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, 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 are generic and may even seem patronising, (if so I mean no offence) but in my experience they are problems that have been demonstrated frequently by grant applicants, and that applies regardless of age, race, gender, educational background or otherwise.

So let’s start at 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 10 years experience of managing grant schemes and appraising 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.

I think that there are several reasons why this problem happens:

1. Wishful thinking- the “I need money and they are giving some away, so they can give some money to me” syndrome. Grant schemes have boundaries within which they can work; yes they are looking to give the grant money away, but only to the most worthy eligible applications. Also there seems to be a belief that there are grants for everything, there are not, grants are only given in very specific circumstances.
2. Rushing an application and not reading the supporting guidance. Relying on grant titles to tell you what a scheme is for is NOT recommended, obtain any published guidance material and read it before applying (this also has other benefits as many grants come with conditions attached, so it is better to consider those before you apply).
3. Stretching the boundaries of the grant scheme by proposing activities that border what the grant can support, or including minor eligible activities as part of a larger non-eligible project. To a certain extent this also falls into the wishful thinking camp, grant applicants picking up key words from the scheme guidance and then tying to make the grant scheme fit their application rather than the other way around. If what you need grant for is excluded or predominantly excluded in the guidance it is time to rethink or seek alternatives.
4. Not being critical enough of a project at an early stage, a major problem is applicants who believe that their project or application is far more important than it really is. To judge this try to find examples that the grant scheme has funded (they are usually documented publicly somewhere) and critically compare them to yours.

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.

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Most grants do not fund the full cost of a particular project or activity, the part the grant doesn’t cover is the matched or match funding. Matched funding is not matching the grant £1 for £1 (or dollar: dollar in the US) it will be a percentage or the total project or activity you are applying for the grant for. For example many arts grants in the UK will fund 90% of a project, the applicant has to put at least 10% matched funding towards the project and maybe more. In some cases the matched can be significantly higher, for example the English development grant under the Grant for Research and Development funds 35-40% of the costs, the applicant has to find 60-65% of the project costs.

It is important therefore to understand before you make the grant application how much you have to contribute, or else you may get a little shock!

There is one further thing to consider about matched funding, some grant schemes require the matched funding to be available in cash (or be generated by a business activities for a business grant), some will however allow an in-kind contribution for example in the time of people involved in the project. Knowing which is allowable for a particular grant scheme is vital so that you do not waste your time in making applications that will be rejected for not having the necessary matched funding.

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The overall aim is to demystify and explain what certain things mean and what grant scheme administrators will be looking for. At first sight some may seem patronising, if you find that the case then move to the next post. All of the issues covered here have been problem demonstrated in applications assessed by the author whilst running grant schemes for the government for 10 years.

This website does have a UK focus but the generic information presented could be used to improve grant submissions made in other countries.

Please note we do not provide funding, this is an advice site only. Please use the forums for discussion about grants

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