Grant Applications Editing and Proofreading Services

Grant applications are written to a form designed by someone who will not read them, assessed by someone applying criteria the form only partly reveals, against a success rate that often sits below one in five. The organisations that win consistently are rarely doing better work than the ones that do not. They are answering the question that was asked, in the word count available, with the evidence the assessor needs to score it — which is a discipline entirely separate from describing what the organisation does.

We edit what applicants across the sector produce — applications to trusts, foundations, lottery distributors and statutory funders, expressions of interest and stage one forms, project descriptions and delivery plans, need and evidence sections, outcomes and measurement frameworks, budgets and their narrative justification, partnership and consortium bids, sustainability and exit plans, governance and safeguarding sections, monitoring and evaluation proposals, reports against previous grants, and appeals or feedback requests following a decline. Our editors work to the word limits and answer the question in front of them rather than the question the applicant wishes had been asked.

The outcomes section is where most applications lose their marks, because organisations describe activity and funders score change. A bid promising to run forty workshops for two hundred young people has described a plan; the assessor needs to know what will be different afterwards, for whom, by how much, and how anyone will know. We rewrite these so each outcome names who changes and in what way, so it carries a figure the organisation genuinely believes rather than one chosen to look impressive, so the measurement is something the organisation can actually collect with the staff it has — a six-week follow-up call, not a validated instrument nobody will administer — and so the baseline is stated or the bid says how it will be established in the first month. We also cut outcomes the project cannot plausibly deliver, because assessors discount the whole set when one is obviously unachievable, and a bid claiming three credible outcomes beats one claiming eight.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including bids in progress and material about your organisation's finances. We are editors rather than funding consultants, and we offer no view on which funders to approach, on eligibility, or on the merits of any project. What we can do is make the application answer the questions asked, within the limits set, with the evidence attached.