Flexi-Grant is a cloud-based grant management system, built by Belfast-based Fluent Technology Ltd, that a growing cluster of UK research funders — including the British Academy, the Royal Society and Cancer Research UK — each run as a separately branded portal to handle applications, peer review, awards and post-award reporting. It is not one shared login; it is one shared software platform, licensed and configured independently by each funder. For research administrators who support applicants across several of these funders, that distinction changes how you plan accounts, deadlines and reporting.
Flexi-Grant® is best defined as follows: Flexi-Grant is a multi-tenant SaaS grants-management platform that funders configure with their own branding, forms and workflows, rather than a single unified application portal shared across funders. Understanding that architecture — and where it helps or hinders interoperability — matters as much as knowing how to fill in a form.
- What is Flexi-Grant?
- Which funders use Flexi-Grant, and why does it matter?
- How does the application and reporting workflow work?
- Is Flexi-Grant one shared login across funders?
- Managing Flexi-Grant applications: what administrators need to know
- Frequently asked questions
- What funder consolidation means for research-funding governance
What is Flexi-Grant?
Flexi-Grant is grant management software, not a grant scheme itself. It provides funders with configurable application forms, reviewer workflows, award letters and reporting modules, hosted centrally and delivered to applicants as a branded web portal (for example, britishacademy.flexigrant.com or grants.royalsociety.org). Fluent Technology Ltd, the company behind the platform, markets it to charities, government bodies, research councils and medical research funders as end-to-end grant-lifecycle software.
The practical effect for the UK research sector is that several major funders now run on the same underlying codebase, even though each instance looks and behaves differently. That is different from a shared identity or data-interoperability layer — it is shared infrastructure at the vendor level, configured independently at the funder level.
Which funders use Flexi-Grant, and why does it matter?
At least eight identifiable UK and international funders currently run applicant-facing portals on Flexi-Grant, spanning medical research charities, learned societies, government science agencies and local authorities.
| Funder | Portal | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| British Academy | britishacademy.flexigrant.com | Humanities and social sciences funding, branded as the “Grant Management System” (GMS) |
| Royal Society | grants.royalsociety.org | Research grants, fellowships and, in some schemes, applications administered on behalf of partner academies |
| Cancer Research UK | Flexi-Grant instance linked from cancerresearchuk.org | Applications, awards and post-award scientific milestone reporting |
| Chief Scientist Office (Scotland) | cso.flexigrant.com | Scottish government health research awards |
| RNID | Linked from rnid.org.uk | Biomedical hearing-research funding; migrated onto Flexi-Grant, announced 20 May 2026 |
| Darwin Initiative | Linked from darwininitiative.org.uk | UK government biodiversity funding, described in its own guidance as used “by a range of government and independent grant bodies worldwide” |
| East Riding of Yorkshire Council | eastridingofyorkshirecouncil.flexigrant.com | Local authority grant schemes |
This clustering matters beyond convenience. When multiple funders converge on one vendor’s data model for applicant CVs, publication lists, host-institution approvals and financial reconciliation, it creates a de facto common schema across a slice of the UK funding landscape — without any formal interoperability standard, governance body or data-portability guarantee behind it. That is a materially different arrangement from standards-based infrastructure such as ORCID identifiers or ROR organisation identifiers, which are portable by design regardless of which vendor a funder chooses.
How does the application and reporting workflow work?
Across Flexi-Grant instances, funders tend to reuse a consistent set of role labels, even where scheme rules differ. Cancer Research UK’s own guidance defines these as: a lead applicant (the person responsible for the project and the primary contact), the host institution (the organisation that receives funding if the award succeeds), participants (joint leads, co-investigators, named staff), and collaborators (those supplying materials or expertise without day-to-day involvement).
Post-award, successful applicants typically receive a Grant Award Letter (GAL) that both the applicant and host institution must accept inside the system, and ongoing obligations — such as Cancer Research UK’s Scientific Milestone Reports (SMRs) — are tracked through the same portal. Notably, CRUK’s system now integrates with Researchfish, the separate UK research-outcomes reporting tool used across many funders, so attributable publications can be pulled directly into a milestone report rather than re-entered by hand.
