Question 1

What is GanaSubvenciones?

Accepted Answer

A platform for NGOs, associations and foundations that brings together 23,757 calls for grant applications (convocatorias) in a single catalogue, reads their rules with artificial intelligence to pull out the scoring criteria, and follows every grant from the application through to reporting (justificación) – the final account of how the grant was spent.

Question 2

Which organisations is it for?

Accepted Answer

For associations, foundations, NGOs, development NGOs (ONGD), federations and social initiative cooperatives. The catalogue is sifted to leave out what a non-profit organisation cannot apply for: funding for businesses, for town councils or for individuals.

Question 3

Do you submit the application for us?

Accepted Answer

No. GanaSubvenciones does not submit applications to any public administration: it does not sign with a digital certificate, it does not go into any sede electrónica – the government's online filing portal – and it does not file anything in your name. What it does is show where the application goes and link to the official portal; the filing is done by your organisation. We are not consultants either, and we do not charge a percentage of what is awarded.

Question 4

Do you guarantee that we'll be awarded the grant?

Accepted Answer

No, and nobody can. The decision is made by each call's scoring committee, on its own judgement. What we do is make sure you know in time which calls are out there, which ones fit your organisation and what they are scored on, so nobody spends two weeks on a project narrative that never had a chance. The decision and the project stay with your organisation.

Question 5

What languages is it in?

Accepted Answer

In Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque and English: the whole website and the whole dashboard, not just the main screens. You switch language from the header without losing the page you were on, and if you have an account the choice is saved, so the emails we send you will arrive in that language too. What is not translated is the content of the calls: the name, the rules and the documents are shown in the language the body running the call publishes them in, because they are official texts and translating them would change what they say.

Question 6

Where do the calls come from?

Accepted Answer

From the Base de Datos Nacional de Subvenciones (BDNS), where by law every call from a Spanish public body has to be published, and from the websites of the private foundations that run calls. Out of all that we import what is aimed at legal persons with no economic activity, in a competitive call (concurrencia competitiva) and with enough budget; the rest – agreements with the beneficiary already named, funding for businesses or for individuals – is left out.

Question 7

How often is it updated?

Accepted Answer

Every night in the small hours, in two passes: one looks for new calls from the last seven days and the other asks again for the record of everything still live, to see whether a date, an amount or a document has changed. On Sundays we go back over ninety days, because the BDNS sometimes publishes with a backdated date. We don't look more than once a day because the BDNS dates what it publishes by day and with no time: looking twenty-four times gives back exactly the same as looking once.

Question 8

How many calls are there, and from which public bodies?

Accepted Answer

Right now 23,757 in the catalogue, of which 1,029 are open today, spread across 1,615 public and private funders. The bulk is local and regional – town councils, diputaciones, cabildos and regions – which is where most of the funding for the Third Sector is. State ones are considerably fewer, and European ones appear only when they are run through a Spanish public body that registers them in the BDNS.

Question 9

Are there calls from private foundations?

Accepted Answer

Yes, though they are a small part of it: the vast majority of the catalogue is public money. Private funding has no compulsory register to search, so it comes from going through the websites of the foundations that genuinely run calls, one by one, from a list built and checked by hand. The big bank and corporate foundations are there, and some international ones that run calls in Spain.

Question 10

Can I rely on the dates and amounts I see?

Accepted Answer

What binds you is the official call, always. The catalogue is a reference tool, which is why every record links to the document with the rules, to the sede electrónica and to the official BDNS record with its documents: before you submit anything you have to check it there. Those links are published by the public body itself, so some lead to a server that is down or to a viewer that won't serve the document; when that happens there is the BDNS record, which does keep them.

Question 11

Can I look at the catalogue without registering?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Searching, filtering and seeing the calls with their deadline, their amount and who is running them needs no account and costs nothing, and there is no limit. What does need an account – a free one – is the part of the record with the scoring criteria, the requirements and the documents required, and everything to do with your organisation: saving calls, the alerts and managing applications.

Question 12

What does reading the rules with artificial intelligence mean?

Accepted Answer

A model reads the official document with the rules – and if it comes in scanned, text recognition is run over it first – and pulls out of it what you need in order to decide: the scoring criteria with the weight of each one, the requirements for applying, the warnings that rule you out from the start, the documents required, the amounts, the deadlines and which costs can be charged. What it looked for and did not find is recorded too, so that a gap is a decision and not an oversight.

