HubSpot Platinum Partner
Melbourne Women's Foundation · 2026 Round

2026 Grants Setup: Assets and Next Steps

Everything that makes up the 2026 grants process today, what is live, and the short list to set up next
Prepared for the MWF team  |  29 June 2026  |  Gather 'n' Grow

The goal

Make the grants process easier for external applicants to apply, and simpler for the internal team to manage, across its many dates and many moving parts.

The two grants differ: the Capacity Building Grant is two steps (an EOI, then a full application for shortlisted applicants), and the Enabling Grant is one step (a single application, no EOI).

This maps the assets for the 2026 grant round (the forms and documents that make up the process), with a status on each and a short ordered list of what to set up next so the July round runs smoothly. It is the 2026 picture for now, and future rounds can reuse and refine it.

Two naming notes to keep consistent everywhere: we call them the Capacity Building Grant and the Enabling Grant across every form, email and document.

Live built and running To build set up in HubSpot Gap missing piece Make public ungated on the website
Application Pack

Keep the pack, but make it a public download, separate from the EOI and the application Make public

The application pack is worth keeping. Some people will want to read it before deciding to apply. The change is to treat it as its own thing, separate from the EOI form and the actual application, and to put it openly on the website rather than behind a form.

Why ungate it: a gated download would mean building one more form and one more autoresponder email. Making the pack a simple public link removes both, and keeps the application path clean. We do lose the ability to see who downloaded it, which for a pack like this is a fair trade.

An old form to remove: 2026 MWF Changemaker Grants Application Pack Download already exists for this and is not in use. You have appended "Not in use - delete" to its name so it is flagged. Once we agree to make the pack public, this form gets deleted.

What is Live Right Now

2026 MWF Capacity Building Grant: EOI Submission Portal Live

The EOI form is built and collecting submissions in HubSpot, and you have updated it to notify Catherine on each one. Good first piece in place.

The one gap: there is no email autoresponder yet, so applicants do not get a confirmation when they submit. That is the first thing to add (next steps below).

Form (HubSpot, internal): 2026 MWF Capacity Building Grant EOI Submission Portal

2026 MWF Enabling Grant: Submission Portal Live

Also built and collecting submissions, and now set to notify Catherine on each one. This is the Enabling Grant's single application (the Enabling Grant has no EOI step), so it is not an EOI form. For clarity we would add "Application" to the name, so each portal says what it is.

Same gap: no email autoresponder yet, so applicants get no confirmation.

Form (HubSpot, internal): 2026 MWF Enabling Grant Submission Portal

Recently Set Up

Already in place

Tickets enabled on the forms. Each form submission now creates a Ticket, so every application lands as its own record for the team to work from.

Ticket description property relabelled to "Additional information about grant application you'd like to provide", with the old 2025 mentions removed.

Next Steps, in Order
1

Add the applicant autoresponder emails

Gap, live forms

Both live forms now notify Catherine but send nothing back to the applicant. Add an automated acknowledgement email to each. Leonie and Kara are reviewing the copy, so this can go in as soon as it lands.

2

Name each portal by what it is, consistently

Tidy

Make each submission portal say its form type: Capacity Building Grant EOI, Capacity Building Grant Application (the full, invite-only one), and Enabling Grant Application. The Enabling one is an application, not an EOI. And use Capacity Building Grant and Enabling Grant consistently across forms, emails, guidelines and the website.

3

Move application fields from Company level to Ticket level

Setup

Some application fields currently write to the Company when they actually describe the application. Alyssa will create new Ticket properties for the application and annual-report fields, point the forms at them, and hide (not delete) the old Company-level ones, so the history is kept but the team is not confused about where things live. Genuinely company details like ABN and legal name stay on the Company.

On the category field: it should be a dropdown. If HubSpot's built-in ticket category cannot be edited to fit, we use a custom dropdown property instead of forcing the default.

On free emails (Gmail and similar): we are not blocking them, since smaller organisations may not have a domain. A free-email submission still creates a ticket; the company record may be sparse, which is a later cleanup.

4

Rework the ticket pipeline stages

Setup, Kara

The current stages look odd and are not relevant to grants. Kara will rework them into a sensible Grant Pipeline (renamed from "support pipeline"): Application SubmittedIneligible or EligibleWith CommitteeAwarded or DeclinedReporting. The old "closed" step gets split into Awarded and Declined, and the leftover closed tickets moved into the right stage.

5

Put the guidelines and forms on the website

Make public

Publish the grant guidelines and application forms openly on the MWF website (the guidelines link through to the forms). Applicants only touch HubSpot when they submit.

6

Build the third submission portal

To build, Catherine

Catherine will create the Capacity Building Grant Application portal (the full, invite-only application for shortlisted applicants), then let Alyssa know so the ticket-vs-company field mapping can be checked and cloned from the existing ones. The Capacity Building EOI and Enabling Application portals already exist.

7

Link the forms from the MWF website

Setup, Catherine

The forms sit at the bottom of HubSpot landing pages. Catherine will add a link on the MWF website (WordPress) to those landing pages, so applicants go website → landing page → submit. For now the landing-page URLs are the default HubSpot ones (a bit long and unpolished). A proper branded domain (for example a grants subdomain) is a future improvement once IT and DNS are involved.

8

Decide how application info reaches the committee

To design

The current method for passing application info to the committee for review is a shared Excel spreadsheet, which reviewers score against the criteria (per the call, plus an earlier attempt to sync application details into reviewer spreadsheets). We do not have to keep doing it that way, since AI can help pull and format the information. We will work out the format that suits the committee best, which could be Google Sheets or something simpler.