Get the Most | Submittable Next · Issue 2 · July 2026

Welcome to the second edition of Get the Most, where I’ll be sharing tips, tricks, and tactics to help you, well, get the most out of your investment with Submittable. 

Today, we’ll take a deeper look at the review process. Scoring applications automatically at intake (which we dove into last month) tells you where to start. Review rounds are where you decide who moves forward — and they're also where programs can get tangled fast. With three feedback types to choose from, a bit of planning here makes your life much easier once those reviews start coming in.

This issue is about setting a review round up so it holds together from the first reviewer assignment to the final decision.

Three Feedback Types, Three Different Jobs

Review rounds in Submittable Next support three feedback types. Let’s take a look at each one. 

Scoring. Scoring creates a quantitative assessment with two parts: the score given by the reviewers, and the weight of that score relative to the other scores, assigned by you. 

To set up a scoring round, you’ll assign the criteria, such as  Need & Demand, Project Readiness, Cost Effectiveness, or whatever matters most to your program. You’ll set the measurement scale for each criterion — commonly 1-10, but this can be adjusted to fit your process. Finally, you’ll set the weight for each criterion so the total comes to 100%. In the above example, if need and demand is twice as important as the other two criterion, you could give that a weight of 50%, and the other two a weight of 25%.  

After reviewers assign scores, Submittable calculates the cumulative average and applies the weight across all reviewers automatically.

Use Scoring when seeking a numerical representation of your panel’s judgment. 

Voting. A binary choice — Yes or No, or whatever labels you configure. No score, just a decision. You’ll see your data as a percentage of how many reviewers chose the affirmative option: for instance, 100 if every reviewer votes yes.

Voting fits stages where a measurement is too nuanced and you just need to seek consensus. It’s a great fit for an eligibility check, a first-pass filter, or a final approval round where the only real question is whether an application moves forward.

Custom Feedback Form. By far our most-used review type — mostly because you can build scoring or voting right into a Custom Feedback Form. You write the questions; reviewers answer them; Calculated Value Fields turn their answers into a score automatically. The reviewer isn't typing in a number — they're responding to a statement, and Submittable does any math that's required.

Custom Feedback Forms are also how you’ll include quantitative feedback in your process (beyond the comments section available with Scoring and Voting). It's also the required review type if you're using Smart Reviewer. (Not using Smart Reviewer yet?  Here is a quick video.)

Since Custom Feedback Forms are how you can have it all, we’ll take a closer look at some tips to use them most effectively.

Four Habits That Make Any Custom Feedback Form Better

This guidance was originally written for programs setting up Smart Reviewer — but every one of these habits improves a Custom Feedback Form whether an AI reviewer is involved or not. A form that's specific and well-structured produces more consistent feedback across human reviewers, too.

1. Match your feedback questions to the application. A reviewer — human or Smart Reviewer — can only evaluate what applicants actually submitted. Your feedback questions should reference things your intake form specifically asks for: financial need, community impact, project timeline, whatever your criteria call for. If the intake form doesn't collect it, no one can score it.

2. Cover one evaluation area per question. Combining two criteria into a single field tends to produce an answer that only addresses one of them.

• Not effective: "Does the applicant explain the project and demonstrate financial need?"
• Better: "Does the applicant clearly explain the project?" and, as a separate field, "Does the applicant demonstrate financial need?"

3. Be specific about what should be evaluated. Vague prompts get vague answers.

• Not effective: "Is this a strong application?" or "Evaluate the proposal."
• Better: "Does the scope of the project effectively address a clear need?”

4. Clearly define what each score means. Labels like "Excellent," "Good," or "Strong" get interpreted differently by every reviewer who sees them. A short description of what each number represents keeps scoring consistent across your whole panel. For example, on a 1–4 scale:

• 4 — Clearly describes project activities, provides a realistic timeline, and explains expected outcomes.
• 3 — Describes project activities, but the timeline or expected outcomes are incomplete or missing.
• 2 — Only a brief or vague description, with little detail about activities, timeline, or outcomes.
• 1 — Unclear, confusing, or missing key information.

Customer Spotlight: Forcing Hard Calls Before Panel Day

Even with a clean scoring setup, most programs run into the same wall: once a pool is strong, everyone starts landing in the same 8-or-9 range, and the number stops telling you much.

The Jerome Foundation, an arts funder serving Minnesota and New York City, solved this by capping the top of the scale. Reviewers score individual criteria as they normally would. Then, instead of an open-ended overall score, they give one of three: a 10, a 4, or a 1. A 10 means the application belongs on the shortlist. A 4 means it's solid — strong enough that it might make the final conversation, but not a lock. A 1 sets it aside, without implying the application was weak.

The forcing mechanism is the cap: only a set percentage of a reviewer's pool can receive a 10, and only a set percentage can receive a 4. Everything else gets a 1, with no limit. There's no comfortable middle number to default to.

Jerome Foundation's Grants and Operations Manager, Andrea Brown, described the effect this way: reviewers stop doing math and start making the kind of hard calls that used to get pushed off until panel day. By the time their finalists sit down for a full day of discussion, the group already reflects where each reviewer's advocacy is strongest — not just a list of everyone's top raw scores.

As Andrea says, the reviewers hate how hard this is—but then they’re grateful for it later. Andrea walked through the full method, including how Jerome Foundation built it into their Submittable review forms and how they run panel day once the finalist list is set. Watch the full webinar → 

A Few Things Worth Knowing Before You Build

• You can publish with just your first intake and first review round — even an internal-only one — and add more rounds later. This is useful when your reviewer pool isn't locked in yet. Here's what you can still change after you publish. 
• A review round doesn't have to be reviewer-facing at all. Add as many rounds as your process calls for, including one that's purely internal. 
• Don't know your reviewers yet? Add yourself as the only reviewer for now. You can build out the rest of the round once your reviewer pool is confirmed.
• Manual reviewers sit outside review groups. If you add someone as a manual reviewer rather than assigning them through a group, they won't be included as part of that group's structure. Decide which setup your round needs before assigning people. You can now bulk add reviewers, too — learn more here.
• Running a deadline cycle?  Before the review round starts, all round settings can be edited, including reviewer auto-assignments, deadlines and more.
• Running a rolling cycle? Leave the deadline blank. It only exists to trigger reminders, so an empty field gives you more flexibility.
• Set up an effective dashboard, and check it regularly. Pull in your calculated scores and key application questions, then filter — your top applications rise straight to the top, and it's the fastest way to see where reviewers stand before a stall becomes a deadline problem.
• Consider using Smart Reviewer to run that internal pass automatically, either on its own or alongside your human reviewers — so you can compare results before finalists are set.
• Resources for your Reviewers. Get your reviewers up to speed quickly. Our Reviewer Help section includes a video introduction and a step-by-step help article.

Wrapping Up

A review round works when the feedback type matches the decision, when scoring is set up so reviewers can't avoid making hard calls, and when a program isn't asking anyone to re-verify what's already settled. Set it up before your next cycle opens, and the round will do the sorting for you instead of turning into one more thing to manage by hand.

Questions? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or visit support.submittable.com.

Related Resources

• Feedback Types and Setup in a Review Round →
• Set up a Review Round →
• Creating Review Groups in a Review Round →
• Assign Reviewers Manually →
• Setting Up & Using Smart Reviewer →
• Prepare for Testing →
• What Can and Cannot be Changed after Publishing an Award Cycle →
• Sort & Filter Applications (Intake & Review Rounds) →