- Applicants build a Flexi-Grant profile with an online CV, career history and full publication list before starting any application.
- Email address is the system username, so administrators should watch for duplicate accounts when participants move institutions.
- Applications must show “100% complete” on every section before submission, and host institutions must approve before the published deadline.
Is Flexi-Grant one shared login across funders?
No. Each funder operates its own Flexi-Grant tenant with a separate account, separate login and separate profile — an account created for a British Academy application does not carry over to the Royal Society’s or Cancer Research UK’s instance. The Royal Society additionally maintains a “Legacy Logon” portal (legacylogon.royalsociety.org) alongside its main Flexi-Grant instance, evidence that even within one funder, migration between platform versions can leave applicants managing more than one credential.
For research administrators supporting multiple principal investigators across several funders, this means credential management is a genuine operational burden, not a formality: expect one account per funder per applicant, with no single sign-on and no automatic profile synchronisation between them.
Managing Flexi-Grant applications: what research administrators need to know
Because each Flexi-Grant instance is independently configured, efficient management comes from process discipline rather than platform features:
- Track deadlines per funder instance — scheme guidance pages, not the portal itself, hold the authoritative submission window and any pre-application discussion requirement.
- Centralise institutional approval workflows — host institutions must approve before the funder’s deadline, so build in an internal buffer against delayed sign-off.
- Maintain a shared applicant-CV template — ORCID import does not reliably pull full author lists into Flexi-Grant profiles, so keep publication lists formatted consistently for fast re-entry across funders.
- Log every account per funder — keep an internal register of which staff hold which funder-specific credentials, given the absence of federated login.
- Distinguish award administration from outcomes reporting — award letters and financial reconciliation live in Flexi-Grant; publication outcomes increasingly route through Researchfish, a separate system.
Frequently asked questions
What is Flexi-Grant?
Flexi-Grant is cloud-based grant management software built by Fluent Technology Ltd. Funders licence it to run their own branded portal for applications, peer review, awards and reporting; it is infrastructure a funder configures, not a grant scheme or a single cross-funder account.
Which UK research funders use Flexi-Grant?
Confirmed users include the British Academy, the Royal Society, Cancer Research UK, the Chief Scientist Office in Scotland, RNID, the Darwin Initiative and East Riding of Yorkshire Council, each running its own instance under its own domain.
Do I need a separate login for each funder’s Flexi-Grant portal?
Yes. Each funder runs an independent Flexi-Grant tenant, so credentials created for one funder’s portal — for example the British Academy’s — do not work on another funder’s instance, such as the Royal Society’s or CRUK’s.
Does Flexi-Grant handle post-award reporting as well as applications?
Yes, for many schemes. Award letters, financial reconciliation and scheduled reports run through Flexi-Grant, though several funders — including Cancer Research UK — now pull attributable publication data from Researchfish, a separate UK outcomes-reporting system, into that reporting workflow.
What funder consolidation means for research-funding governance
The convergence of multiple major UK funders onto one vendor’s platform is a governance-relevant fact, not just an IT choice. It lowers the cost of standing up a grants portal for smaller or newer funders — a genuine efficiency gain. It does not create data portability, a common identifier scheme, or interoperability with adjacent research administration infrastructure such as ORCID or ROR: each funder’s Flexi-Grant instance remains a data silo unless the funder separately builds integrations, as Cancer Research UK has done with Researchfish.
That gap is what standards bodies and interoperability frameworks exist to close: shared vendor software reduces duplicated engineering effort, but it is not a substitute for shared, vendor-independent data standards. “Which portal does my funder use” is an operational question; “does my funder’s data connect to my institution’s other research information systems” is the separate, harder governance question that shared SaaS infrastructure alone does not answer.
As more funders migrate — RNID’s move onto Flexi-Grant was only announced in May 2026 — the administrative burden of managing multiple, non-federated funder accounts will keep growing for institutions working across several funding streams, even as each individual funder’s user experience improves.
