Writing effective and successful funding bids Darlington College 6 th July 2012

1. Writing effective and successful funding bidsDarlington College6th July 2012 Sally Brown http://sally-brown.net Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University, Adjunct Professor, University of the Sunshine Coast, Central Queensland and James Cook University Queensland Visiting Professor University of Plymouth and Liverpool John Moores University.

2. In today's workshop you will be asked to consider: • What’s Darlington College’s USP? Recognising and valuing our areas of special expertise and experience; • Matching the need: Identifying service needs (creativity, serendipity, good timing etc) • What are we offering? Identifying and expressing clear and measurable outcomes; • Keeping on track: Developing time lines, milestones and work plans; • Who is on the team? Identifying suitable project team members and robust management plans;

3. And also think about • How much? Identifying true costings and building appropriate financial models; • What could possibly go wrong? Contingency planning and risk analyses; • Building bidding capacity: Developing specialist expertise in bid writing (the right words, the right numbers, the right team etc.) • Is it worth going for? Knowing when to bid (and when not to bid).

4. What’s Darlington College’s USP? In small groups, on flip charts please identify three strengths in each of these areas: • Specialists expertise; • Personnel with particular skills; • Innovation; • Facilities and estate; • Student-centredness; • Finance; • Geographical location. Please also identify any perceived weaknesses.

5. Writing successful bids for external funding: • Needs coordination and prioritisation to avoid internal competition; • An awareness that the more bids you write, the better you get; • A team of specialists working together gets more funding than individuals trying to do everything; • Recognition that lots of great bids get rejected, and a hit rate of 1 in 3 is brilliant; • Successful bidders tend to get more success.

6. Assessors considering funding bids ask: • What on earth is this all about and why should I care? • Have the bidders taken any notice whatsoever of what’s been done before? • Is it worth the substantial amount of money they are seeking? • What could possibly go wrong? • Who are these people anyway?

7. Or in the jargon, they’ll ask: • Is there a clear focus to the bid? Is it interesting/original? • Are they building on existing work? (and have they referred to the literature in the field?) • Does it offer the funders value for money (and are they putting in anything themselves?) • Have they done a realistic risk analysis with mitigation plans? • Does the bidding team have a track record?

8. Why do you want to bid? What is really important? Funding: • For the college to add to annual turnover? • To secure posts for temporary staff? • To find a solution to a genuine problem? • To offer prestige and potential career enhancement for the bid writers and the project team? • To provide opportunity to work with others at a regional or national level? • To pay for exciting trips away?

9. With all funding bids • Try to avoid doing them in a hurry, allowing plenty of time for consultation, rewriting, checking of detail, sign off (by HR, finance, Senior managers, etc); • Pay good attention to the language, making it appropriate to the subject area, relevant and brief, mirroring terminology from the bidding call; • Stick strictly to word counts and avoid repeating text: use appendices where allowed; • Bids should never be completed by a single individual: there should be peer review even before they go for internal sign off.

10. Bidding through JISC • Only eligible UK Higher Education & Further Education institutions are able to lead bids in response to JISC Grant funding opportunities. The majority of JISC calls are therefore open to all Higher and Further Education institutions funded by JISC’s core funders.  • Grant funding opportunities are emailed on ‘jisc-announce’. To join jisc-announce, email: jiscmail@jiscmail.ac.ukwith the line: join jisc-announce yourfirstnameyourlastname or go to JISC mail Announce

11. Successful JISC bidders need to show that the bid • Supports innovation; • Provides a UK wide benefit and adds value beyond that which could be achieved by institutions acting individually or collectively; • Is not possible, or is unlikely, without central support ; • Has a clear output and is delivered with demonstrable value for money; • Could not be performed as well and more appropriately by institutions themselves or by another public or commercial body.

12. JISC advice on bidding. “For your bid to be successful it must...” • Stand out from the others. • State its objectives clearly and concisely. • Clarify project outputs and demonstrate wider benefits to the education and research community. • Demonstrate how it supports the JISC Strategy. • Describe how it meets the criteria set out in the call. • Demonstrate that an initial assessment of project risks has been undertaken.

13. And… • Provide a sound initial project plan and demonstrate robust project management arrangements. • Demonstrate how it is aligned with the objectives of your college or institution. • Document proposed dissemination, embedding and evaluation mechanisms. • Provide clear costings using the template provided. • Comment on sustainability issues when project funding ceases. • Demonstrate value for money or add significant value to the funding requested.

