How Covid-19 Changed Grant Management

The Covid-19 pandemic did not just disrupt the UK charity sector — it permanently rewired how funders and grantees work together. Processes that had been debated for years were overhauled in weeks. Nearly all UK foundations (96%) changed their working practices in 2020 in response to the crisis (ACF, 2021). Applications that once took months to assess were turned around in days. Reporting requirements were paused, shortened, or replaced with phone calls. Electronic signatures replaced wet ink. Remote panels replaced boardroom meetings.

What makes these changes significant is not just that they happened, but that many of them stuck. More than five years on, the sector has not returned to pre-pandemic norms. The pandemic proved that much of the administrative burden in grantmaking was unnecessary — not because accountability does not matter, but because the same accountability could be achieved with far less friction. The question for funders today is not whether to keep these changes, but how to embed them properly with the right tools and governance.

This guide examines the specific changes the pandemic drove in UK grantmaking, the evidence on what worked, what has endured, and how modern grant management platforms support the practices that emerged. It is written for grantmakers, programme officers, and charity leaders who want to understand the lasting legacy of pandemic-era grantmaking and apply those lessons going forward.

What you will learn:

• How the pandemic changed every stage of the grant lifecycle
• Which emergency measures have become permanent practice
• What the data says about proportionate grantmaking outcomes
• How remote and hybrid working reshaped panel reviews
• Where digital tools now replace manual processes
• How to build resilience into grantmaking for future disruptions

Who this is for: Grantmakers, trust administrators, programme officers, foundation directors, and charity sector leaders who want to understand the lasting impact of Covid-19 on grant management practice and apply those lessons to their current operations.

What Changed During the First Months of the Pandemic?

When the UK entered lockdown in March 2020, grantmakers faced an immediate challenge: charities needed emergency funding, but every established process — from in-person panel meetings to paper-based applications — was suddenly impossible. The response was remarkably fast. Over 250 funders signed the London Funders Covid-19 statement, pledging to simplify processes, extend deadlines, and offer financial flexibility (London Funders, 2020).

In practical terms, this meant several things happened almost simultaneously. Application forms were shortened — in some cases to just five questions with 50-word answer limits. Decision timelines collapsed from months to days. The London Community Response Fund, for example, processed applications with an average turnaround of 4.2 days during the first month of lockdown. Due diligence checks were made proportionate to grant size, with many funders accepting Charity Commission registration as sufficient verification for smaller awards.

Reporting requirements for existing grants were paused or converted to brief telephone check-ins. Funders proactively contacted grantees to offer flexibility, allowing organisations to redirect funds to where they were most needed without seeking formal permission. Unrestricted funding became far more common — IVAR research found the proportion of charities receiving some form of unrestricted funding rose from 46% in 2019 to 60% by 2022.

These were not merely emergency workarounds. They were, in effect, a sector-wide pilot of proportionate grantmaking — and the results challenged long-standing assumptions about what funders actually need to make good decisions.

How Did Application Processes Change?

The most visible and lasting change has been to application design. Before the pandemic, grant applications were often lengthy, requiring detailed logic models, multi-year budgets, and extensive organisational information — much of which was already publicly available on the Charity Commission register or Companies House. The pandemic forced funders to ask a simple question: what information do we actually need to make a funding decision?

The answer, in many cases, was far less than they had been collecting. Funders discovered that shorter, more focused applications did not reduce decision quality. In fact, they often improved it by making applications more accessible to smaller, grassroots organisations that lacked dedicated fundraising staff. According to ACF's 2021 survey, more than 80% of foundations committed to maintaining the reduced administrative requirements they had introduced during the pandemic.

These changes did not emerge from a single directive. They evolved through practice, were validated by experience, and are now supported by research from IVAR, ACF, and NPC. The shift is not about lowering standards — it is about asking the right questions at the right level of detail for the size and risk of each grant.

What Happened to Panel Reviews and Decision-Making?

Before March 2020, most UK foundations conducted grant panel reviews in person. Trustees and assessors would gather around a table, work through a stack of printed applications, and make decisions over the course of a day. The pandemic made this impossible overnight, and funders pivoted to remote panels within weeks.

