Five Top Grant Tips

Foreign. Hi, I'm Jessie Ballantyne and I love grants. I sold my house to fund the launch of the Grants Hub because I truly wanted to make grants easier to find. In the very early days, I ended up running the Grants Hub from the ICU ward of a children's hospital. Let's just say I'm committed to the cause of helping you find grants. If you're looking to get real with grants, to learn what works and what doesn't, to hear from grant experts from across the country and have some fun while we do it, then Grants Uncovered is the podcast for you today. I've got for you five top grant tips. Now, when you come to grants, it's very easy to get bogged down in all the complexities of grant applications and grant guidelines and what we're eligible for and what we're not, and which grants are relevant or not. And then when it comes to writing applications, it's about who we need to get involved in things. The budget. You know, there are so many different elements to grant applications that can become really quite overwhelming and it turns a lot of people off. Now, in my past, I have been involved in grants in various ways. So that's been in local government, helping write and apply for big grant applications, was also helping train community groups in finding and applying grants. Applying for grants. Sorry. And then also helping assess grant applications. Now, that's been as part of my role when I was CEO of the Grants Hub and we ran grant programs and we saw thousands of applications come across our desk. And this is a common story, what I'm sharing with you, that I've spoken with, with many funding providers over the years, and so many funding providers who sit there and assess the grant applications say the same thing, that often there are very basic things that people get wrong from the outset that stops a funding assessor reading your application, and that's not what you want. So there are some super basic things that if you get them right, you will straightaway get your application read further than many other people who will have applied for the same grant as you. These are the absolute basics you need to get right with grants. And as I sometimes I say, you know, it's like food, air and water. These are the basics. You've got to have these things right or, you know, the rest of the application is going to be a bit of a struggle to get past a grant assessor. So here we go. Number one, firstly, make sure you're eligible to apply. Read all of the eligibility criteria before you start your grant application. Don't start moving on to writing different parts of it, getting budgets, getting quotes. If you don't even know if you're eligible to apply for the grant, it won't get you anywhere. Funding providers simply can't provide grants to people who are not eligible. It's not fair to everyone else who has applied and they've put their criteria in place for different reasons. So some of them have got different goals that they want to meet as a funding provider provider, or they might have picked certain demographics or target groups for various reasons. So if you're applying for a grant and you're not eligible, they cannot give it to you. It's just not fair. So tip number two, get in touch with the funding provider before writing your application. It's better to ask them questions directly rather than guess what they're after. Now, I know some funding providers don't provide a way for you to get in touch with them. There's not much you can do about that. But there are a lot of really amazing relational funding providers out there who are very happy to answer people's questions. Now, it might be via email, it might be via phone. Just find out what they want. Like, don't try and call them if they don't want to be called. If they're saying you can submit questions via an online form, we'll use that. If they submit frequently asked questions, like responses to those, as we often see with grant applications from government, particularly your big government funding rounds, then go back and look at those frequently asked questions. They're there to help you write better grant applications. Tip number three, never ever change the format of a grant application. Funding bodies hate it. This is harder to do now that we use mostly online applications. But if you attempt in any way to change the format of that grant application, I can almost guarantee you that the funding assessor is not going to read it. People get very creative when it comes to playing around with word or exporting or printing out things and handwriting in PDF documents and then re scanning them. And it gets very, very messy. If a funding provider wants you to submit something online, then that's the way you need to do it. Don't change their formatting, don't change their font sizing. Keep everything exactly as it is. Now, while I'm out on this one, don't use capital letters. Always use lowercase or normal font for your grant applications. Tip number four, don't use fancy language just for the sake of it. Keep your applications clear and concise. Now, I don't want to pick out any particular groups here, but my husband is a teacher, so I'm going to choose teachers as an example for this. Teachers have a little bit of a habit of using a lot of educational jargon in their grant applications. And for those of us who are not teachers, we can't understand what you're talking about. So teachers in particular, please don't use fancy words in your grant applications that a lot of us don't understand. For the rest of you, make sure that you're not using jargon for your particular industry. So if you're in health, make sure you're, you know, writing your applications at a really easily understood level. You don't know who is sitting on the other side of the grant application assessing this. You don't want to make them feel like they don't know what you're talking about or that they don't understand what your project is about. Keep your language clear and concise. And finally, tip number five, make sure you answer every question. If you really don't think a question applies to you, write NA not applicable. Or a hyphen or something at a bare minimum. So at least then the funding provider knows that you have seen the question and for whatever reason you don't believe that you need to answer it. But otherwise you must answer every question that you're asked. So I'll go over these again quickly. Tip number one make sure you're eligible to apply. Tip number two get in touch with the funding body before writing your application to ask any questions. Tip number three Never change the format of a grant application. Tip number four don't use fancy language just for the sake of it. Tip number five make sure you answer every question. So there you have it. Five top grant tips to give you a head start when it comes to writing grant applications and making sure your application gets assessed fully by the person reading it at the other end, ultimately giving you the best chance of grant success. Good luck. Thanks for joining me on Grants Uncovered. If you'd like show notes, head over to grantsuncovered.com see you next time.