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You are here: Home > Community and living > Fundraising information > How to apply for grants > Making a project more fundable

Making a project more fundable

This page contains information on how to make a project more fundable when submitting a grant application.

What is a good idea? A good idea is something that will have immediate appeal with the donor/grant maker as being different, lively, worthwhile, and worth funding. Good ideas are central to good fundraising, even the very best application many not make up for a poorly thought out project or for something that is simply not interesting.

We see more and more the term ‘innovative’ being used in the grant maker’s criteria; however it is difficult to define what constitutes a good/ innovative idea. Usually it is something that leaps out at you from the page and seems obvious once someone has thought of it!

It is difficult to help generate a good idea, but these bullet points might just trigger an idea:

Ingredients of a Good Idea:

• It meets a really important and urgent need
• It is fresh or interesting (or at least sounds it) and captures imagination
• It is – or sounds – startlingly obvious, even though nobody has thought of it before
• It has a catchy title
• It is or it appears innovative
• It is topical – it fits with current fashions, thinking, concerns
• It addresses issues of disadvantage, a key concern for most funders/grant makers
• It is different – it stands out from the crowd or more ordinary applications
• It has different aspects which appeal to different funding constituencies (wide appeal)
• It shows value for money or leverage (a small input with lots of output)
• It complements and supplements existing provision or involves collaboration
• It has a clear and attainable objective
• It has measurable benefits and specific outputs
• It is realistic and achievable
• It is fundable and may even achieve its own income in the long term

How to Develop Good Ideas?

• Respond to new needs as they emerge
• Two heads are better than one (bounce ideas around)
• How could your work/ project be done better? What new needs are emerging?
• Ask ‘current’, ‘previous’ and ‘potential’ users what they think
• Keep an eye on the marketplace and in touch with social trends, what are others doing?
• Write down ideas as soon as you have thought of them; then develop and refine them
• Bring in outsiders who have no preconceptions
• Develop a positive CAN DO attitude, and work on the ideas that can make a difference
• Go back to the basics and think about what you would do if you could start from scratch