15 top tips for writing better funding applications
Read the Specification – And then read it again and then read it again making notes! Bullet point the key asks of the specification, the important documents you need to provide and when it has to be returned by. Can you win this based on past performance or expertise? Or do you really want it? Does it fit your strategic objectives? Bids that are aligned to your core business will always be more successful. The specification is what the commissioner wants, they may welcome some innovation, but the time is often long gone where wholesale changes would be welcomed … be certain you can deliver what is in the specification for the required price and the required quality before you even start?
Detail is everything – If you are presented with a two-part tender (business questionnaire and method statements) the temptation is to major on the method and treat the business questionnaire as a “tick box exercise”. This is a dangerous tactic as this section often contains the PASS/FAIL questions, an error of judgement or a wrong answer to one of these could see you ejected from the tender process without even having your method statement read. It happens much more than you think!
Answer the question! – Obvious one really but answering the question requires discipline and staying on point. Its always about what the buyer/commissioner/purchaser wants and that should be clear in the specification and at the root of every answer. Be wary of word limits and do not exceed them. Most electronic tenders will not allow you to go over the word limit but It’s easy to stray off-topic writing an overly wordy response and not actually answer the questions. Subheadings and bullet points can help you stay on track they can also help the person evaluating your response to process the information.
Never assume anything – If you are applying for a contract or funding never assume that the person who is evaluating the tender knows what you are talking about. Avoid abbreviations and technical terms, write in plain interest and structure your response as if you are a new provider “we will do what we always have done very successfully in the City” will, unfortunately, feature very low in the scoring matrix.
Professional Bid Writer or DIY? – Professional bid writers come at a cost but even the best professional bid writer will know your organisation and its capabilities as well as you do, they will not be able to show your enthusiasm for a tender and make it come alive on paper/screen and may not know all the connections and partnerships that come together in a locality to make a good service work. On the other hand, professionals are disciplined, often come with experience and you will get a bid in on time (although of course there’s no guarantee of success)
Avoid “Copy” and “Paste” – If you are relying on “copy and paste” you are not thinking about what’s actually required by the service specification. Sometimes it can be very obvious that a passage has been pasted in from another tender and can easily go badly wrong if that pasted text includes identifiable information e.g. applying for a tender in Coventry but mentioning you will do something in “Leicester” never instils confidence.
The Importance of Attachments and Implementation Plans – As part of your bid preparation make sure you are aware of the attachments, policies, procedures and implementation plans. There is always a temptation to major on the text submission and leave the plans until last, a rushed or very generic project risk assessment or plan will be obvious and could lose you important marks in the final evaluation.
Avoid Jargon – This should be obvious but it's so easy to slip into the words we use every day at work and that even between health and social care, is not a common language. Write in plain English explaining what you are going to do, who with and who to using terminology that would be understood by a layperson.
Evidence your claims – Commissioners and buyers are trying to gauge competence from your tender submission so make it easy for them. Provide examples and evidence of where you have delivered similar services successfully before. If you are asked to provide business references, ask the referees permission first before submitting the application.
Talk about your Impact and your expected outcomes – not just your outputs – The service specification will tell you in detail what needs to be delivered for the contract but how will your organisation do it and do it better than the competition. What will good or even excellent look like and tell commissioners what you already have in place that will ease implementation. Be realistic but confident with your outcomes … failing to hit them will cause problems in the future and dent purchasers confidence in your organisation.
Work “Offline” until the last possible moment – The majority of tenders are now completed online however unless the submission is particularly small download the questions and complete them offline. Working offline allows you to share the answers around the team without sharing the passwords, can help avoid problems such as submitting by accident and allows you to divide the work between the “experts” in your team. There's nothing worse than writing 2000 words only to lose them through a computer failure.
Pick your “winning team” carefully – “Work collaboratively but write with one voice” – You may want to break the answers up and ask your team “experts” to fill in their knowledge area but there are two key things to consider here. Firstly tell your team, in good time, that they are going to be involved nobody likes a big job dropped on them at the last minute and secondly the main tender writer needs to make sure the narrative reads as one voice, a tender submission that is all over the place with different language and styles of writing is hard to understand and can look unprofessional.
Get the budget right! – Point 2 talks about getting the detail right, budget/finance mistakes are some of the easiest to make. Different figures in tables and text, applying for more than is available and even not submitting a budget at all are all common mistakes to make and at the least can cause you to lose marks in scoring at worst get your tender excluded. If you work in a larger organisation make sure you have the authority to put the budget in in the first place.
What’s your ADDED value? – What added value, social impact, social value can you identify that will set you apart from other organisations? Commissioners and buyers need to prove they have maximised value for money and the more you can offer to prove that the more attractive your tender will be over the competition. Be careful not to promise what you can't deliver though.
Getting it gone! – So you’ve written everything, collated all the appendices and supporting documents … it's ready to go! However best practice says you should be at this point at least a day before the submission deadline, somebody, preferably not you (if you have written it) needs to give it a final proofread and only after that send it off. There can always be IT problems that may trip you up so submit in good time, there is no negotiation over digital tenders they are time and date stamped as they are submitted. Keep a record of the submission receipt.
