Grant Reporting for Individuals Editing and Proofreading Services

The report says the project was delivered successfully and the aims were met. Two of the four aims were not met, one was replaced by something better in month three, and the exhibition happened in a different venue for a good reason. The funder finds this out from a photograph. The next application from this person is read differently for the rest of their career.

We edit reports made by individuals to their funders — final and interim reports, variation and change requests during a project, financial reconciliation and expenditure statements, evidence and documentation appendices, requests for extension or reallocation, and the covering letters that accompany a difficult report. Our editors work on the document that decides whether you are funded again.

The account of what did not go to plan is the part of a report that determines an applicant's future, and its failure is a success narrative that omits the variations. Funders expect projects to change; they do not expect to discover it themselves. We work through these so the report is structured against the aims as they were originally written, with each one marked as met, partly met, replaced or not met, since a reader with the original application beside them is doing exactly this and will do it more suspiciously if the report does not; so every departure is stated with when the decision was taken, why, and what was done instead — because a change explained in month three is management and the same change revealed in month twelve is a problem; so anything that failed is reported with what was learned, given that funders fund people and a candid account of a failure is the strongest evidence of judgement a report can contain; so the money is reconciled line against line with the original budget and any underspend explained rather than absorbed; so the outputs are evidenced with the actual thing — images, documents, attendance figures, a link — rather than described; so the numbers match anything already published elsewhere, since funders check; so the report answers the questions asked in the funder's own form and order; and so anything the funder has a right to be told before the report is sent earlier. Reports written this way get the applicant funded again.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including reports, financial records and material about projects that did not go to plan. We are editors rather than funders, assessors or accountants, and we offer no view on delivery, expenditure or any funding relationship. What we can do is make the variations read as judgement rather than as concealment.