Grant Proposals for Individuals Editing and Proofreading Services

A proposal asks for eleven thousand pounds. The project is good and the assessor believes in it. The budget is four lines — materials, travel, fees, contingency — and the assessor cannot tell whether the applicant has costed anything or estimated everything, so they cut it to seven and a half thousand, which is roughly what they cut everything to.

We edit funding applications made by individuals — project budgets and their justifications, activity and workplans, timelines and milestones, applicant biographies and track record sections, letters of support and partner confirmations, small grant and bursary applications, and the resubmissions that follow a partial award. Our editors work on the section assessors trust least.

The budget and its justification is where an individual application is either believed or trimmed, and its failure is a set of round numbers with no working behind them. An assessor cannot fund a figure they cannot follow. We work through these so every line shows its arithmetic — the rate, the quantity and the source of the rate — since £2,400 for materials is a guess and 40 sheets at £58 plus VAT, quoted on 14 March, is a cost; so the applicant's own time is costed at a stated rate with the number of days, because a proposal in which the applicant works free reads as either unsustainable or as concealing a subsidy; so anything already secured or contributed in kind is shown, given that assessors fund gaps rather than totals and a part-funded project is easier to support; so the quotes and their dates are attached or cited, as a price gathered eighteen months ago will be challenged; so the contingency is a stated percentage with what it covers, since an unexplained contingency line is the first thing removed; so the consequence of a reduced award is written out — what would be dropped, and at what point the project stops being worth doing — because assessors reduce awards routinely and would rather the applicant chose the cut than that they guessed; so the total matches every other document in the application; and so nothing appears in the budget that the workplan does not require. Budgets written this way get funded at the amount requested.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including applications, financial information and unsuccessful submissions. We are editors rather than funders, assessors or accountants, and we offer no view on costs, eligibility or any funding decision. What we can do is show the assessor your working.