Have we outgrown the spreadsheet?
For awards, scholarships, grants and competitions run on email and spreadsheets. Tell it how your program runs. It works out the staff hours the manual parts take, what a platform would have to cost to pay for itself, and writes a short case you can send to your manager or executive director. Sometimes the honest answer is that the spreadsheet is fine.
Try a sample program:
What the number is counting
The number is the staff time the manual parts of a program take: the emails, the copying, the chasing. It does not count the work a person should be doing, like reading a hard nomination or talking to a sponsor. Each chore gets a planning number of minutes, multiplied by your submissions, reviews, judges and rounds, and by the number of programs you run this way.
The break even is $4,000 a year, where New Empact Work starts. Divided by your hourly rate, that is the number of staff hours a year where a platform pays for itself. Above it, the staff time makes the case. Below it, the case rests on the other two parts of the summary. The reviewer capacity calculator shows how many judges the round needs.
Planning minutes, by chore
per submission6 min
per submission2 min
per submission: downloading, merging, naming and filing10 min
per review assigned2 min
per judge, per round3 min
per score returned: copying, checking, chasing gaps3 min
per advancing entry, plus an hour per round3 min
per submission, when review is blind5 min
per submission, when there is a fee3 min
per review assigned, when you check1 min
Questions this page answers
When should we move off spreadsheets?
When the manual hours cost more than a platform would, or when you add blind review, a second round or another program run the same way. A small single program often runs fine on a spreadsheet, and this page will say so.
How do I make the case to my executive director?
Lead with the break even figure, show where the hours go, then say what that time should be spent on and what applicants and judges experience today. The summary above is written in that order.
Where do the minutes come from?
They are planning defaults for each chore, listed above. The summary says they are estimates, so your manager knows what they are looking at.
Is what I type stored?
No. The calculator runs in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent, and there is no account.
When the case gets a yes
New Empact Work runs intake, review assignment, scoring and the record of who reviewed what in one place, for awards, grants, scholarships, and competitions.