The shift to video-conferencing tools for panel meetings proved more effective than many expected. Remote panels made it easier to involve assessors who were geographically dispersed, had caring responsibilities, or could not travel. Several foundations reported that the quality of discussion improved because panel members could review materials digitally in advance, with documents shared through secure online portals rather than posted in large envelopes.

According to NCVO's 2021 survey, 81% of charities changed how they used digital technology during the pandemic, with 82% reporting that staff used digital tools to work remotely — though only 41% had been doing so before Covid-19. This digital transformation extended to grantmakers, with online assessment workflows, shared scoring systems, and asynchronous review processes replacing the in-person model.

By 2022, most foundations had settled on a hybrid approach. Routine funding rounds are assessed remotely, with in-person meetings reserved for complex strategic decisions or relationship-building events. This model has proven efficient and, in many cases, more inclusive. Funders using platforms like Plinth can assign assessors to applications digitally, enable structured scoring, and give panel members access to all relevant materials through a single dashboard — eliminating the need for physical document packs entirely.

Did Faster Decisions Compromise Quality?

This is the question that concerned trustees most during the early pandemic response — and the evidence suggests the answer is no, provided appropriate safeguards were in place.

The pandemic demonstrated that speed and rigour are not inherently in tension. What drives poor decisions is not the speed of the process but the absence of clear criteria, structured assessment, and proportionate due diligence. Funders who had well-defined eligibility criteria could triage applications quickly because the criteria did the heavy lifting. Those without clear criteria struggled regardless of timeline.

ACF's research found that foundations which moved fastest in 2020 were generally those that already had strong governance frameworks. They could streamline processes because their trustees trusted the framework, not because they abandoned accountability. The result was a 13% rise in grantmaking by the largest UK foundations during the pandemic period (Civil Society, 2022).

Several practices that emerged during this period have now become standard:

• Delegated authority — allowing programme officers to approve grants below a certain threshold without full panel review
• Rolling deadlines — accepting applications continuously rather than in rigid funding rounds
• Two-stage assessment — using a brief expression of interest to filter before requesting a full application
• Proportionate due diligence — scaling checks to the size and risk of the grant, rather than applying a single standard to all awards

These approaches reduce decision time without reducing decision quality. They also reduce the burden on applicants, who no longer need to prepare extensive submissions for grants they may not be eligible for. The key principle is one of proportionality: the level of scrutiny should match the level of risk.

How Did Reporting and Monitoring Change?

Reporting was one of the first things to change when the pandemic hit, and it may be the area where the shift has been most profound. In the early weeks of lockdown, funders proactively paused reporting deadlines, recognising that grantees were dealing with service disruption, staff furlough, and organisational survival. Many replaced formal written reports with brief telephone or video conversations.

What emerged was a recognition that much pre-pandemic reporting was performative rather than informative. Organisations were spending significant time producing reports that funders often did not read in full. Plinth's own research found that UK charities spend an estimated 15.8 million hours per year on funder reporting — the equivalent of over 7,500 full-time roles. The pandemic created permission to question whether all of that time was well spent.

The changes that have stuck include:

• Shorter reporting forms — focused on a small number of key outcomes rather than exhaustive activity logs
• Flexible formats — accepting videos, photos, and verbal updates alongside or instead of written reports
• Aligned reporting — coordinating reporting schedules and questions with other funders to reduce duplication
• Real-time dashboards — replacing annual reports with ongoing data that funders can view at any time

This last point is where technology has made the biggest difference. Rather than waiting for a grantee to compile and submit a report, funders using platforms like Plinth can access monitoring data in real time — seeing outcome progress, financial summaries, and case studies as they are recorded. This shifts reporting from a periodic administrative burden to a continuous, low-friction flow of information that is more useful for both parties.

IVAR's work on open and trusting grantmaking reinforces this shift. By 2025, over 150 funders had signed up to IVAR's eight commitments, collectively making grants worth over £1 billion in 2023-24. One of the core commitments is to "only ask for what is really needed" in monitoring and reporting — a direct legacy of what the pandemic proved was possible.