14. Good luck and serendipity really help But you can work on creating your own good fortune by: • Signing up to alerts for funding opportunities; • Keeping on top of national and other briefings and literature in your chosen area; • Attending live or virtual briefing events where funders launch calls for bids; • Networking at events to find potential bidding partners (and check out the competition).

15. Focus of the bid • Normally within a relatively short set word count (say 200 words) you will be asked to clearly state what you are aiming to achieve with the funding; • Refer very closely to the bidding call to ensure that what you are aiming to do closely matches the funders’ objectives; • Avoid waffle and over-flowery language: your outline should jump off the page by clearly setting out your ambitions; • Keep your aims realistic and reasonable.

16. JISC for example says: “First and foremost your proposal must be based on a good idea. It should be aligned with the requirements of the call, be original, offer real benefits to both your own institution and others if successful and demonstrate a sound awareness of the field and of other work that has already been carried out.” http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/bidguide/grantbidguide.aspx

17. What can you put in your bid? JISC say: “It is very important to provide a brief summary of all expenditure, justifying the amounts and the need. JISC funding will only be provided for staff salaries and on-costs (NI, Pensions, etc), travel and subsistence, dissemination, evaluation, indirect and estates costs. Proposals can include the capital costs of equipment or software where required by and appropriate for a project, such as PCs or servers. You must always provide full justification for any large capital expenditure or software being requested.”

18. Project Plan template from JISC 1.Project Overview 1.1Project Summary 1.2Objectives 1.3Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes 1.4Overall Approach 1.5Anticipated Impact 1.6Stakeholder Analysis 1.7Related Projects 1.8Constraints 1.9Assumptions 1.10Risk Analysis 1.11Technical Development 1.12Standards 1.13Intellectual Property Rights 2Project Resources 2.1Project Partners 2.2Project Management 2.3Project Roles 2.4Programme Support 3Detailed Project Planning 3.1Evaluation Plan 3.2Quality Assurance 3.3Dissemination Plan 3.4Exit and Embedding Plans 3.5Sustainability Plans Appendices Appendix A. Project Budget Appendix B. Workpackages

19. The right words really matter • Word counts and page counts matter a lot: with practice reducing 400 words to 200 gets easier (and you can use people outside the project team to help); • Accurate technical language is good: jargon and overblown grammatical constructions aren’t iand neither are excessive colloquialisms! • Don’t over-egg the pudding or over-stuff the Christmas stocking (and watch those similes and metaphors!); • Proof reading and ‘sanity checks’ are essential.

20. Institutional support: e.g. JISC say: “It is essential to have the backing of the host institution or college. This means more than a statement from senior management ‘fully supporting the work’. You should try and demonstrate how it builds on previous work, adds to other work that is already planned or is taking place or helps realise a published strategic aim and will be of benefit to the community more broadly.”

21. Time lines, milestones and work plans • Realism is the key to success: assessors are quick to identify the excessively optimistic! • Use software or post-its to map out the project plan; • Ask the project team and other stakeholders (e.g. HR, Finance and managers) to give the plan a reality check; • At key points identify specific, measurable and achievable outcomes; • Build in some flexibility for things to go wrong.

22. Awareness of what’s been done already in the area • Look at what the funders have already supported in this field. Many will not support identical or very similar bids to what has been funded previously unless they add considerable value; • Check the funders’ websites and bid calls for information; • Provide evidence that you are familiar with published literature in the field, especially reports etc produced by the funders; • Use Google Scholar to identify publications on the area.

23. Identify suitable project team members • Include (where possible) people who have a track record in successful bids maybe in other domains; • Create a credible team of experienced project staff and at least one person with senior ‘clout’ perhaps as steering group chair; • In identifying your team, write bespoke CVs that emphasise the areas your funders are interested in rather than lengthy conventional CVs; • Make sure everyone listed has a real function in the team.

24. JISC say on project teams: “Don't underestimate the problems in recruiting suitable staff to work on the project. Staff with suitable qualifications in areas where the JISC is interested can be in short supply or expensive. If you have appropriate people to be seconded to the work this should be stated in your bid. Alternatively you should provide contingency plans in the event that you experience problems with recruitment. ”

25. Funding is not worth bidding for if: • It doesn’t align with strategic plans for the institution (you won’t get senior management buy-in); • The funding doesn’t cover the true costs of what you plan to do (unless your college can regard your input as a sensible investment of matched funding); • It is of little interest to the bidding team who would find undertaking the project a stressful bore!

