Review your grant application before you submit

The report opens with the organisation, the programme and round, and a plain overall judgement. It identifies the review as an internal readiness check. The funder makes the award decision. The dashboard carries the same judgement, date and filename, so you can find the record without reading the full note first.

Eligibility against the published rules, a request outside the published range, unanswered mandatory questions, answers over the word or character limit, a budget that does not sum, a missing attachment the funder named, leftover placeholders. These are listed first. If something could not be checked because a document was missing, the report names the limitation explicitly.

The report uses the funder’s own published assessment criteria, “what we look for”, scoring guide, weightings or qualitative framework, in their wording. That material is often a different page from the application form. Any estimate is labelled as the reviewer’s interpretation of the published method. If they have published no method, the report says so and does not invent a score, percentage or total in their name. It then uses a labelled inferred fallback, marked as such, so that part of the report still runs.

The review can use a published past-awards list or a past-awards export you supply, including a 360Giving export, where it covers the relevant programme. The report identifies the source and its limits. It says where this application already sits inside that pattern, and where it sits outside it. It names one change that would strengthen the draft. Past awards provide context. They cannot predict whether this application will be funded. If suitable past-awards evidence is unavailable, the report states that limitation and does not guess names.

At application level: whether claims are specific on the page in front of you, whether the argument holds together without contradictions, and whether any answer ignored the question that was asked. Style comments are comments on the writing. They are not proof of who drafted it.

Every answer is walked in order. For each one: the question title, the count against the published limit where you have given one, what already works, and what still needs changing. Each thin answer receives attention even when another is strong. Findings stay as rewrite guidance unless you later ask for a separate rewrite pass.

The report ends with actions in an order you can work through: blockers and missing evidence before tone. The dashboard repeats that sequence on one screen. You rewrite. If this funder restricts applications written by a consultant or by AI, that rule is respected.

A grant writer, bid consultant or specialist reads your drafted grant application, often with tracked changes or a short report. Useful when you want another pair of eyes on this round. You pay for that read. You do not keep a method you can run again in your own tools.

Useful as learning: you see how someone else would read your drafted grant application. The habit usually leaves with the course, unless you turn their comments into a checklist you actually reuse.

A Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) is a local membership body that supports charities, CICs and community groups in its area. Many already offer members funding advice or a bid check, sometimes free as part of membership. That relationship stays with them. This page explains the self-directed kit. GRS does not offer personal reviews of a network’s members’ live bids through it. Similar local infrastructure bodies exist under other names.

Some grant-writing products and AI drafting tools will comment on a draft against an uploaded brief, inside their own app. That help lives in their product. The public kit gives you a method to install in a suitable existing workspace and use with checkable organisational knowledge.

The review can only see what you give it this time: the draft, this round’s live programme pages, any published assessment or scoring material, and any records you actually open. A run from the face of the text, this funder’s live pages, and public registers is a useful structured check. It will catch unanswered questions, word-limit breaches, internal contradictions, thin evidence on the page, and obvious eligibility misses. A fluent figure that does not appear in any document you supplied will usually pass.

Own-application mode can use a Funding Knowledge Base, a checkable knowledge document from the Grant Readiness Starter Kit, or another maintained knowledge store, alongside accounts or evaluations you already keep. You can run that depth with this pack. Readiness assessment, and the tracing of claims against what the organisation actually knows, reach their fullest form when that store is a comprehensive Funding Knowledge Base: the work, the evidence, the voice, what you have already told funders. Grant Resource Studio’s main work is building that. Using only this check is still a fine outcome.

The report is a readiness read. If the funder has published how it assesses or scores, that method comes first. If it has not, the report does not invent a score in the funder’s name. It then uses a labelled fallback. Community-shaped applications get inferred topics adapted from the National Lottery Community Fund’s published Stage One shape. Other applications get a shorter neutral set. Those rows are marked inferred, so a reader can see they are a generic fit check.