Your early experiments with funding applications might be disastrous, but learn from your mistakes and your Eureka moment will come eventually, says Victoria Symes

With competition for funding becoming increasingly fierce, it’s crucial that charities stay ahead of the game. When making a funding application, the simplest of errors can make all the difference between success and failure. Mistakes are important steps along the path to success; to learn from them, the key is recognising the problem and understanding what didn’t work before trying again.

The solution is not always immediately obvious, but taking a step back and looking at it from different angles can bring the perspective you need – and ensure that the next application is a real winner.

Gaps in research

Most of us talk about researching funders before submitting an application but how many of us are tempted to skip this when time is tight? I learnt the value of research many years ago when I found myself working for a grassroots charity that posted the same mail-merged application to every trust they could find the name of, with some of the worst rates of return I have ever come across.

While few cases of poor research are as extreme as this one, it remains one of the most common reasons for unsuccessful applications. Creative thinking and an eye for detail are the name of the game. I encourage my clients not to rely on what funders say in their marketing, but to dig deeper, by scrutinising their list of exclusions and visiting annual reports on the Charity Commission’s website for examples of grants recently awarded.

One youth arts project I recently worked with was able to use this approach not only to stop wasting time on ill-fitting applications but to find support from some surprising sources, whose giving data revealed them to be a far better match than their website had suggested.

Fools rush in

My experience at the ‘mail-merge charity’ also taught me not to overlook the importance of picking up the phone to get to know the funder. Undoubtedly, the most successful applications I have been involved in were those made as part of a dialogue with the funder. This is taken for granted in major donor fundraising, yet easily forgotten with trust and statutory fundraising.

While not all funders will speak to applicants, many positively encourage a relationship and will allow you the chance to run initial outlines past them for feedback. Talking to them also gives you the opportunity to negotiate; one funder who had refused to receive applications from a national arts organisation for years changed their mind following one such conversation. Our application was successful and they are now a regular supporter.

Going solo

Too many organisations mistakenly think they can hire someone to fundraise, and then forget about it until year end. Yet fundraising is a team effort that requires buy-in across the organisation, the right vision, business plan and communications strategy, and strategic use of board members and senior colleagues to cement funding relationships at every level.

At least three big trust funders I know of show evident signs of supporting causes where they know the board, and individual donors often demonstrate similar giving patterns, making the involvement of senior staff and volunteers essential. One charity I worked with struggled to see the importance of this until a peer organisation started to yield strong results using this method. The charity hastily changed its strategy and was able to treble its trusts income in less than a year by agreeing to the targeted involvement of key board and executive members.

Excuses, excuses

Some organisations may feel they lack the ‘right’ board members, that they are based at too great a distance from the funder, or that they don’t have inspiring venues. While this can be a disadvantage when trying to build a relationship with a funder, with a little creative thinking it is by no means impossible.

A children's charity I recently advised solved their location problem by taking their senior staff and board members to London for a series of inspiring meet and greet events that featured some of their children and films of their work. By taking their cause to the funders they were able to create a window onto their world and build new relationships in the process. The events resulted in five applications to seek funding or donations, four of which were successful.

At one London-based cultural organisation I worked for, to which it should have been relatively easy to attract funders, we wracked our brains for months to understand why one particular funder would not respond to invitations from our high-profile board member. Imagine our surprise to see the same funder walking through the building one day with one of our senior curators who was asking her for advice. The curator had accidentally solved the problem by tapping into the approach the funder preferred – teaching us all a valuable lesson about treating even major trust funders as individuals.

Preparing the ground

The Benjamin Franklin maxim “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” has never been more applicable than when talking about pitches and meetings with funders. Admittedly, there may be some things you can’t prepare for (as I found to my cost when I was made to answer tough questions while forcing down an inedible lunch rustled up by the director of a leading foundation). For most things, however, I find that a pre-meet, a strategy and briefing notes are essential tools for ensuring colleagues are fully on message. Decide who will lead the meeting to avoid confusion, and pre-empt the difficult questions that might be asked.

Since some early meetings when I came away kicking myself for not asking what I needed to, I have always prepared a clear plan of what I aim to get from a meeting, rather than just fulfilling the funder’s requirements. Use the opportunity to ask questions to help you understand the process.

Be flexible. Even with the greatest preparation, funders have a habit of going off brief so be ready to respond about other aspects of your work. It will reassure them that you are in control, and may well lead to a whole different stream of funding.

Too many voices

Ever heard the saying “a camel is a horse designed by committee”? Watch that your funding applications don’t fall into this trap. One application I was involved in for a higher education institution involved so many experts that the final draft was like a tapestry of competing projects.

The fundraising team assumed full editorial control, redrafting and making radical cuts to the application to ensure the narrative was consistent. This was met with great objections from academic colleagues, all of which were promptly forgotten when the largest grant to our campaign was secured as a result. Take control of your applications and ensure that colleagues’ input is politely but firmly managed.

Counting the costs

It amazes me when a client proudly shares a beautifully crafted application, only to reveal a hastily-assembled funding budget. Yet with many funders claiming this is the first section they read, this is not a part of your application to be ignored. Ensure your costs are proportionate to activities described, and calculate the cost per head - does it sound reasonable? If not, can you justify why you need so much funding?

Use whatever space you have to explain how you arrived at your costs, in clear and simple language, to avoid being rejected simply because funders may not have the time or inclination to verify details with you. Use the same high-impact language you have in the rest of your application to sell the importance of each and every part of your budget.

Avoid meaningless terms such as ‘administration’ or ‘overheads’ by replacing them with impact-related descriptions (programme management, partnership liaison, marketing to hard-to-reach communities) that demonstrate their relevance to the funded activity.

Don’t be a bore

While it goes without saying that criteria are generally non-negotiable, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the reason for your bid. Re-reading some of my early unsuccessful applications, I realise how dry they must have sounded.

To get around this, I now make an initial assessment of guidelines then lock them in a drawer until I undertake my final review. This provides the freedom to write in an inspiring way, without getting bogged down by the guidance notes.

Working to the principle that most people lose concentration beyond the first page, I treat my first paragraph like an ‘elevator pitch’, capturing only the most essential and inspiring details, so that the funder will consider it worthwhile reading on.

High-impact and emotive words draw the reader in and make an application stand out from the hundreds they have read that day. Rather than over-focusing on need, I outline the transformational difference a project will make, with clear aims, projected impacts, and evidence, no matter how exploratory. Ultimately, it is this vision that will persuade funders to invest.

Learning your lessons

No one likes to hear a “no”, but instead of casting aside your rejection letter and moving on to the next application, use this valuable opportunity to find out how you could improve your outcomes and to get inside the head of your funder.

Always contact the funder to get their feedback on your application; is it something that can easily be addressed? Take the chance to strengthen the relationship by seeking their advice.

Track the data you gather from this feedback; it may point to a problem that needs fixing, or may be a powerful tool in demonstrating to the board the need for change.

Fundraising will always be challenging but by learning from your funding failures, and those of others, you can become a more nuanced and resilient fundraiser. To quote James Dyson: “Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.”

Victoria Symes is founder and director of impact! fundraising, a strategic fundraising consultancy.