Grant application guide
01
Read the scope document before the application form. Funders write scope in specific language, and assessors are briefed against it. If your project only fits after some creative interpretation, it will score badly no matter how well it is written. Check eligibility, the required consortium shape, the funding rates for your organisation size and the project duration limits.
02
A grant funds a defined project, not your company. Decide what starts on day one, what exists already, and what the money will buy. Work that would happen anyway is business as usual and will not score. A new module inside a mature platform is a low technology readiness project in its own right if you frame the boundary correctly.
03
Assessors are technical. Name the current best alternatives, cite them, and state the specific technical limitation you are overcoming. Then give the numbers: the performance, cost or efficiency gap you expect to close, and how you will measure it. Claims without a baseline read as marketing.
04
Work packages with owners, durations, deliverables and decision gates. Every cost line should trace back to a named activity, and every activity should appear in the finances. Mismatches between narrative and spreadsheet are one of the fastest ways to lose value for money marks.
05
Each scored question is marked in isolation by a different reader. Answer in the funder's order, use their vocabulary, and put the evidence inside the answer rather than pointing elsewhere. Where a question has three parts, write three parts.
06
Give the draft to someone who has not worked on it and ask them to score it cold against the published criteria. Fix the lowest scoring answers first, because that is where marks are cheapest to win. Submit at least two days before the deadline, since portals slow to a crawl on closing day.
Competitive bids reward preparation, not speed. Working back from a deadline, allow two weeks to scope and confirm fit, four weeks to draft and evidence, and two weeks for review, finances and submission. Starting earlier does not make the application longer, it makes the evidence stronger. Our live UK grant directory shows what is open now and when each round closes, so you can plan backwards from a real date.
Plan for six to ten weeks for a competitive Innovate UK style bid. Roughly two weeks to scope the project and confirm fit, four weeks to draft and evidence each section, and two weeks for review, finance checks and portal submission.
Most UK innovation competitions score a fixed set of written questions independently, usually covering the need or challenge, the approach and innovation, the team and resources, the market and route to commercialisation, the wider impacts, the project plan and risk, and value for money. Each answer is marked on its own evidence, so a strong answer elsewhere cannot rescue a weak one.
Expect eight to fifteen hours of founder or technical lead time across the whole bid when a specialist writes it, concentrated in the scoping session, the technical detail and the final approval. Writing it yourself typically costs three to five times that.
Usually not because the technology is weak. The common causes are answering a question that was not asked, describing activity rather than evidencing innovation against the state of the art, an unrealistic or unresourced work plan, and costs that do not match the described work.
More detail on scoring and assessor behaviour is in our how to win guide and the full FAQ.
Book a free consultation and we will tell you honestly whether the project is fundable, and which open competition fits it best.
