The TSB will be giving grants of 75% of project costs (maximum cost £33,000) up to a maximum grant of £25,000 for feasibility studies lasting up to 3 months, it is expected that each project will culminate in a short report and, where relevant, a demonstrator. Projects will also present their achievements at a public ‘Collaboration Nation’ event to be held in autumn 2011.

This call is open to micro and small businesses only, either individually or in collaboration. For information the definition of these is:
- micro business - fewer than 10 staff, and a turnover or balance sheet less than €2m (approx £1.7m)
- small business - fewer than 50 staff, and a turnover or balance sheet less than €10m (approx £8.4m)

For the main call applications are being accepted in the following areas:

Advanced Materials

Development and application of advanced materials for:

• Secure, clean and affordable energy supply, distribution and use – both fixed and mobile sources – in the energy, transport and construction industries
• Sustainability in relation to transport, construction and the ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ agenda, including packaging and materials for carbon capture
• High value markets, including technologies for healthcare and the creative industries.

Biosciences

• Genomics – the use of genomics technologies by UK businesses and the development of novel tools and technologies to better access or gain value from genomic information
• Industrial biotechnology – development of renewable feedstocks (not resulting in the diversion of food away from the animal or human food chain) and biological processes for the production of materials, chemicals or energy.
• Agriculture and food – development of technologies which enable improvements in food quality, nutritional content, safety, authenticity or traceability or the production of novel or functional foods.

Electronics, Photonics and Electrical Systems

Preference will be given to proposals that have deliverables such as demonstrators, mock-ups or prototypes in the following key areas:

• Control systems and power engineering – reducing electricity consumption in the built environment, or addressing electricity consumption in industrial processes or transport
• Plastics and printed electronics – developing a sustainable base for wealth creation in the industry
• Data and image acquisition – developing systems based on sensing and imaging capabilities
• Communications – contributing to the cost-effective development and deployment of next-generation access, or the development of local high frequency wireless networks
• Systems design and integration – embedded systems, robotics and autonomous systems, specification, and verification and testing of computing system designs, including industrial lasers.

High Value Manufacturing

• Designing and developing innovative products or systems that offer improved performance, functionality, reliability, service life and reduced environmental impact
• Developing production technologies that can create high value through novel processes, advanced product manufacture, resource efficiency or greater product customisation, or that create greater environmental sustainability through efficient disposal, recycling or re-manufacture
• Developing service solutions that complement product offerings by adding value before, during or after manufacture
• Value systems associated with the provision of a lifetime service around the manufactured product or manufacturing process

Information and Communications Technology

Radically new software-based technologies or approaches to enable:

• reliable and continuous sensing in challenging physical environments
• intelligent, autonomous or autonomic machine reasoning and behaviour
• computers to take account of user requirements, preferences, values and processes
• complex ICT systems to be engineered rapidly, cost-effectively and reliably to be fit-for-purpose, ie, safe, secure and resilient.

Nanotechnology

Development and integration of the added functionality offered by nanoscale technologies for:

• Living with environmental change – technologies for water supply and use; monitoring of physical structures and waste streams; secure, clean and affordable energy supply, distribution and use; new technologies to address the reduce, re-use, recycle agenda
• Living with an ageing and growing population – applying nanoscale technologies to healthcare, including drug delivery and discovery; diagnostics and imaging; prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of disease and implants; surface cleanliness; food packaging and storage
• Living in an intelligent, connected, modern world – technologies for safety and security systems; intelligent transport systems; increased user interaction with products; and next generation computing and entertainment systems.

For the additional calls applications are being accepted in

Digital Services

Using data sources in the public domain, and in particular, public data:

• Complementing public sector provision of services to citizens
• Emergence of the ‘Internet of Things’ – a network of ‘things’ such as objects, environments, vehicles, and clothing that are embedded with sensors, processing or actuators and with the ability to communicate, network, and produce information
• Sectors and application areas presenting complex challenges to the adoption and use of cloud-based computing.

Space

• Satellite Telecommunications
• Sensing
• Position, Navigation and Timing
• Robotics and Exploration
• Access to Space

Responsible Development of Nanoscale technology

Development of innovative products or processes which can have applications for Environmental Health and Safety aspects of nanoscale technologies that also address EHS-specific lifecycle issues.

For more information see the TSB site.

We expect competition for these grants to be high, any businesses looking for help with applications should contact us directly

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.

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.

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