Grant Consultancy
Why to use Grant Consultants?
There are 2 primary reasons to use a grants consultants, to save time, and to improve chances of success.
How do we save you time:
- By searching for appropriate funding for you
- By checking that you can apply for the funding schemes identified
- By identifying any conditions that impact upon your business
- By compiling the application for you
- By liaising with the grant body during the application process allowing you time to continue to run your business
- By managing the claims process or grant drawdown again allowing you time to concnetrate on running your business
How do we improve your chances of success? There are various ways in which decisions on grants are made but generally they involve an element of competing for the funding that is available. Sometimes there are fixed closing dates and all applications received compete against each other for the funding, but even with schemes that have no closing date there is still an element of competition with only the highest quality proposals receiving funding. We add value by drafting the applicating, ensuring that it is clear and understandable and addressing the grant appraisal criteria thus maximising the chances of gaining a grant.
Watch to look for?
Grant consultancy does have a poor reputation, one of our aims in becoming consultants (having spent a decade on the other side of the funding equation) is to show that there is a better way to assist businesses. If you are thinking about using a consultant ask what they are going to do for you, what their expertise is, how they gained that expertise, and references of successful clients. Be cautious of high success rate claims.
Fees
We operate a variety of fee mechanisms from day rate through to fees based on a percentage of the grant value either paid completely on success or with a nominal non-refundable up front initiation fee with the remainder on success. Most, if not all, grant consultants operate using the success based or no-win no-fee model.
Whilst the no-win no-fee model sounds like an ideal solution to a grant applicant we would urge caution as there are some issues with this model that can encourage aberrant behaviour. For example why would a consultant take on a case which superficially appears to have less than certain success? If you see other consultants claiming exceptionally high success rates with no-win no-fee then you know they are being highly selective with who they take on. Therefore projects that could gain grant funding don't get funded as the application doesn't get the help it needs from the consultant, just because it has poorer chances of success initially.
One final thing to consider, fees that are not based on success will generally be significantly cheaper.