New to grants? Let us help.
Managing a grant is actually an incredibly difficult and time-consuming process, on top of running your business. grantmanager.ai helps you through it, from the idea to the final claim, in plain words.
The reality of grants and grant applications
A grant can transform what your business is able to do. Go in knowing what it takes.
Applying
- Good projects get turned down.
- Competitions are competitive, and a strong idea is no guarantee. Decide what you would do without the money before you start.
- A good application takes weeks.
- Evidence, budgets, partners and supporting letters all take time, and the deadline will not move.
- You answer the funder's questions, not your own.
- Assessors score what they asked for, within strict word limits, however good the rest of your story is.
- Decisions can take months.
- If your project cannot wait for an answer, a grant may not be the right route.
If you win
- The grant rarely covers everything.
- The funder usually pays a set share of eligible costs, and you find the rest. This is known as match funding.
- You usually spend first and claim later.
- Expect to fund the project yourself for a quarter or more before money arrives, and plan your cash flow around it.
- Early spending may not count.
- Costs from before your project's agreed start are usually not eligible.
- The paperwork never really stops.
- Time, costs, receipts, claims, reports and meetings with whoever monitors your project run all the way through.
- Records have to last.
- Monitoring and audit continue after the money lands, often for years, and a cost you cannot evidence may have to be repaid.
Rules differ by funder and competition, so check the guidance for yours and take your own financial advice.
What a grant asks of you
You agree to do some work.
The application sets out what you will do, and the offer letter makes it formal.
You keep records as you go.
Who worked on what, what was bought, and the receipts that show it.
You often spend first and claim afterwards.
Many grants work this way, so cash flow matters. Your offer letter says what applies to you.
You report on how it went.
To the funder during the project, and often to a wider audience at the end.
Three questions to ask yourself
A pause over any of these does not mean something has gone wrong. It means the record is worth keeping as you go, and you can start small, with one project and the part you need most.
How it helps
What stays with you
Words you will meet
General orientation only. Your funder's own guidance decides what each term means for your grant.
- Funding call
- A funder's published invitation to apply, with its own rules and deadline.
- Grant offer letter
- The funder's formal offer, setting out what you have agreed to and the terms.
- Eligible cost
- A cost the funder's rules allow you to claim. What counts differs from funder to funder.
- Claim
- Your request to the funder for money, usually for a set period, backed by records of what was spent.
- Accrued and defrayed
- A cost is accrued when you have incurred it, and defrayed when the money has actually left your account.
- Attestation
- A person confirming that their record, such as a timesheet, is true.
- Consortium
- Several organisations sharing one funded project, usually with one acting as lead.
- Monitoring officer
- Someone a funder may appoint to follow a project's progress and costs.
- Dissemination
- Telling people about the results of the project.
- FEC
- Full economic costing, the method UK universities use to work out the full cost of research.
- RTO
- Research and technology organisation, a body that carries out research and development work for others.