April 22, 2025

Webinar Recap: Grant Management with Trello and Atom: Part 2

Discover Trello’s advanced features.

In the ever-evolving landscape of research administration, technology and AI are rapidly reshaping workflows, collaboration, and grant management. In the latest installment of Atom Grants’ webinar series, experienced research administrator Katey Sackett and Atom Grants co-founder Tomer du Sautoy delivered an in-depth, practical look at how Trello and Atom Grants’ software platforms are empowering research teams to streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and improve communication across the research lifecycle.

About the Speakers

Katey Sackett is an experienced research administrator, now serving as Assistant Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at RIT. With deep experience in pre- and post-award research administration and a keen understanding of the resource constraints many research offices face, Katey has been instrumental in shaping Atom’s products and is a passionate advocate for practical technology solutions in research administration.

Tomer du Sautoy is co-founder and CEO of Atom Grants, bringing a background in research and software development. After researching physics at the University of Bristol and working as a founding software engineer, Tomer shifted his focus to building technology that supports the research ecosystem, culminating in Atom—a platform designed to automate and enhance grant discovery and management for research teams.

Key Takeaways from the Webinar

Katey’s presentation focused on how Trello can be transformed from a basic project management tool into a robust, collaborative platform tailored for research administration. Key highlights included:

• Advanced Checklists: Assign checklist items to specific team members and set due dates at the checklist level (requires paid plan). This granular control is essential for tracking complex, multi-step processes like proposal development and compliance reviews. These features also enable users to view all upcoming tasks across boards and receive targeted notifications, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
• Automations: Automations are the heart of Trello’s power for research teams. Katey demonstrated how rules, buttons, and scheduled automations can:
  • Automatically label and sort cards based on content (e.g., identifying NSF proposals by title).
  • Trigger the creation of new cards for specialized workflows (such as IRB reviews) and keep related cards linked for seamless navigation and collaboration.
  • Mirror cards across boards, allowing multiple administrators or PIs to work in parallel with real-time updates—crucial for large, multi-institutional projects.
  • Send automated email notifications to PIs and team members when proposals move through key stages, reducing the need for manual updates and repetitive communication.
  • Generate weekly summary reports and due-date reminders, helping teams prioritize and redistribute workloads as needed.
• Power-Ups and Integrations: Trello’s ecosystem of Power-Ups extends its functionality, from integrating with Google Drive and Slack to exporting data to Excel or syncing with institutional calendars. Katey emphasized that while Power-Ups can be valuable, most core needs can be met with Trello’s built-in features and creative use of automations.
• Templates and Customization: While Trello offers built-in templates, Katey recommended teams invest time in mapping their unique workflows and building custom checklists and automations that fit their processes. This approach ensures the system supports, rather than constrains, each team’s way of working.

Atom Grants: AI-Driven Grant Discovery and Management

Tomer introduced Atom Grants’ evolving platform, which aims to take research administration automation a step further:

• Semantic Search for Funding: Atom’s AI-powered search engine allows users to find funding opportunities using natural language, ensuring more relevant matches than traditional keyword searches.
• Automated Project Creation: Atom can prefill Trello cards or its own management boards with extracted requirements, deadlines, and tasks directly from RFPs, reducing manual data entry and setup time.
• Integrated Collaboration: The Atom platform is designed to enable direct collaboration between researchers and administrators within the same project space, addressing the limitations of per-seat licensing in tools like Trello.
• Compliance and Document Analysis: By leveraging AI, Atom analyzes uploaded documents against RFP requirements, check for compliance, and assist with budget preparation—all within the user-friendly platform.
• Continuous Updates: Atom pulls information directly from government and private funders to ensure users are always working with the latest sponsor terms and conditions, and is developing features to automate notifications about term updates that occur during proposal development.

Learn More and Subscribe to Future Webinars

Stay up to date on our webinar series, by clicking here to subscribe. For more information on Atom Grants’ AI-powered grant discovery and management tools, visit Atom Grants to book a demo or reach out to our team here.

Interested in learning more or becoming an institutional design partner with Atom Grants? Reach out to Tomer at tomer@atomgrants.com to learn how your institution can gain access to our newest research administration tools! You can also connect with Katey for Trello implementation consulting at kxsuadv@rit.edu.