Most calls ask artists to submit artwork for sale or exhibition: each piece carries a price, medium, and dimensions. An Application call is different: it judges a person and their portfolio, not a priced artwork. Use it for membership intakes, scholarship and grant applications, fellowships, and open portfolio reviews.
When a call is set up as an application, the submission form drops all the sales-oriented inputs (price, availability, "not for sale" controls) and instead collects the things an application needs: an artist statement, a CV or bio, work samples, an essay, and any other questions you add. It's the same call, jury, and review tooling you already use, configured for a different kind of intake.
This article covers what makes an Application call distinct and how to stand one up. For the basics of creating any call, start with Creating Your First Call.
When to Use an Application Call
Reach for an Application call when you're collecting people and portfolios rather than works to sell or hang:
Membership applications: artists apply to join your organization, and accepted applicants become members.
Scholarship and grant applications: students or artists apply for an award, usually with a written essay.
Fellowships: applications that also carry a grant award (see the Fellowship call type).
Portfolio or jury review: any free, juried intake where there's nothing for sale.
The fastest way to set up an application is to let the call type configure it for you. On Admin → Calls → Create Call, the Basics step has a Call Type dropdown. Four of its choices (Application, Membership, Scholarship, and Fellowship) do more than label the call: picking one pre-fills the entry fee, the sales mode, and the starter questions for that kind of intake. You can still adjust everything afterward.
Note: These configurations are applied only when creating a new call. Choosing a call type on an existing call changes the label, not the settings. The title, description, and dates are always left for you to fill in. Switching from one of these four to an ordinary call type clears what it set up, so nothing bleeds into an unrelated call.
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Application
The general-purpose application. It pre-configures:
Call Type: Application and Submissions are for sale: off (works are samples, not items for sale).
Free entry ($0 submission fee).
Starter questions: a required Artist statement, a required CV / bio, and an optional References field.
Document uploads on, so applicants can attach a PDF portfolio or full CV.
Blind review is not turned on for you here; switch it on yourself if you want it. This choice also scaffolds no award, which is the one difference from Fellowship, which adds a grant award.
Membership
Everything the Application type sets up, plus the three things a membership intake needs:
A $25 application fee (a standard submission fee through the normal checkout, and you can change the amount).
Accepted applicants become members. When the jury accepts a submission on this call, Crafted Call creates a member record for the applicant and tags them as a member in your subscriber list.
Blind jury on by default.
It also turns on rolling intake, so the call has no deadline and you admit applicants one at a time as they apply. That is usually what a membership intake wants. Turn it off before you create the call if you would rather run membership in rounds. See Rolling Calls.
This is the only way to turn on the "accepted applicants become members" behavior from the form, so pick this call type (rather than building from scratch) when you want jury acceptance to mint members. See Membership Applications below.
Scholarship
A free, juried scholarship intake with the questions a student application needs:
Free entry ($0) and sales off.
An Application essay (a Long Text question with a default 500-word cap you can adjust).
A Mentor / teacher name field.
A "Are you a current high-school student?" Yes/No question that conditionally reveals two more fields (High school name and Expected graduation year) only when the applicant answers Yes.
A default Scholarship Award scaffolded on the call, with the prize amount left blank for you to fill in.
Blind jury on by default.
A scholarship never creates members on acceptance. Accepting a scholar awards the scholarship, nothing more.
Australia: the Scholarship call type is not offered to Australian organizations yet, because it depends on age-restricted and student features that are unavailable there. The dropdown says so when it applies to you. Set up an Application call by hand instead.
What Makes an Application Call Different
Whichever call type you start from, or if you build one by hand, an application behaves differently from a sell-your-artwork call in a few consistent ways.
Submissions are work samples, not items for sale
The deciding switch is Submissions are for sale, in the call's submission requirements. When it's off, the submission form hides every pricing, availability, and "not for sale" control. Applicants upload work samples and tell their story; they never set a price.
Free (or fixed-fee) entry
Plain application and scholarship calls default to $0: free to apply. A membership application carries a flat application fee, set to $25 for you, charged through the normal Stripe checkout. You can set any fee, or none, the same way you'd configure fees on any call.
