About the client
FDSC – Foundation for Civil Society Development is one of the main actors in the NGO sector in Romania, managing large public funding programs for non-governmental organizations.
The challenge
The process of applying for funding used to involve large amounts of paperwork, with heavy bureaucracy for applicants and for evaluators. Each call for proposals came with different forms, rules, and strict timelines. Evaluations also needed to be managed securely and transparently, involving multiple evaluators and sometimes requests for clarifications.
The solution
We designed and implemented a complete online grant management platform, live since 2014 and still in operation today.
- Calls & funding lines – creation and management of active intervals, multiple users per NGO, role assignment.
- Form constructor – instead of hardcoding, administrators define the logic of each call: sections, fields, rules, file uploads, and even complex constructs such as activity matrices or partner tables. Once configured in the admin panel, the system automatically generates the public application form. In other words, I didn’t “program a form” — I built the program that programs the form.
- Administrative evaluation – allocation of evaluators by site admin, checklist-style evaluation, subsystem for requests and clarifications between evaluators and applicants.
- Technical & financial evaluation – two evaluators per project (sometimes three if scores diverge), point-based forms with minimum thresholds.
- Final decision – system generates ranking lists based on scores; funding allocation is finalized manually but must respect evaluation results.
- Communication – automated mailings and notifications throughout the process.
- Security & reliability – no hacking incidents since launch; in more than 10 years, only 5 contested cases (documents not lost, system always traceable).
Results
- A fully digital workflow replacing tons of paper.
- Secure and transparent management of calls, applications, and evaluations.
- Significant reduction of bureaucracy for both applicants and evaluators.
- Stable operation since 2014, with high trust from NGOs and public authorities.
