RECAP: Don’t Be Scared of Grant Funding Applications

Entrepreneurs and experts gathered to spend Halloween night exploring the spooky world of grant funding at WeWork Chancery Lane. Here are some of the critical topics that came up in the talks from Granted Consultancy Ltd., Stephens Scown and Innovate UK.

First, Granted Consultancy Ltd. offered some general tips on how to make your application one of the less than 10% that succeed.

Read the eligibility criteria carefully.

According to Granted, 18% of grant applications fail basic eligibility checks for the grant they’re applying for. Criteria can involve not only what your business does but also where it operates and where your partners are from. (For example, some EU grants require an EU co-founder on the business’s team.) If you don’t understand the criteria, call or arrange a meeting with the funder and ask questions.

Don’t change your business to fit the eligibility criteria.

Apply for grants that are a natural strategic fit. Changing your business’s philosophy or operations just to shoehorn it into what a particular funder wants will only harm you in the long run. Instead, wait for a grant opportunity that actually makes sense for your business.

Be realistic.

“We are innovative and have no competition.” Such claims will only scare grant funders away. They know that all businesses have competition and want to work with entrepreneurs who know it, They will also know if you’re trying to cover up your competitors by not mentioning them in your application. So fully research your market and quantify what makes you different. It’s difficult, but it sets your application apart.

Explain the deeper benefits of your project.

Ask yourself how your project will exploit new market opportunities or displace competitors by quantifying the economic, social, technical and environmental benefits your innovation will generate. Go beyond the obvious; you may be surprised what additional value you uncover.

Start early.

A grant application should not be left to the last minute. Treat it the same way you would treat a pitch to a venture capital firm or angel investor. If the funder has asked for any specific element of your application, you must generate it, even if you don’t already know how.

Next, Granted homed in on a topic little-understood but helpful for entrepreneurs: intellectual property (IP).

Grant funders value IP.

Grant funders like to tell their stakeholders that they’ve funded the creation of something new, and IP helps them do so. They also value entrepreneurs who have IP protection, since this proves that no competitors already hold the IP rights to the technology they’re hoping to fund. Grant funders appreciate IP so much that they’ll often even fund a business’s IP protection work.

IP is overlooked.

Entrepreneurs often ignore or forget about IP for two reasons:

• It’s perceived as expensive and therefore the domain of large corporations. But this is not always true. IP overlooked because there’s a perception that it’s expensive — but that’s not always true. Large corporations usually win IP battles because they understand IP better than small businesses, not because they have more money. Armed with knowledge, small businesses don’t have to be the losers in IP.
• It’s seen as complex. It’s true that patent applications are expensive and complex, especially if you want to patent your technology in more than one territory. But patents aren’t the only option available.

Consider design rights.

Design rights are a quicker, more affordable IP option than patents. These rights are concerned with how the product looks, not how it works or what it does. For example, Apple holds the design rights to the iPod Classic design. This means that no one can copy that design, even if the copy-product’s function is totally different, like a TV remote or a toy. However, design rights are not always limited to physical products. Some countries allow less tangible products such as software interfaces to have design rights.

Unlike patent applications, which cost thousands of pounds, take years to register and are likely to fail, design rights applications cost only a couple hundred pounds and take only a few months to process.

Use non-disclosure agreements.

Non-disclosure agreements are a massively overlooked IP tool. Use them even in the earliest stages of the business. Ask everyone you work with to sign one, and be suspicious if they refuse.

Remember that you have copyright.

Copyright is an automatic right that protects the expression of an idea (but not the idea itself). You own the copyright on everything you produce, even your meeting notes, but to make use of copyright, make sure anything your business creates is documented. With an appropriate agreement in place, you can also own the copyright on whatever your employees produce at work. However, be very specific in employee/consultant contracts about what you can use and in what territory, or you may face a lawsuit.

Finally, Innovate UK provided some specific information on applying for their government grants.

Four Criteria for Support

In assessing a business, Innovate UK uses four criteria. To pass the application round, a business needs to be able to tick all of the following boxes:

• Can the UK do it?
• Is there a large market opportunity?
• Is the idea “ready”?
• Why taxpayer support?

How to maximise your chances of winning an Innovate UK grant:

• Check that you understand all eligibility criteria and the scope of the grant you wish to apply for.
• Use the scope of each grant to your advantage, positioning your business in new ways to widen your range of relevant grants.
• Think of your application as a pitch to sceptical investors. They’re not just looking for good ideas or technology. They’re looking for high-growth UK businesses.
• Ask others for constructive criticism before submitting a proposal.
• Answer every question and follow all instructions. A single question poorly answered or not answered means an application rejected.

Looking for other funding options? Come to Business Funding Show’s ‘Investment Conference: Next Round’ on 15 November at 12:30–6:30 p.m. at NatWest HQ. Tickets are available here.