What Role Did Digital Tools Play in the Transition?

The pandemic was, in many ways, a forced digital transformation for the grantmaking sector. Organisations that had been using spreadsheets, email, and paper files found themselves unable to operate. Those with digital grant management systems adapted far more quickly.

According to NCVO's research, the most common barriers to digital adoption during the pandemic were staff skills (20%), cost of equipment or software (17%), and service user digital skills (15%). For grantmakers specifically, the challenge was often that existing systems were designed for in-person workflows — requiring physical signatures, printed documents, and manual data entry — and could not easily be adapted for remote operation.

The shift accelerated adoption of several categories of digital tools:

• Online application portals — allowing applicants to submit, save drafts, and track the status of their applications
• Assessment workflows — enabling remote scoring, comment sharing, and panel coordination
• Electronic grant agreements — replacing posted contracts with digital signing
• Monitoring dashboards — providing real-time visibility into grantee progress
• Data analytics — using aggregated grant data to identify trends and inform strategy

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2023 found that around 65% of UK charities now use a hybrid working model, and only 12% work exclusively from a physical location. For grantmakers, this means that any system relying on in-person processes or physical documents is increasingly out of step with how both funders and grantees operate.

Tools like Plinth were built for this post-pandemic reality. The platform supports the full grant lifecycle digitally — from configurable application forms and automated eligibility screening through to assessor assignment, grant agreements with digital signatures, payment scheduling, monitoring, and AI-generated impact reports. This is not about replacing human judgement but about removing the manual overhead that previously consumed so much of the sector's time.

What Has Persisted and What Has Reverted?

Not every pandemic-era change has survived. Some emergency measures were always intended to be temporary, and a degree of recalibration was inevitable. But the overall trajectory is clear: the sector has not returned to pre-pandemic norms.

The practices that have persisted share a common feature: they reduce burden without reducing accountability. The ones that reverted were typically those that sacrificed information the funder genuinely needed. This distinction matters for any grantmaker assessing which pandemic-era changes to formalise. The question is not "did we do this during Covid?" but "does this improve our process permanently?"

How Should Funders Prepare for Future Disruptions?

The pandemic was not the first crisis to affect the charity sector, and it will not be the last. Flooding, economic recessions, public health emergencies, and policy changes all create spikes in demand alongside disruptions to normal operations. The grantmakers who responded most effectively to Covid-19 were those who already had flexible processes and digital infrastructure in place.

Building resilience into grantmaking does not require predicting the next crisis. It requires designing processes that can scale up or down, operate remotely, and adapt to changing circumstances without collapsing. Practically, this means:

• Portable data — grant records stored in systems that can be accessed from anywhere, not locked in office filing cabinets or local hard drives
• Remote-ready workflows — every stage of the grant lifecycle operable without physical presence
• Scenario planning — documented processes for surge volumes, including pre-approved emergency funding criteria and delegated authority thresholds
• Proportionate controls — assessment and monitoring processes that can flex based on grant size and risk level, rather than a single rigid standard
• Open data practices — publishing grant data using standards like 360Giving, enabling sector-wide coordination during emergencies

360Giving's Covid research showed that 174 grantmakers published open data on their pandemic funding, covering 66,000 grants worth nearly £2.4 billion. This transparency enabled better coordination and reduced duplication — demonstrating the value of open data in grantmaking beyond normal times.

Platforms like Plinth support this resilience by design. Because the entire grant lifecycle — applications, assessment, agreements, disbursements, monitoring, and reporting — operates within a single cloud-based system, there is no dependency on physical infrastructure. Funders can launch emergency funding rounds, configure simplified application forms, and process grants remotely within hours, not weeks.

What Does This Mean for Grantmakers Today?

The legacy of Covid-19 in grant management is not a set of emergency workarounds to be remembered fondly. It is a permanent shift in what the sector considers good practice. The evidence is clear: proportionate processes, digital infrastructure, and trust-based approaches produce better outcomes for funders and grantees alike.

