Our services

Bid writing

We are proud of our bid writing success with small charities in and around Coventry and the West Midlands. We share your pioneering spirit and aim to help you articulate clearly the needs you are trying to meet. We can help you prepare a fundraising strategy, if you need one, and can prepare grant applications ranging from a few hundred pounds to millions of pounds in value, for both capital projects (e.g. building) and revenue projects (e.g. salaries), or a combination of both.

We are especially proud of our role in securing over £1.2m for Broad Street Meeting Hall for a new community centre and staff, serving one of the most deprived areas in the UK. We have particularly enjoyed working with Radio Plus, a community radio station in Coventry, to secure and manage 20 small grants over four years for a media training programme supporting disengaged young people into employment.

Feasibility studies

A feasibility study is often a pre-requisite to a successful grant application. Feasibility can help to define needs and demand for services, engage residents, customers and stakeholders, improve partnership working, avoid duplication, define costs and income and improve business planning, communication and governance.

Typically, a feasibility study can include analysis of external research and data, assessing need and demand, conducting interviews and surveys, building partnerships and investigating funding. In several cases we have secured Big Lottery Awards for All grants for feasibility studies on behalf of clients. Most of our large grant successes are preceded by feasibility studies.

Project management

We have many years’ experience of managing long-term multi-funded projects and programmes from inception to completion. Accounting for grant funding, spending it in accordance with the plan and commissioning and co-ordinating contractors and services can be daunting and time-consuming if you haven’t done it before.

We can carry this responsibility for you by managing capital and revenue projects in accordance with funders’ requirements, including building projects and small scale events. Some grants make allowances for this in the budget. This frees you to do what you do best – delivering your services for the people you serve and value.

Research

Engaging with developers and local authorities in the West Midlands, we were commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health to identify opportunities to integrate the health and well-being agenda into major regeneration projects and the organisations behind them. Funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, this was followed by a second commission to help assess the potential health and well-being benefits on charities in the West Midlands of setting up a social investment loans and grants fund. Many of our feasibility studies involve researching the need and demand for services or communities.

Evaluations

For those who may be unaccustomed to external funding or bidding for contracts, evaluating the impact of your activity is essential for future funding success. We can help you identify what information to collect, how to collect it and what to do with it. We can then help you draw conclusions to help with decision making and business planning.