ones — about their experience of the process. Was the form accessible? Did they encounter technical difficulties? Did they understand the questions? Anonymous feedback surveys, conducted after decisions are communicated, provide invaluable insight. IVAR provides templates and guidance for grantee perception surveys as part of its open and trusting grantmaking resources.

Benchmark against sector data. Use 360Giving's open data on UK grantmaking to compare your funding patterns with the broader landscape. If your awards are concentrated among a narrow set of well-established organisations, that may indicate process barriers that are not visible from the inside.

What Can the Sector Learn From Digital Inclusion Practice?

Grantmaking is not the only field grappling with digital exclusion. The wider digital inclusion sector — led by organisations such as the Good Things Foundation, the Digital Poverty Alliance, and the government's Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund — has developed principles and practices that translate directly to funder processes.

Co-design with excluded groups. The most effective digital inclusion programmes are designed with, not for, the people they are intended to serve. Funders can apply the same principle by involving small, grassroots, and digitally excluded organisations in the design and testing of their application processes. This does not require a formal co-design programme; inviting five organisations from your target communities to test your form and give honest feedback is a practical starting point.

Provide multiple channels, not just multiple devices. True inclusion means offering different ways to engage, not just ensuring a website works on different screen sizes. Phone-based applications, paper forms that are digitised on receipt, video submissions, and in-person conversations are all legitimate channels. The key is that each channel receives the same quality of consideration in the assessment process.

Invest in digital skills alongside digital access. Some funders have begun including digital skills support as an eligible cost within their grants, recognising that providing a laptop without the skills to use it effectively does not close the divide. The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 found that 60% of charities had not accessed funding for digital costs in the past year, citing lack of time, limited core cost coverage, and difficulty finding funders who support digital projects as the primary barriers.

Recognise that inclusion is ongoing. The digital landscape changes constantly. New platforms, new file formats, new accessibility standards, and new security requirements create a moving target. Inclusive grantmaking is not a one-off redesign but a continuous commitment to reviewing and adapting processes. The organisations that are digitally confident today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa. For a broader view of how the sector is adapting, see our guide on modernising grantmaking from paper to platforms.

Where Should Funders Start?

The scale of the digital divide can feel paralysing, but the most impactful changes are often the simplest. Here is a practical starting point for any funder that wants to make their processes more inclusive.

This week: Test your application form on a smartphone with a 4G connection. Note every point of friction — slow loading, awkward layouts, confusing instructions, session timeouts. Ask a colleague who has never seen the form to complete it while you observe.

This month: Review your form language. Replace every piece of jargon with a plain-English alternative. Add one sentence of guidance beneath each question explaining what you are looking for and why. Remove any question that does not directly inform a funding decision.

This quarter: Introduce at least one alternative submission route. This could be a phone line for applicants who cannot complete the online form, an option to submit a short video instead of a written answer, or a partnership with local infrastructure organisations to provide supported application sessions.

This year: Begin systematically tracking who applies and who is missing. Set up demographic monitoring at the application stage and accessibility feedback after decisions. Use this data to identify where your process is working and where it is not.

Ongoing: Budget for inclusion. Supported application routes, alternative formats, plain-language guidance, and accessibility testing all cost money. Include these costs as essential programme delivery expenses, not optional extras. If you expect grantees to demonstrate inclusion in their work, model it in yours.

For funders looking for technology that supports inclusive processes rather than creating new barriers, Plinth's grant management platform is designed with accessibility and flexibility at its core — from mobile-friendly data collection to AI-assisted reporting that reduces the burden on grantees while maintaining the data quality funders need. Plinth's free tier makes these tools accessible to organisations of any size, and its approach to proportionate grantmaking aligns with the principles set out by IVAR and the ACF.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does making grant processes more accessible mean lowering standards?

No. Inclusive design improves the quality of applications by removing barriers that prevent capable organisations from applying. The National Lottery Community Fund found that simplified forms produced higher-quality, more focused applications. Accessibility and rigour are complementary, not competing. The standard is what you fund and why; the form is just the mechanism for collecting information.

Can we accept paper applications without creating a compliance risk?

Yes, provided you digitise records on receipt and maintain the same audit trail as for digital submissions. Many funders already accept paper forms for specific programmes. Grant management platforms can support this by providing tools to scan and digitise paper records while maintaining consistent data structures and audit trails.

How do we budget for supported application routes?

Include access provision as an essential programme cost, alongside assessment, monitoring, and evaluation. A reasonable starting point is 2-5% of the total programme budget for inclusion support — covering phone lines, local support partnerships, document conversion, and accessibility testing. This is a cost of running an equitable programme, not an overhead.

Will offering multiple submission formats make assessment harder?

It requires some adaptation, but not as much as you might expect. Clear assessment criteria should apply regardless of submission format. AI tools can help standardise data from different formats — extracting structured information from written applications, video submissions, and phone-based responses — so that assessors work from comparable summaries. The content matters more than the container.

What about GDPR and data security with alternative submission routes?

The same data protection requirements apply regardless of how information is collected. Phone-based submissions should be recorded and stored securely with consent. Video submissions should be encrypted in transit and at rest. Paper forms should be digitised and originals destroyed according to your retention policy. Grant management platforms like Plinth handle data security across all collection methods, maintaining GDPR compliance regardless of how information enters the system.

How do we know if our current process is excluding organisations?

Compare your applicant pool with the population of organisations in your target area or sector. If your applicants are overwhelmingly larger, more established, and more urban than the communities you intend to serve, your process may be acting as a filter. Track first-time applicant rates, drop-off rates on partially completed forms, and gather feedback from organisations that enquire but do not apply.

Should we stop using digital applications altogether?

No. Digital processes offer genuine advantages — speed, searchability, consistency, and reduced environmental impact. The goal is not to abandon digital but to ensure it is not the only option and that the digital experience itself is well designed. Mobile-friendly forms, plain language, generous timeouts, and save-and-return functionality make digital processes accessible to a much wider range of applicants without requiring a return to paper.

What role can infrastructure organisations play in bridging the digital divide?

Local infrastructure bodies — Councils for Voluntary Service, volunteer centres, community foundations — can serve as vital bridges. They can provide physical access (devices, connectivity, meeting spaces), skills support (guided application sessions, digital training), and local knowledge (identifying which organisations in their area face barriers). Some funders partner with infrastructure organisations to deliver supported application routes, which is particularly effective for reaching grassroots groups that are not visible through digital channels alone. For more on how the grantmaking sector is evolving, see our guide on trends in UK philanthropy, technology, and trust.

Recommended Next Pages

• Reducing the Burden on Grant Applicants — Practical approaches to proportionate application and reporting processes
• How Charities Experience the Application Process — The applicant perspective on funder processes and where friction occurs
• Modernising Grantmaking: From Paper to Platforms — How technology is reshaping funder operations across the sector
• Collecting Impact Data Without Overburdening Charities — Proportionate approaches to monitoring and evaluation
• AI and Accessibility in Grantmaking — How AI can support more inclusive grant processes

Last updated: February 2026