For grantmakers who have not yet formalised these changes, the priority should be to audit current processes against what the pandemic proved was possible. Where are you still collecting information you do not use? Where are you requiring bespoke formats when standard data would suffice? Where are you relying on physical processes that could be digital?

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2023 found that 73% of charities feel unprepared for AI, despite recognising its potential. For grantmakers, AI is not a distant prospect — it is already being used to screen eligibility, summarise applications, and generate impact reports from programme data. The organisations that embraced digital tools during the pandemic are now best positioned to adopt these next-generation capabilities.

The pandemic did not create the case for modern grant management. It simply made the case impossible to ignore. Five years on, the question for every grantmaker is whether their current systems and processes reflect what they learned — or whether they have quietly drifted back to the practices the pandemic proved were unnecessary.

FAQs

Did the quality of grant decisions fall when funders sped up their processes during Covid-19?

No. Research from ACF and IVAR indicates that faster decisions did not reduce quality when supported by clear eligibility criteria and structured assessment frameworks. Foundations with strong governance frameworks were able to streamline timelines without compromising rigour. The key factor was proportionate due diligence — scaling the depth of review to the size and risk of the grant.

Are remote panel reviews as effective as in-person meetings?

For routine funding rounds, remote panels have proven at least as effective as in-person meetings, with the added benefit of broader participation. Most UK foundations now use a hybrid approach: remote for standard assessment and in-person for complex strategic decisions. Digital assessment tools allow panel members to review, score, and comment asynchronously, which can actually improve the quality of discussion.

How many UK funders have committed to maintaining pandemic-era changes?

Over 150 funders have signed IVAR's Open and Trusting commitments, collectively distributing over £1 billion in grants in 2023-24. ACF's research found that 84% of foundations stated they would continue the flexibility around reporting and payments introduced in 2020. The London Funders Covid-19 statement attracted over 250 signatories.

Can we keep using shortened application forms permanently?

Yes, and the evidence supports doing so. Proportionate application design — where the depth of information requested matches the size and complexity of the grant — is now considered best practice by ACF, IVAR, and NPC. Shorter forms do not mean less information; they mean more relevant information, which often improves decision quality while reducing burden on applicants.

What digital tools do grantmakers need post-pandemic?

At minimum, grantmakers need an online application portal, a digital assessment workflow, electronic agreement signing, and a monitoring dashboard. Platforms like Plinth provide all of these in a single system, along with AI-assisted features such as eligibility screening, application summarisation, and automated impact reporting. The key requirement is that the system supports remote operation end to end.

Has the pandemic led to more unrestricted funding in the UK?

Partially. IVAR research found that the proportion of charities receiving unrestricted funding rose from 46% in 2019 to 60% by 2022. However, restricted funding remains common, particularly for larger programme grants. The trend is towards greater flexibility rather than a wholesale shift to unrestricted funding. Many funders now offer a mix, with unrestricted core funding alongside restricted programme grants.

How did 360Giving data help during the pandemic?

360Giving tracked Covid-related grants from 174 grantmakers, covering 66,000 grants worth nearly £2.4 billion. This open data enabled funders to see where money was going, identify gaps, and reduce duplication. The experience strengthened the case for open grant data as standard practice, not just a transparency exercise.

What should funders do now to prepare for future crises?

Build flexibility into standard processes rather than creating separate emergency procedures. This means digital-first workflows, proportionate assessment frameworks, documented delegated authority, and open data publication. Funders who already operate this way can respond to a crisis within hours, because their normal processes are inherently adaptable.

Recommended Next Pages

• Reducing the Burden on Grant Applicants — Practical strategies for proportionate application and reporting design
• How to Run a Modern Grants Programme — A best-practice guide to digital-first grantmaking
• Risk Management in Grantmaking — How to scale due diligence proportionately to grant size and risk
• Building Transparency into Grant Decisions — Using open data and clear processes to build funder trust
• How Charities Experience the Application Process — The grantee perspective on what works and what does not

Last updated: February 2026