Would you like to feel more confident in the funding proposals you’re submitting?

As grant fundraisers it’s rare that we get useful feedback on the proposals we write. After all, it can be hard enough to get funders to let us know the outcome, let alone provide us with tangible ways we can make future proposals better.

With competition for funding at an all-time high we want to do everything we can to make sure our proposals avoid the shredder and find their way in to that elusive “fund” pile.

Over the years we’ve written a lot of funding proposals. We’ve secured 7- (and 6- and 5- and 4- and 3-) figure gifts for a range of organisations. We helped write the bid that secured a first-time applicant to Arts Council England one of the largest Round 1 Culture Recovery Fund grants (and annoyed the Telegraph in the process). And we recently helped one charity find success with two funders that had previously turned them down on multiple occasions.

But we’ve also spent a lot of time on the other side of the fence. Having set up real grant programmes and been responsible for whittling hundreds of proposals down to a small handful we’ve learnt a fair bit about what works and what can get your application a one-way ticket to the shredder.

Our Proposal Review Service takes this experience and makes it available to you so you can get bespoke, honest, useful feedback on your proposal before you click submit. This is your chance to borrow an external pair of eyes, and the experienced grant fundraising brain they’re attached to.

So far we've helped new grant fundraisers, old hands and everyone in between to see their proposals in a new light. Now we'd like to help you.

Here’s how it works:

1. You send us your draft proposal, together with the name of the funder you’re applying to and when you want to submit it
2. We’ll give your proposal a thorough review, considering it from the funder’s perspective:
   • Is it easy to read?
   • Is it easy to understand?
   • Is it easy to fund?
3. We’ll arrange a Zoom call to talk through the proposal, identify areas where it might be possible to improve and brainstorm ways to make it stronger

We offer a tiered pricing structure to try and make this as affordable as possible:

• Proposals up to 3 pages - £150 per application per review
• Proposals between 4 and 10 pages - £300 per application per review
• Longer proposals - let's chat!

If you’d like me to book your proposal in for an MOT, complete the contact form next door.

Alternatively, email David.Burgess@ApolloFundraising.com with the proposal, the name of the funder you’re applying to and the date when you want to submit it.

But be quick!

To give your proposal the time and attention it deserves we are only able to review two proposals per week. So, if you know you have a deadline coming up, book your slot early to ensure you don't miss out.

Below, David has tried to predict some of the questions you might have. But we're fundraising consultants, not mind readers, so if your question isn’t below, please email David.Burgess@ApolloFundraising.com and let’s have a chat.

Who’s this service for?

We think all proposal-writers could benefit from getting an external pair of eyes to review their work every now and then, whether they are new to grant fundraising or if they’ve been doing it for a long time.

However, we spend a lot of time telling our clients that “everybody” isn’t a target market, so here are some situations where we think investing in an external review could be especially useful:

• You’ve been receiving more “Nos” than normal recently and you want to know if it’s simply because of the difficult market or if there are things you could be doing differently
• Nobody else within your organisation has experience of grant fundraising and you’d like the comfort of getting a second opinion before you submit your proposal
• You don’t see yourself as a fundraiser but applying for grants has become part of your role and you'd like the support of a friendly mentor to check that your approach is on the right tracks
• You’re applying for a new project or piece of work, or for a complex project that’s hard to communicate to people outside of your organisation
• You’ve been working on your own for a long time and feel you’d benefit from a fresh perspective

Why should I pay you to do this when AI could do it for free?

If you’re simply interested in checking your proposal for typos or grammatical errors, this isn’t the service for you. There are plenty of clever (and free!) digital tools that will do a far better job than our analogue human brains.

However, if you’re looking to go deeper and focus on the things that really determine how successful your proposals are, we’d argue it’s our human brains that give us an advantage over AI.

We're better placed than Chat GPT to consider how easy it is for a human to read and understand your proposal.

We have an advantage over Claude when it comes to determining how easy it is for a human to get excited by your proposal.

And we have skills that Copilot doesn’t when it comes to considering how easy it is for a group of humans to say yes to your proposal.

And this matters.

Because the people ultimately making decisions about your proposal are human, too.

Do you guarantee success and do we get our money back if it’s unsuccessful?

Alas no.

We can’t guarantee that our work together will definitely lead to the funder saying yes. Nobody can promise that. Your proposal is just one of the factors at play when it comes to funders making decisions. Brilliant proposals can still be rejected – especially in the current climate.

However, that’s not a reason not to try. In fact, the opposite is true. When so much of the grant-making process is out of our hands all we can do as fundraisers is to focus on making the bits we can control as good as possible.

And, even if your proposal is rejected, the advice and tips you take from this process will help you make the next proposal you write even better.

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Keen to discuss this further? Email David.Burgess@ApolloFundraising.com to get your proposal review booked in today.