UK & UAE
As the economy is not at its best and businesses are desperate for a cash injection, the vast majority are chasing grants and public funds, which is understandable, who doesn’t like “free” money? Recently, we have received a lot of requests for help in bids and grant writing! A lot of them asking for bid writers, whether it’s a company that writes bids as a service or individuals who do this!
Those entrepreneurs and businesses who used to write grants and bid applications themselves and win at an average mark of 75% a few years ago, now have to go up to 85% at least and most of the time they are not successful.
The competition is furious and unfortunately, the awards are now going mostly to those who can afford grants writers to help them. The numbers I came across recently are shocking, for example, one company that offers grants writing as a service won close to £15M applications out of a £25M pot with about 55 successful applications out of 65. Entrepreneurs and businesses that usually write their own applications are suspecting that some of the application assessors have links with these grant writers who are winning at that rate. Well, I know this is a serious allegation, and if true it will hold all those involved accountable, they get blacklisted usually. However, having these thoughts going around is enough to knock off the confidence of small businesses and their ability to actually have a chance with a successful application.
As the coming year will have major changes in funds and grants available aimed to support businesses and replacing funds such as the ERDF (European Regional Development Funds) with UK ones, I believe there will be less money even tho recently someone argued that there will be more, I will leave this to you to decide on. However, what is for sure, we are going to see a spike in the applications to get some of what is available. For example, in 2020 during the first wave of Covid, Innovate UK received over 8.5K applications for their small grants scheme only, which is higher than the total applications they received the year before across all their funds. The coming spike will again include a lot of the first-timers, whether they actually qualify for the grants or not, and to give you a scale out of the 8.5K applications only 865 projects were funded at a score of 79.7% and above.
So the question is how do we make sure that the grants and funds available don’t only go to the businesses and big institutes that already have big pockets to afford grant writers? or usually, giving the majority of the money as a safe option, simply because they have been awarded grants before? but goes for the right people across sectors, to all businesses of different sizes and to institutes that actively engage with business on the ground at their level rather than to institutes that only look at businesses as numbers on their desktop screens.
We need a body, a committee, a board or whatever you want to call it (with members that don’t have any conflict of interest, regardless of any signed consents or interest decelerations as these have proven to be useless), to impartially support small businesses and entrepreneurs so they can fairly access the grants and funds available by providing them with accurate advice on their applications, even sometimes clarify to them which is suitable, rather than just randomly putting in applications left and right. Also, we need to have a mechanism that controls the involvement of bids and grant writers. It needs to be regulated to ensure fairness of funds distribution, at the end of the day some of these might be won because they contracted a good writer and not because they actually can deliver.
As a lot of changes and a lot of challenges coming ahead, here are my top strategic tips for your next grant or funds application, whether you are a business owner or a business support organisation:
- It’s business and not free money: You need to understand that grants and funds are deployed for a specific purpose and like any other client the funders are paying you for a service. so make sure that you treat your application or proposal with this in mind, understand what is the money for and is your application/proposal deliver what the client/funder looking for.
- Choose the right pot: If you think you are not losing anything by applying to every grant you come across, I am afraid you are wrong. Writing a grant application is not an easy job and requires a lot of time so choose carefully what suits your business and what you are good at. Do not waste your time trying to fit into a grant that is not clearly within your scope of work. Invest your time in the grants that make sense to you and give extra time for the details of it rather than wasting it on irrelevant grants, this will increase the quality of your applications.
- Have a subject expert:Do not mistake this for “a grant expert”, here I am talking about the cases where you find a grant that 70% fits your project and there is 30% of it in an area of expertise that you have the tools to deliver but don’t have an expert to put things together. Reach out to the expert whom you will need if you win the bid and ask them to write the part relevant to their experience, in return for them writing their part you list them in your application as who is going to lead on that part in specific and budget for it according to their preference. You will be surprised of how willing people are to help in this case, its a win-win situation where they need your tools and resources to be involved at that level of grants and you need them to deliver a successful project and raise the quality of your application content at the first place.
- Partnerships go a long way:Following on the previous point, finding the right partners to join you in an application is always a plus. Usually, funders like to expand their investment across multiple businesses/suppliers as it decreases the risk of failure and ensures further accessibility to funds among the targeted market. Also, this is helpful when you go for big pots, having partners means sharing resources and that means increasing your capabilities to implement bigger projects and going for bigger pots of money.
- Think about the wider ecosystem:Funds plans in the region: so if you can demonstrate that your project can fit within other projects that secured funds from the same pot can be a huge advantage as it makes it easier to justify why you should be awarded the money. for example your project can act as a pipeline that feeds other projects working under the same funds.
- Nail down your “How”: Yes it’s great when you talk about hitting the goals and objective required. But don’t just promise without evidence, you need to detail how you will reach the desired outcomes. A large number of the applications are unsuccessful even tho the applicant might be the best to do the job, however, they easily fall into the trap of talking about the results without detailing what are the steps to be taken throughout the project to reach these results.
- Stay on point and don’t improvise too much: We are all guilty of this, I think I have done it myself while writing this article. Be straightforward in answering what the application questions ask for and don’t add things that are not required. Anyway, there is always words limit on the application, so you need to be cautious about it.
- Have a clear M&E system: Sometimes this has a score itself out of the total mark. However, whether it is or not, having clear monitoring & evaluation system for your project gives the funder invaluable information they need. The data collected can be used for reporting purposes, ensuring accurate & effective delivery and informing the design of future funds (and the design of your future project).
Finally, “Diversify” grants and bids are great cash injection to your business and usually in good amounts that really makes a difference, especially during challenging times, however, they take a long time and you can’t just rely on them, you need to make sure you are constantly having commercially viable conversations. Now more than ever, your time is your main asset so ensure you are spending enough of it on what brings you the cash that at least keeps up with your burn rate.
Hope these tips help you better understand the grant writing framework and strategy. I would love to know what are your thoughts about the above or if you have any questions. So please comment below or drop me a message, and also share with those who might benefit from this article!