Question 13

Can I rely on that analysis?

Accepted Answer

Every scoring criterion and every requirement is stored with the exact sentence from the document it comes from, and that sentence is then searched for inside the original document automatically, without asking the model again. Anything that doesn't turn up is flagged and goes into a tray that is reviewed by hand. Even so, the analysis is a reading, not a ruling: what binds you is the official document, which is linked on the same record, one click away.

Question 14

Have the rules of every call been read?

Accepted Answer

No, and there would be no point. Reading a set of rules costs money, so we start where it is worth it: the ones that are open, with a big enough amount, and that fit the most organisations. Today there are 1,491 records with the rules already read and summarised. On the rest, the record says so at the top and takes you to the official document, instead of showing a summary that doesn't exist.

Question 15

What if the call says its criteria are in another document?

Accepted Answer

It happens often: this year's call refers you to a set of bases reguladoras – the binding rules of the call – approved years earlier and published in a provincial gazette. When that happens, the record shows where the call says they are, and those rules are tracked down and read separately. We deliberately distinguish between “there is no scoring scale to look for” – a non-competitive call, where nothing is scored – and “the scoring scale exists and we couldn't get to it”, because for someone deciding whether to apply they are not the same thing.

Question 16

What is the fit percentage?

Accepted Answer

How much of what a call asks for fits what your organisation has declared in its profile. It is worked out with a fixed rule, the same for every call and with no artificial intelligence involved, and four things count: the field of work, which weighs most; the territory; your annual budget against the amount of the call; and the groups of people you support.

Question 17

Is it the probability of being awarded it?

Accepted Answer

No. It doesn't measure your chances of winning: it measures whether the call is for you. It is there to sort a catalogue of thousands and decide where to spend your time, not to predict a decision.

Question 18

Why is there sometimes no percentage at all?

Accepted Answer

Because your organisation's profile isn't yet enough to work it out. If a good part of the data that counts is missing, it says “not enough data” instead of a low number, which would be worse: a low number reads as a no, and what is happening here is that we don't know. An empty field never takes points away; its weight is shared out among the others. Filling in the profile is what changes the list most.

Question 19

Why do some calls show a warning instead of a percentage?

Accepted Answer

Because something rules you out from the start, and then the number doesn't help: the reason does. What rules you out is a deadline that has already closed, a territory that isn't yours, not meeting the minimum age they require as at the closing date, the rules naming types of organisation and yours not being among them, or their requiring a recognition you haven't declared. All the checks fail the same way: what isn't known never rules you out.

Question 20

How is it different from the AI fit analysis?

Accepted Answer

The percentage comes out on its own, for every call at once, and costs nothing. A fit analysis is asked for on one specific call and uses up a credit: it reads that call's rules against your organisation's profile and returns a verdict with the strengths, the weaknesses and what would rule you out, each with its reason. It takes a couple of minutes. If you change the profile afterwards, the saved analysis is marked as out of date instead of disappearing, and running it again is up to you.

Question 21

And what is a project Match?

Accepted Answer

Something different again. You upload the project narrative – as a PDF or in Word – and it is scored criterion by criterion against that call's scoring scale, with the weight of each one and saying what is missing to score higher. It is not the mark the committee will give it and it can't be: it is there to decide whether to apply and to improve the narrative before you send it. When a call doesn't publish its weights, we say so before the credit is spent.

Question 22

What exactly does it alert you about?

Accepted Answer

Two things. Changes to what you follow: a call that opens, a date that moves, rules or a budget that change, a decision that is published, or a programme that is run again. And the deadlines of what you are managing: the closing date of the call, the expected decision, the window for representations (alegaciones) – your reply to a provisional decision – and the reporting deadline, which alerts you thirty days out, seven days out and the day before.

Question 23

How do they arrive?

Accepted Answer

In the dashboard, with a bell and its counter, and by email: one single email a day per organisation, with everything grouped inside it, and none on the days when nothing has happened. Never one email per alert. What has been read is marked for the whole organisation and not for each person: if a teammate has already seen it, it won't come up for you again, and we say who saw it.

Question 24

Can they be turned off?

Accepted Answer

Yes, by family and from your account preferences: the email digest, changes to what you follow and deadline reminders are turned off separately, and each person has their own. How far ahead the closing alert goes out – three, seven or fourteen days – belongs to the organisation and applies to the whole team, because there is only one reminder and it can't exist at fourteen days for one person and three for another. What is urgent, what closes tomorrow, arrives anyway: that is the service, not a preference.

