GaryH  

This is the first in a series of hints and tips to help people/ businesses and organisations maximise their chances of receiving a grant, more free information can be found on my websites Grants Help, Grant for Research and Development, and Grant for Business Investment and my business consultancy website.

These tips apply mainly to those grants that require a supporting written proposal justifying the need for the grant. This includes grant schemes such as the UK Government’s Grant for Research and Development also known as GRD/ GRAD or GRAND, and the Grant for Business Investment also known as GBI, and others including Grants for the Arts, Heritage and Lottery funds, and grants from charities/ trusts/ foundations.

The principles described in this series are generic and some will see them as patronising, which is not intended. In my experience these problems have been demonstrated time and again by grant applicants irrespective of background/ educational/ commercial acheivement.

The easiest and most basic way of improving you chances of getting a grant:

Know what grant scheme you are applying for and know what it does i.e. what it is designed to do and what activities it can fund.

Yes this is a really basic point but from significant experience of managing grant schemes and appraising grant applications this issue is all too common, at least 10%, and at times up to 30%, of the applications I saw could not even be considered because the activities were not eligible for funding under the grant scheme conditions.

There are several reasons why this problem happens:

1. Wishful thinking- that as governments do give away money that anyone can receve it, there are not grants for everything situation, only very specific circumstances.

2. Rushing an application and not reading the supporting guidance. Failure to read the fine print before applying especially with respect to conditions and matched funds.

3. Stretching the boundaries of the grant scheme by proposing activities that border what the grant can support

4. Not being critical enough of a project at an early stage, i.e. failing to take a realistic viewpoint as to how well the grant proposal fits the guidelines.

So if you are searching for a grant to apply for remember to download the guidance and read it, and then apply the scheme criteria critically to your potential application, or else you may find you have wasted your time in applying and get rejected almost immediately.