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I’ve been writing funding bids for a long time and I’ll admit it was like a mystical art/science when I first started but to be honest it should be no more difficult than some of the other aforementioned core management tasks – the secret is how you set about it and break the task into easy to manage chunks. If I can narrow it down into three key areas that help that constitute my top tips then they would be:

1) Gather your information and shape the team
No bid writer can hope to understand the intricacies of a decent proposal in depth, but if they are writing it on behalf of people who want the money/funds then all the information the writer will need will be in the heads of the people s/he can gather round a table. The shaping of the bid is dependent on the people there. Use the time effectively, ask the right questions and get agreement on where to get further information and you can start to get there.

2) Plan and structure your proposal in depth – then be succinct
As with most things in life, you get nowhere unless you put the work in. Most bid writers I know look at word limits on funding applications as necessary evils. The secret is not to fill the sections with lots of words but to be as concise as possible to describe and understand the outputs that will be needed. This requires you to plan how the proposal will work, who will be involved and what the key tasks are. Go into too much detail and you will lose the reader, don’t describe the issues in enough depth and risk the bid looking vacuous or directionless.

3) Think like your funder
The easiest thing for me to do to get a good funding proposal is for me to take someone else’s first draft and edit it into a coherent document. This is because I can read other people’s work with a dispassionate view and remove the superfluous and concentrate on the main reasons and rationale for the bid. If it’s your own work, that will be more difficult to do, but try and think like the funding body. They are likely to get lots of bids, so is yours innovative? Does it address their requirements (not yours!)? Is it SMART? Be hard on your proposal – because they will be. If you can address any possible question they might have, then you are a big step closer to your goal.

So I’m reviewing this article and realise there is a lot more to it than following a three step guide described above, but if you have never done a funding proposal before then following these three key elements in your proposal will give you a much better outcome than not paying heed to them. If you want more information on writing an effective funding bid there are plenty of decent sources out there and of course you can always talk to us if you really do want us to assist!

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With a keen interest in helping start up businesses and a history of putting together a varied range of support packages for individuals seeking a new future in working for themselves I have always been struck by the power of face to face support. In fact of all the support structures that we have been behind I can say, that one-to-one support was the most popular, used and valued service.

Information is available in other formats too, in fact I use the new Business Link website regularly to source impartial and independent advice, but there is nothing that can substitute the contextual assistance that an adviser can give.

For me it is the interactivity of speaking to a real person, someone who has experience, who can look you in the eye and say, here’s what I did that makes the information you are receiving both helpful and memorable.

Only today I was assisting someone who was half-way down the route to setting up what I hope is an innovative export business that he couldn’t believe that there was no-one that he could talk to about his particular issue. I explained that there was much available on the internet and if he paid someone for it. He was just incredulous that the “stimulation of small businesses and entrepreneurs” heralded by a succession of governments didn’t go beyond my general, experience-based advice on broad start-up issues, unless it was paid for.

And of course, there is paid-for advice and there are some fantastic professional advisers who go beyond the call of duty to provide sensible and useful advice for their clients but not everyone is either in the position to pay for or understand the immediate benefit of personal, professional and cost-effective advice. I’m also not sure that providing unlimited face-to-face support for all people starting their own business is the best use of taxpayer’s money but surely some middle ground is needed.

I hope the sizeable bank of volunteer mentors that is envisaged by the current government policy works, especially for those young (at heart) and enthusiastic would-be entrepreneurs who need that practical and early advice to get them moving in the right direction. I just hope that if there isn’t the availability of decent mentors that these people don’t get holed up down dead ends, spending valuable time on pointless research and spending money on products and services they don’t need.

I fear that professional advice, free at the point of use, for those at the tipping point of starting their own business is a desirable public good and efforts should be found to fund this. How this might happen, I know, is of concern to a large number of policy makers and providers and I hope over the coming years a balanced approach is formulated to assist people who really need the support and will, given the opportunity, add value to UK PLC.

Most people I know who work between the sectors tend to notice the similarities, the areas of mutual benefit, the areas where working together achieves more. It is therefore with frustration that we are constantly reminded of the “difference”. Sure, there are some namely procurement delays, prolonged decision making etc but as always there is more that binds us than sets us apart.

Most of the projects I have been involved with have involved private partners as well as public organisations and to be frank when I have sat back and observed the corporate cultures it seems to me that private sector organisations care just as much about non-financial outcomes and value for money and public sector organisations care passionately about efficiency and what the customer wants.

So am I lucky? Is the current obsession with moving things into the private sector to stimulate competition, efficiency and the general betterment of a process or project or industry the right step? I’m not sure. What I am certain about is that in most cases the workers and management can, given the opportunity to re-design services, provide better value for money and listen to all stakeholders and actually end up with something better than they started. This doesn’t necessarily mean changing the sector it resides in but to trust that the people who run these services / products to work with their customers / patients / consumers and to be given the time make things better.