Grants
There are hundred of grants available in the UK for a variety of uses from home inprovement through to developing new technology products. There is not space to describe all the grants available nor would it practical as many grant schemes start and finish fairly quickly.
As the demand for grants is high criteria are put in place to allow selection from all the applicants. As a general rule grants are awarded either under two systems, the first is where the grant is awarded if the selction, or appraisal criteria, are met. An example of this are home inprovement or energy efficiency grants. The second system is competitive, where all applicants compete for the available funding and the selection or appraisal criteria are used to identify the most worthy cases. Competitive grants may have fixed closing dates, but not necessarily as some national business grants are run competitvely but without set competition closing dates.
As consultants we primarily focus on Business Grants but can advise and assist on others (community grants, ERDF) as the basic principles of good grant application writing are transferable across schemes. However we do not get involved in grants for individuals (education etc) nor domestic grants (home improvement etc).
There are 3 points that are very important to recognise before applying for a grant:
- Funding is usually limited, so only the best quality grant applications and proposals are likely to gain funding
- Grants are usually discretionary, which means that there is no automatic right to receive the grant even if you meet the appraisal criteria laid down
- As a result of this speculative, or non considered, applications will fail i.e. your application has to meet the scheme criteria, not the other way round
The process of applying for grants can be long, complex and frustrating which many applicants find offputting. Our grants consultancy service is designed to alleviate a significant part of the burden of the application process.
Business Grants
Business Grants are available from various sources including central government, local authorities, non-governmental organisations and private trusts.
Many businesses are frustrated when they cannot find a suitable grant to help them, as most of the business grants come directly or indirectly from government it is useful to understand when and why the government intervenes by offering grants.
Government will intervene when there is a clear market failure, an example of this is Technology Strategy Board Smart Grants which helps small and medium sized businesses develop technically innovative products and processes. The government intervenes as there is evidence that shows that it is difficult for businesses to gain debt finance (bank loans) and venture capital for these as they represent too high a financial risk due to the uncertainty of a return and long time for technology developments to reach market. This is why the government does not offer start-up grants as there is no evidence that there is market failure in the provision of such funding.
Some of the national grant schemes to consider are:
- Technology Strategy Board Smart
- Grant for Business Investment also known as GBI
- Grant for the Arts
- Collaborative Research and Development
- European Framework Programme
- Eurostars
- Rural Development Programme
The Technology Strategy Board and many universities fund innovation and knowledge transfer actviities through knowledge transfer voucher schemes.
There is one important point about grants, they rarely provide complete funding, instead they are used to incentivise other finance sources to fund a business or assist a funding shortfall. The non-grant funded element is called "match funding", it is very rare that a grant allows match funding to be provided by another grant. Some grants will allow match funding to be provided in kind through a time contribution by the business, more commonly governmental grants require match funding to come from private sources. What constitutes private sources is not as straightforward as might be imagined as some other government interventions, such as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, will have a state aid value which will reduce the value of any grant received. Grants should not be seen as a single solution but rather as part of a packaged finance approach.
As we have extensive experience of managing and delivering some of these grants scheme we are uniquely placed to be able to advise and guide you through your funding search. We know what is being looked for in the applications, we helped develop the guidelines and we know know them intimately and can advise on the conditions attached to each grant so that there are no surprises for you.