Airtable is a popular flexible database tool used by many small funders to track grant applications, active grants, and reporting. For very small grant programmes, it can work adequately. But as programmes grow in volume, complexity, or accountability requirements, the limitations of a generic database tool become significant.
This comparison covers what Airtable does well, where it falls short for grants management, and when the upgrade to purpose-built software makes sense.
For a funder making 10-20 grants per year with simple requirements, Airtable can handle the basics:
For a small community foundation or philanthropist making a small number of grants, this may be sufficient.
No applicant portal. Airtable can collect form submissions, but it doesn't provide a returnable applicant portal — where applicants can save progress, view their previous applications, and access their grant history. Every Airtable form submission starts from scratch.
No assessment workflow. Purpose-built grants management software supports structured assessment — assigning applications to reviewers, managing COI declarations, collecting and averaging scores, and producing assessment summaries. Airtable would need significant custom automation to approximate this.
No grant agreement management. Generating, issuing, and tracking execution of grant agreements isn't something Airtable does. This typically ends up happening in separate systems — Word, DocuSign — without a connected record.
No milestone and payment workflow. Tracking milestone deliverables, triggering payment on completion, managing acquittal workflows — these require workflow capability that Airtable doesn't provide natively.
Limited audit trail. Purpose-built grants management software maintains a full audit trail of who viewed, edited, and approved what, and when. Airtable's change history is limited and not designed for compliance audit purposes.
No NZ/AU compliance features. Charities Register integration, gaming trust compliance documentation, OIA-ready records — these are built into purpose-built ANZ grants management software and don't exist in Airtable.
Reporting limitations. Generating programme reports — funded amounts by sector, geographic distribution, outcome summaries — is possible in Airtable but requires significant effort compared to purpose-built reporting tools.
Data security. For funders handling sensitive applicant information, Airtable's security and data residency may not meet ANZ data governance requirements.
Scale. At 100+ applications per round, managing a grant programme in Airtable becomes genuinely difficult — without the batch operations, automation, and workflow management that purpose-built software provides.
Consider purpose-built grants management software when:
Funders sometimes underestimate the hidden cost of maintaining grants management in Airtable:
- Staff time spent on manual workarounds (copying data between systems, manually generating agreements, manually tracking deadlines)
- The risk of data errors and information loss in a flexible, free-form database
- Difficulty onboarding new staff when processes live in undocumented workarounds
- Reporting that takes hours of manual data manipulation rather than minutes in purpose-built tools
Tahua is purpose-built for ANZ grantmakers — replacing the patchwork of Airtable, spreadsheets, Word, and email with a single integrated system designed around how grant programmes actually work.