The application form lets you define which information applicants must provide when submitting a grant request. You can decide which sections are included in the form, which information is taken from Spheriq profiles and which additional questions must be answered.

The application form is divided into four sections:

You can enable or disable the Person, Organization and Project sections depending on your funding process. The Request section is always part of the application form.

To customise the form, go to Grant & Funding Management → Settings → Forms, open the relevant application form and select the Application form tab.

Use the navigation above the form to switch between the four sections and configure each one individually.

Use "Include section" to decide whether a section is included in the application form. You can enable or disable the Person, Organization and Project sections independently of one another. This allows you to adapt the form to your funding process. The Request section cannot be disabled.

Depending on the configuration, Spheriq automatically adds certain required fields to ensure that each grant request can be clearly identified:

In the Person, Organization and Project sections, you can also decide whether the corresponding Spheriq profile should be used.

If "Use profile" is enabled, information from the corresponding profile becomes part of the grant request. You can select which profile fields are required, make them mandatory and change their order.

If "Use profile" is disabled, the corresponding Spheriq profile is not required. The section can still be included and supplemented with custom questions.

To ensure that the grant request can be clearly identified even without a profile, Spheriq automatically adds the relevant fields where necessary. For example, if no profile is used in the Project section, information about the organization or project title is requested directly in the form.

The use of profiles affects which applicants can access the form.

If organization and project profiles are used, the form can only be completed by users registered on Spheriq as a Nonprofit/Organization. This is because individuals cannot create organization or project profiles on Spheriq.

Individuals can therefore only use application forms that do not require these profiles.

If no organization profile is used in the Organization section, the person submitting the grant request is displayed as the applicant. If an organization profile is used, the organization is displayed as the applicant instead.

If you use the Person section, you can also require identity verification. If identity verification is enabled, the applicant must verify their identity before submitting the grant request.

If you use an organization profile, you can specify whether the organization must be verified. Two options are available:

Organization verification

The organization must have submitted its verification before the grant request can be submitted. The verification does not yet need to have been confirmed by Spheriq.

Organization verification + Tax exemption

In addition to organization verification, tax exemption is checked. In this case, the grant request can only be submitted once Spheriq has verified the organization's tax-exempt status.

When you enable "Use profile" in a section, you can decide which information from the corresponding profile is required for the grant request. For each available profile field, you can specify whether it should appear in the application form and whether it is mandatory. You can change the order of the fields using drag and drop.

For example, you can request only the information from an organization or project profile that is relevant to evaluating your grant requests.

In addition to profile fields, you can add your own questions to all sections. Click "Add question" and select the question type. You can then enter the question, add an explanatory tooltip if needed and specify whether an answer is mandatory.

The following question types are available:

You can change the order of the questions using drag and drop.

The Request section is always part of the application form and cannot be disabled. In addition to your custom questions, applicants are asked to provide the following information by default:

These standard fields are not displayed in the form editor but are automatically included in the Request section when applicants complete the form.

In addition to the questions in the application form, you can configure various settings at the top of the form editor. This section explains the available options.

To change the form information, such as its name and description, click the pencil icon.

Your first form is automatically named "Standard form". You can change its name here and add a description. The description is shown to applicants once you have more than one form. You will also find the button to delete the form here.

Click the gear icon to access additional settings for the application form.

Enable or disable the application form. Only active forms are available to applicants for new grant requests, and existing drafts can only be submitted if the corresponding form is active.

This option allows you to use the form for grant requests entered directly into the system by your funding organization. Once a Request by Funder form exists, the "Create grant request" button appears in the grant request overview for administrators and managers.

Grant requests created this way are automatically assigned the status "In preliminary review" and can then be managed as usual. The only difference concerns communication. As the grant request is not linked to an applicant, messages cannot be sent via the platform when the status changes, and a shared network cannot be created. Communication must therefore take place outside the platform, for example by email.

A simplified application form is used for "Request by Funder". The Person, Organization and Project sections are not available; the form consists solely of the Request section.

By default, applicants are asked to enter the amount they would like to request from your funding organization. However, if your organization wishes to receive requests for in-kind donations, enable this option. Instead of asking for an amount, the form will ask for the type of in-kind donation requested. If your organization provides both financial support and in-kind donations, you will need a separate application form for each type of support.

You can also use our grant request system for preliminary requests. When this option is enabled, the terminology throughout the application form and related communication is automatically changed from "grant request" to "preliminary request". Instead of receiving an approval, applicants are invited to submit a final grant request. We recommend including the link to the final application form in your approval message template. Preliminary requests are also marked with a corresponding label in the applicants' grant request overview, so they can always distinguish between grant requests and preliminary requests. To use your form for preliminary requests, simply enable "Use as a preliminary request form". From Partner Plus onwards, approved preliminary requests can be converted into grant requests, ensuring that both remain linked.

The Eligibility Check helps you evaluate incoming grant requests efficiently. Our artificial intelligence (AI) checks the funding criteria defined in your organization's profile and compares them with the information in the applicants' organization and project profiles, as well as the details provided in the specific grant request. Based on this comparison, it generates a recommendation. The Eligibility Check classifies grant requests into three categories: "Fully meets the criteria", "Partially meets the criteria" and "Does not meet important criteria". The classification is explained in a comment for each grant request. This gives you an initial assessment to support your evaluation. You can enable the Eligibility Check individually for each application form using the corresponding toggle. From Partner Plus onwards, the prompt used for the Eligibility Check can be customised.

The "Requests on invitation" feature also supports funding organizations that proactively identify and approach potential project partners. Instead of displaying a button to submit a grant request on your organization's profile, you send the link to your application form directly to selected project partners. Once you enable "Form for requests on invitation", you can click "Copy URL" to copy the form link and send it to the relevant project partners.

This feature is also useful as a second stage following a preliminary request and is therefore available to all Grant & Funding Management users. After positively evaluating a preliminary request, you can send the applicant the final application form directly. Simply include the form URL in the approval message template for preliminary requests.

Once you have made your changes, save the form by clicking "Save and close".

The changes will apply to newly created grant requests. When an applicant starts a new grant request after the form has been saved, the latest version of the form will be used. Grant requests that have already been started and saved are not affected by subsequent changes to the form.

Grant & Funding Management allows you to have several application forms active at the same time. To create another application form, click "Create new form".

Enter the form name and description, then click "OK". The form name is particularly important when you have multiple forms, as applicants will see it and incoming grant requests will receive a label containing the name of the form. This label allows you to identify which form was used to submit each grant request. Make sure you also rename the standard form (your first form) accordingly. Next, customise the questions in the new form if necessary. Once you have finished, you can activate the form and start receiving grant requests through it.

To allow applicants to submit grant requests to your organization using your configured forms, at least one application form must be active. You must also enable grant request submissions on Spheriq. To do this, go to the grant request overview and switch "We accept grant requests" on. The "Submit grant request" button will then appear on your organization's profile on spheriq.ch, allowing applicants to submit grant requests to your organization. Even if you only accept invitation-only grant requests, you must enable this setting so that applicants can submit the form. Unlike regular forms, however, no "Submit grant request" button will be displayed on your organization's profile.