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Enhance Your Grant Funding Success: Techniques for Clear and Compelling Applications

Join Sue Scott for an engaging workshop designed to improve your grant funding success rate. This session focuses on enhancing the readability and relevance of your funding applications. Learn key principles of effective bid writing, understand funder motivations, and master techniques for clear communication. You'll explore how to articulate outcomes, demonstrate necessity, and effectively present evidence of your project's impact. With practical tips on writing style and layout, you can create applications that resonate with funders and increase your chances of success.

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Enhance Your Grant Funding Success: Techniques for Clear and Compelling Applications

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Grant funding applications Today’s aims: Improve your funding success rate Enhance the readability & relevance of your applications Led by: Sue Scott

  2. Grant funding applications Improve your funding success rate - Techniques to enhance the readability & relevance of your grant applications

  3. Workshop outline • Readability & style • Understanding funder motivations • Proving need & demand • Describing outcomes & benefits • Your questions

  4. Key principles of successful bid writing • Effective communication - reflect the funder’s values • Focus on the customer’s need • Sell the benefits and outcomes • Describe your solution with conviction • Provide evidence of delivery capability

  5. Effective communication – writing styles

  6. Your writing style • Make every sentence count “The application submitted is too muddled” • Do you need to use jargon? • Avoid long words or sentences • Concise is nice, brief is better “Be clear and straight to the point about what the funding is actually for…”

  7. Readability tests • Two examples…

  8. Active voice • Sentences in the active voice are shorter, clearer and more direct. • They can also convey more enthusiasm and passion… ‘We will fight them on the beaches’

  9. Passive voice • Sentences using passive verbs tend to be flat and lacking interest • They add words, making a sentence long-winded ‘The enemy will be engaged by us on the beaches’ ‘The Council instructed the clerk to write to the County Council requesting……’

  10. A helpful tool…

  11. Tips on layout • Use structured headings to grab the reader’s attention & keep them interested: ‘Measuring success’ • Use white space - around your headings it gives them attention • AVOID USING ALL UPPER CASE AND UNDERLINING • Use captions to sell your message

  12. Tots to teens – having fun and keeping active

  13. E-bids • Doing not reading! • Need dynamic style with fewer words • Need lots of hooks • Front-loaded headings • Bullet points • Shorter sentences and paragraphs

  14. Effective writing – elementary rules • Never use a long word where a short one will do • If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out • Never use the passive where you can use the active • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent • Never use a metaphor, simile or figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print George Orwell, ‘Why I Write’ , Penguin Books 2004, first published 1946

  15. Any questions?

  16. 2. Funder motivations…

  17. Understanding funder motivations • Fund guidelines • Published material – Google! • Personal contacts • Events • ‘call to discuss the application first’ Person-to-person discussion

  18. Reflecting funder values

  19. Show your project’s most relevant side • Frontloaded funder benefit statements... “Tots to teens will gain improved health, fitness & social interaction while enjoying the play space” “Young people at risk of offending will have access to recreational facilities such as cookery classes and music workshops.”

  20. Bring the project alive… • A catchy name, eg Teen Cuisine • Service user testimonials • Photographs • Infograms – Information is Beautiful

  21. 3. Proving need and demand

  22. Be persuasive • What’s the Need or Problem? • What’s your Solution? • Is this solution wanted? • Show plenty of evidence of need, ie. “Community fundraising has already started”.

  23. Evidence for need • Parish surveys • Parish Plan • Neighbourhood Plan • District & County Council strategies • National government policies

  24. Evidence of demand • Consultation, Consultation,Consultation

  25. Evidence of demand • Your top tips…

  26. Consultations… Coffee and cake or surveys and social media…

  27. 4. Outcomes and Impacts…

  28. Answering the question correctly • Inputs = resources you put into your project (eg staff time, funding, venues) • Outputs = activities or products (eg promotional leaflets, play space) • Outcomes = about change (eg improved confidence; new community groups & leaders) • Impact = the outcomes and long term effects (eg community ownership & management of a building)

  29. Outcomes…

  30. Building skills & confidence to run community events…

  31. A fresh pair of eyes Your critical friend will be able to spot: • Assumptions about knowledge • Areas not described well

  32. 5. Questions and Answers

  33. What next? Funding for Beginners Courses: • 3 April – Saunderton, Buckinghamshire • 5 June – New Ollerton, Nottinghamshire • 6 August – Cirencester, Gloucestershire • 19 August – Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

  34. Thank you!

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