Q. Aren’t contingency fees illegal for Federal grants?
A. No! This common misconception is propagated by repetition on the websites of many grant consultants who prefer to charge full fees, win or lose. Federal grants (and many others) do not permit funding of the grant application, including consulting and grant-writing, to be funded from the grant at all. Any applicant has the right to pay for assistance in preparing an application as long as that cost is funded from non-grant resources. Likewise, if part of that cost is success linked, it is completely legal if not funded by the grant.
Contingency fees to consultants linked to the funding agency are not allowed, to avoid the risk of improper influence in awarding the grant.

Q. Why do I need help preparing a grant application? – the instructions and rules are publicly available!
A. Securing grant funding is a highly competitive business; to succeed your application must stand out from hundreds or thousands of rivals. Achieving this requires the skill of grantsmanship – not only a talent for persuasive writing, but also a deep knowledge of how the granting agency operates, how the reviews are conducted and how to take advantage of these processes. Such expertise is developed by investing much time into researching the agencies and through experience gained over years of grant application submissions and responses. If you want a professional grant application, you need a professional grant consultant.

Q. Do you provide a turnkey grant writing solution?
A. The common meaning of turnkey grant-writing is that the applicant sends a mass of data and articles to the writer, who then turns that into a completed grant application ready for submission. At Compelling Proposals we refuse to do this because it can not produce a high quality grant application. Applications prepared this way are invariably poorly planned and superficially argued, as the writer does not have the applicant’s knowledge and understanding of the project to be funded.
Since your success is of paramount importance to us, we work in tandem with each client to produce the most compelling proposal possible.

Q. How long does grant preparation take?
A. As long as possible! Grants applications vary in length from one fund to another. When under pressure of a tight deadline and with a focused dedicated effort by all relevant contributors, an application can be built in as little as a fortnight – sometimes less. However, the more time that is spent on considering the grant strategy and refining the project plan, the better the application will be. Starting preparation early gives more time for review and feedback from peers and opportunity to make changes where necessary.

Q. Shouldn’t grant consultants be experts in the subject/technology of the application?
A. No! One of the most frequent mistakes of applicants is to assume that all reviewers of their grant and decision makers are experts in their field and understand the jargon. In most cases, there may be one or two experts and a number of other decision makers. A well written grant application presents the concepts and arguments clearly to all readers, while offering sufficient technical details or specialist knowledge for expert reviewers to validate the project design. Over many years of grant consulting, we have found that this clarity is better achieved by non-experts with excellent comprehension and writing skills than by those who take knowledge for granted. Additionally “outsiders” tend to ask obvious and simple questions that challenge the logic of a proposal, which experts tend to overlook.

For more on grants, see our Grants Tips and Links