Question 25

Will you alert me to new calls that fit?

Accepted Answer

Not today, and that is deliberate. Alerts are about what you follow and what you are managing. An alert that sends everything that comes out stops being opened within two weeks, and from then on it alerts you to nothing. To find what's new there is Search, with the catalogue sorted by fit with your organisation.

Question 26

How much does it cost? Is there a free plan?

Accepted Answer

There is a free plan, Explora, which doesn't expire and doesn't ask for a card: with it you use the whole catalogue and try the fit analysis once. The paid ones are Analiza, €39 a month or €396 a year, Gana, €79 a month or €804 a year, and Ilimitado, €139 a month or €1,416 a year. Above all they differ in how many grants you can have under way at once – 5, 10 or no limit – and also in how many analyses and Matches you get each period. The detail is on the pricing page.

Question 27

What exactly do you pay for?

Accepted Answer

How many grants you have under way at once, what uses artificial intelligence, and the team seats. Fit analyses and project Matches run on credits, which are topped back up at the start of each period. Searching, filtering, saving calls, the alerts, the tasks, the Library and reporting don't use credits.

Question 28

Do I need a card to get started?

Accepted Answer

No. You create the account with an email, confirm the address and you can log in. The card only comes up when you take out a paid plan, and then Stripe collects the details in its own form: they don't pass through our servers at any point.

Question 29

What if we run out of analyses halfway through the month?

Accepted Answer

You top up for the same price as the plan and get the same credits again, without changing plan or renewal date. Credits bought this way don't expire and are spent after the plan's own, which do expire on renewal. You can also let them top up on their own, with a cap on top-ups per period that you set.

Question 30

Is there a minimum term? How do you cancel the plan?

Accepted Answer

There is no minimum term. You cancel from the dashboard, without ringing anyone or writing an email, and you keep access until the period already paid for runs out; until then you can undo it. When it ends, the account moves to the Explora plan and nothing is deleted: the profile, the saved calls and the applications are still there, and so are any credits you had bought separately.

Question 31

How many people from the team can log in, and how do you invite them?

Accepted Answer

As many as you need: there is no cap. The first is included in any plan, the free one too, and from there each seat is €8.90 a month, added to the plan's invoice. You invite people by email from the dashboard, and there are two roles: whoever administers – invites, removes and changes roles – and whoever is a member. The invitation expires after seven days and the seat counts from when it is sent, not from when it is accepted, because it is already reserved.

Question 32

Do you issue an invoice?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with its number and its PDF downloadable from the dashboard, in the organisation's name and with its CIF (tax ID). The tax details are entered once and can be changed whenever you need. Payment is by card.

Question 33

What happens to the documents we upload?

Accepted Answer

They are kept in private storage and only your organisation sees them. They aren't reachable at a public address: they are served through signed links that expire, so that an address copied from the browser bar isn't still opening your articles of association a month later. You can delete them whenever you want. Your organisation's documents – articles of association, accounts, certificates – are never sent to the artificial intelligence; the only thing sent to it, and only when you ask, is the project you upload to have it scored.

Question 34

Is our data used to train models?

Accepted Answer

No. The artificial intelligence provider does not train its models on what is sent to it through its programming interface, and the files uploaded to it for analysis expire on their own after ninety days at most. Even so, a piece of advice: before uploading a narrative, take out the names and details of the people you support that the analysis doesn't need. With the project anonymised the result is the same.

Question 35

What data do you keep and how do you delete the account?

Accepted Answer

What is collected, what for, how long it is kept, who else sees it and how to exercise your GDPR rights is all in the privacy policy, linked in the footer of every page. To close the whole account and have everything hanging off it deleted, there is a button at the bottom of My organisation; you can also ask for it from Contact. Invoices are the exception, because there is a legal obligation to keep them.

Question 36

Do you use cookies or analytics?

Accepted Answer

There is no analytics and there are no trackers of any kind: no Google Analytics, no social media pixels, no heat maps. Nobody receives your browsing. The cookies used are the four strictly necessary ones that make the site work – the session, the language and little else – and that is why there is no cookie banner to accept either. It is set out in the privacy policy.

Frequently asked questions

1.What it is and what it isn't

2.The catalogue of calls

3.Reading the rules with AI

4.The fit percentage

5.Alerts

6.Plans, payment and team

7.Account, data and documents

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