Narrative questions instead of sale metadata
Instead of medium, dimensions, and price, applications collect written answers: an artist statement, a CV or bio, an essay, references, a mentor's name. These are ordinary custom submission fields, so you can edit, reorder, add to, or remove them. The essay uses the Long Text field type with an optional word limit. To learn how the field types and required toggles work, see Custom Submission Fields.
Conditional ("show this only when…") fields
The Scholarship call type shows off a useful pattern: the High school name and Expected graduation year fields only appear when the applicant says they're a current high-school student. You can build the same kind of conditional reveal on any custom field, it's the standard "visible when" rule documented in Custom Submission Fields. Hidden fields aren't required and their stale values are discarded when the applicant submits.
Document uploads for portfolios and CVs
All four of these call types turn on document uploads (PDF by default), so a full portfolio or CV can be a first-class attachment alongside the work-sample images.
Membership Applications: Accepted Applicants Become Members
This is the one genuinely new behavior in the application flow. On a call created with the Membership call type, accepting a submission does more than mark it accepted: it creates (or reactivates) a member record for the applicant and tags the matching subscriber as a member.
A few things to know:
It triggers on acceptance, through any path: whether you finalize jury decisions in bulk, mark a single submission "in," change a status by hand, or promote someone off the waitlist, an accept creates the member.
It's safe to re-run. Accepting the same applicant twice (or replaying a decision) won't create a duplicate member. The record is keyed to the applicant's email within your organization.
It's a member record, not a paid subscription. A juried-in member doesn't have a recurring Stripe subscription. If you want recurring dues, set up membership tiers and collect dues separately. See Managing & Renewing Memberships.
Only membership applications do this. A scholarship or a standard artwork call, even though a scholarship is also technically an "Application" type, never creates members on acceptance.
Reviewing Applications
Applications are juried with the same tools as any other call. Because applications often judge a portfolio rather than a name, the Membership and Scholarship call types enable blind jury by default, which hides applicant-identifying details from scorers. To set up scorers, rounds, and scoring criteria, see Setting Up Your Jury. Applicants move through the same submission statuses as everyone else, see Understanding Submission Statuses.
Building an Application Call by Hand
You don't have to use one of the four quick-start call types. To configure an application manually:
Create a call and set Call Type to Application.
In the submission requirements, turn Submissions are for saleoff.
Set the submission fee (or leave it at $0 for free entry).
Add your questions as custom fields, for example a required Artist statement and a Long Text essay.
Turn on document uploads if you want PDF portfolios or CVs.
One caveat: the "accepted applicants become members" behavior cannot be switched on by hand. It is set only by choosing the Membership call type when you create the call. If you want jury acceptance to create members, start there, then change the fee and questions afterward.
Plans & Limits
Application calls don't require a separate add-on. They count against your plan's call limits (active calls and calls per year) exactly like any other call, so the same plan rules apply whether you're running a juried exhibition or a membership intake. For what each plan includes, see Pricing & Plans.
Troubleshooting
Choosing a call type didn't change any settings.
The quick-start configuration is applied only when creating a new call. On a call that already exists, the Call Type dropdown changes the label and nothing else, so set the fields by hand. Australian organizations do not see the Scholarship choice at all.
Applicants are being asked for a price or "for sale" details.
The Submissions are for sale toggle is still on. Turn it off in the call's submission requirements so the form treats entries as work samples.
The school fields show even for applicants who aren't students.
Those fields are conditional on the "current high-school student" question. Make sure that question still exists and that the conditional rule points at it. If you renamed or deleted the source question, the reveal rule no longer matches. See Custom Submission Fields.
I accepted a membership applicant but no member appeared.
The "accepted applicants become members" behavior only runs on calls created with the Membership call type. A standard application or scholarship call won't create members. Confirm the applicant has an email on file, then re-check your member list.
Accepting a scholar created a member by mistake.
It shouldn't. Scholarship calls never create members. If you see this, the call was likely set up as a membership application rather than a scholarship. Check which call type it was built from.
