10 tips for successful collaborative funding applications
Written by
Alistair Williamson
Managing Director
Drawing upon a remarkable track record of achievements with SBRI, Innovate UK, and other prestigious funding bodies, we have successfully secured over £2.5 million in funding for various projects. In light of these accomplishments, Alistair is pleased to share 10 invaluable tips for crafting compelling and fruitful collaborative funding applications.
“We have successfully secured over 2.5 million in funding”
What makes an award winning
grant application?
External grant funding, whether from charities, the government, or other sources can help accelerate early-stage medical device developments and other risky product developments. In medical technology and wellness sectors, successful grant applications are often viewed as a positive validation of your innovation concept by onward investors.
Most Government-backed funding steams do not require equity sharing or repayment. So, what’s the catch? The application process will require a lot of hard work with no guarantee of success. Competition for grant funding is intense. With success rates in many awards under 5%, that’s a risky and significant opportunity cost to any business.
If you are planning to apply for funding, start by being brutally honest with yourself. If you can summarise persuasive, logical reasons to buy into your proposal in a few bullet points, it may be worth applying. If not, stop and reconsider.
Our top 10 tips
1. Fit
Assessors, who evaluate your application, possess diverse skills and experience and must review numerous submissions in a short time. To ensure fair evaluation, they adhere to clear marking criteria. Precisely addressing the competition criteria significantly boosts your chances of a positive assessment and simplifies their scoring process.
Ensure you plainly describe how your project aligns with the competition’s scope and objectives, answering all questions explicitly and comprehensibly. If possible within word limits, include relevant indirect reasons supporting your funding application, like policy implications or environmental/macro-economic factors.
2. Ideas are not everything
While creativity and discovery are valuable elements, they shouldn’t overshadow the main components of a successful application. The focus should primarily be on addressing real needs and presenting a detailed roadmap to actualize your vision, emphasizing expertise and leadership.
Boost your application’s credibility by thoroughly discussing the involvement of customers, users, influencers, sales teams, and manufacturers. Additionally, make sure to highlight the legacy benefits your project will deliver. Reflect on potential impacts like job creation, upskilling, and overseas market opportunities. Demonstrating these considerations will enhance the overall strength of your proposal.
3. Inventive step
Competitions demand substantial innovation, impactful business transformation, and societal benefits. Merely suggesting minor improvements or “me too” products won’t suffice.
Conduct thorough desk research to support your idea – explore the internet, conduct patent and literature searches to showcase your concept’s novelty and competitive landscape. Emphasise the potential patentability and value of your intellectual property; this can significantly enhance your application.
4. Know your stuff
For successful collaborative funding applications, instil confidence in your team’s cutting-edge knowledge, skills, and experience. Remember, assessors may be experts or novices in your field.
To increase your chances, assemble a team of named experts with relevant CVs and support your projections and claims with credible statistics and referenced quotes. In cases of limited word count, utilise appendices to provide this vital information.
5. Market focus
A strong link between the applicant and end-user is vital. Clearly define target customers, explaining the reasons and timing behind their potential product purchase. Be transparent about your profit strategy. Public funding bodies value new tax income.
Showcase market insight and understanding of purchase decisions and functions. If your innovation necessitates changes in organisational processes, like healthcare pathway modifications, thorough market intelligence is crucial to validate market need and acceptance.
6. Objectives
Assessors will gain confidence in grant applications that set clear objectives linked to validated market needs. Aa an example, an attractive health innovation application will outline clear impacts for patients and healthcare providers, such as demonstrating quality of life improvements, positive financial impacts etc. It is essential that you explain a clear overall approach. Do this by setting out your project methodology, set sensible milestones or packages of work. Funding bodies are looking for realistic schedules and whether you have the resources to deliver.
Remember that your overall research methodology must be justified by evidence, experience and clearly explained. Ideally include a comparison to alternative approaches.
7. Collaboration
Government-backed funding competitions promote collaboration with external organizations. Lucid Group has successfully partnered with academic, clinical, and commercial healthcare entities in various projects.
Collaboration can be challenging, as all parties juggle differing priorities. The more aligned commercial and research interests are, the higher the likelihood of success. When applying for funding with partners, showcase project management ability, risk management approach, and provide a detailed budget. Prior multi-partner experience adds to your credibility.
Finally, agree and specify the IP position for all partnership members.
8. Costs
The simpler, more complete justification you can provide, the better when it comes to project costs. Most competitions require budgets to be divided into labour, overheads, subcontracting, materials, capital, travel “and” other costings.
Never underestimate your budget and remember that most funding won’t cover the full commercial costs. You will need to demonstrate that you can afford to be fully committed to delivering your project. Think carefully about justification if you propose to largely deliver your project with subcontractors. Dependency on subcontractors can lead assessors to question legacy impacts on your business. Some funders prefer collaborative partnerships over significant subcontracting.
9. Presentation
Following competition guidance to the letter is essential to maximise your score when submitting a collaborative funding application. Assessors are required to be rigorous and a point lost due to word count errors could be the difference between success and failure.
10. Perseverance
Following competition guidance to the letter is essential to maximise your score when submitting a collaborative funding application. Assessors are required to be rigorous and a point lost due to word count errors could be the difference between success and failure.
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