How do I write a grant application that wins?

Q: How do I write a grant application that wins?

You write it for the assessor, not for the funder. A real person is scoring you against published criteria, usually in about twenty minutes, usually as one of many that day. They are not looking for the best business. They are looking for evidence against each criterion, in the order the criteria are listed, in language they do not have to translate. Most good businesses lose for one of three reasons: they applied to a scheme that was never going to fund them, they described what they do rather than answering the question asked, or they left the assessor to infer the thing that needed proving. All three are decided before you write a word.

Do this before you write anything

Read the scoring criteria, not the blurb. Almost every UK scheme publishes what the assessors score and how it is weighted. That document is the brief. The marketing page is not.
Check the fit honestly. If the scheme exists to fund something you are not doing, no amount of writing fixes it. Withdrawing at this stage is a win, not a failure.
Find out what they funded last round. Most funders publish it. It tells you the size, stage and kind of organisation they actually back, which is often narrower than the eligibility rules suggest.

Then write it like this

Answer the question that was asked

If the question is how your project addresses the challenge, the first sentence of your answer says how it addresses the challenge. Not who you are, not how you started. The assessor is scoring that box against that criterion and cannot give you marks for an answer to a different question.

Put the evidence in, not the adjectives

Assessors score evidence. A number, a named customer, a completed pilot, a letter of support, a qualification. Every sentence that could be said by any applicant is a sentence scoring nothing. If you could swap your company name for a competitor’s and the sentence still reads true, cut it.

Name the risk yourself

Every application has an obvious weakness and the assessor will find it. Applications that name it and say what they will do about it score better than applications that hope it goes unnoticed, because unmanaged risk is usually its own scored criterion.

Write in plain English

Your assessor may be technical, but rarely in your exact niche, and always short of time. Jargon does not read as expertise, it reads as something to be worked out, and work gets skipped.

The mistakes that cost the most

Asking for a round number with no working. Costs that are justified line by line read as a business that knows what it is doing.
Overpromising on jobs or growth. Many funders check afterwards, and it affects whether you are funded again.
Leaving it to the deadline. Applications usually need partner letters and finance figures you cannot produce in an evening.
Recycling the last application. Assessors recognise it instantly, and the criteria are never quite the same.

What losing is worth

Ask for the assessor feedback. Most UK public funders release it, most applicants never request it, and it is the most useful document you will get all year. It tells you precisely which criterion you failed, which is usually a business problem rather than a writing one.

See what funding is currently available and whether you can claim R&D tax relief.