26. Value for money. Funders hate: • Vague and badly worked through financial plans with very obvious gaps; • Anything that looks as if the college is trying to get work paid for by the project that is properly the responsibility of the college; • Obvious attempts to create jobs for people already on the payroll; • Anything that looks like a ‘freebie’, ‘jobs for the boys’ or ‘Three go mad in Stockholm’!

27. What are on-costs? • These are charges institutions require bidders to include to cover their overheads to ensure projects break even; • Institutions all have their own policies on this; • Some institutions insist on including high on-costs within bids (30-40% is not unknown); • You need to ask before a bid is completed whether on-costs make the bid really viable; • Not all funders allow the charging of on costs;

28. Task: which of these would you put under consumables, on-costs, other headings? • Office heating • Tea and biscuits for meetings • Telephone charges • Dissemination conference costs • Printing of outputs/publications • Secretarial support • Transcribing of interviews • Purchase of equipment e.g. audio recorders • Conference attendance for project leader • Photocopying of project meeting notes • Post-its

29. Planning for things to go wrong • Use a creative brainstorm to think through what might go wrong without shrinking away from the unfeasible and frankly silly! • ‘Bear attacks’ help identify more feasible but highly unlikely contingencies (e.g. terrorist attacks during a dissemination conference) that can then be planned for; • In the case of each contingency, think through the realistic likelihood of anything happening and the impact it would have on the project if it actually happened, and plan mitigations for the highest scoring.

30. Sample risk analysis and mitigation

31. Task: risk analysis and mitigation

32. Dissemination: JISC say “A project will only be successful, and of value to JISC and the wider community, if the results are made available to everyone. Your proposal must address the issue of dissemination and embedding thoroughly. Experience has shown that different skills are needed in the dissemination phase. Does your team possess those skills? Can they be made available at the appropriate phase of the work?”.

33. How are you going to disseminate? (Not just another website!) JISC say “Most proposals merely offer to set up a website, write a report and make presentations at conferences. Proposals suggesting innovative mechanisms and evidence of real commitment to dissemination and embedding project outcomes have a much greater chance of success.” So what else can you do in college, regionally, nationally, and maybe even internationally?

34. How about: • Regional networking events for colleges also supported by the funders? • Virtual networking events and activities with high dissemination value for modest (but identifiable) costs; • Pragmatic publications (not just academic papers), perhaps working with commercial publishers e.g. Pearson to produce guidelines, hand books, case studies etc.

35. Identifying true costings will help get institutional sign-off and encourage funders to support you • Typical headings include staffing and non-staffing costs; • Work with HR colleagues to get accurate staffing costs to cover more than just hourly rates; • Work through everything that will be a cost to the project and talk to colleagues in finance to get accurate costs; • Always cross-check with the funders’ guidelines to ensure you are only asking for what they are prepared to support.

36. Transparent Approach to Costing “TRAC is now the standard method used for costing in higher education in the UK. The application of full economic costing as the basis for cost-based funding is seen as central to securing the long-term financial sustainability of higher education and its ability to deliver high quality learning and teaching and research. Bidders from UK HE institutions should use the TRAC methodology when calculating the cost of a project or service.”

37. Planning for effective evaluation • Do you need internal or external evaluators? • Evaluation questions should be about not just whether milestones have been achieved but about the extent to which value has been added; • Both qualitative and quantitative data can be included; • It’s useful to have stakeholder impact to evaluation, for example, student views on enhancements; • When things go wrong it’s best to identify this and outline remediations.

38. How will you know if your project has been successful? • You have achieved all your project outcomes and produced all your promised deliverables on time and to a high standard; • The outcomes are really useful for your college and other beneficiaries; • The college has improved capacity both for future bids and in the area in which you were working; • The project team have developed personally and build their own competences; • The funders give you positive feedback which suggests you may be funded again in future.

39. Conclusions • Bidding for external funding can have high value for the college and for the individuals concerned if projects fit with institutional strategies and are well-conceived, well-managed and productively orientated; • When projects go badly wrong, they can often be revived by creative new approaches; • Mature bidders develop a sense of when to bid and when not to bid: sometimes bids are clearly a poor investment of time and resources (and you may need to advise your managers of this); • Brilliant projects can be brilliantly uplifting!

40. A fictional bidding opportunity • Bids are invited for up to £20,000 for colleges in UK institutions to undertake curriculum development activities to enhance student familiarity with new technologies; • The deadline is 15th August 2012 • A key aim of the call is to redress disadvantage among traditionally under-represented groups of students; • Collaborative bids by up to five colleges are welcomed; • Activities supported by the call must be completed within 6 months of confirmation of funding; • Successful projects will demonstrate innovation, cost-effectiveness and robust project planning.