JISC offer advice on making your grant application stand out

Funding opportunities

JISC funds a wide range of infrastructure, services, innovative projects and studies.  As competition grows for funds, JISC have offered some advice on successful bidding that can help you make a strong application that stands out from the crowd.  Their advice is worth considering for all grant applications.

Sarah Porter, Director of Innovation at JISC, said:  “We want to attract bids from a wide range of universities and colleges, those that know JISC well and others that might be bidding for the first time or need additional help with their application. We know bidding for funds is a time-consuming process and we are therefore aiming to give organisations the best possible chance of being successful in their applications.”

JISC advice for successful bidding includes:

 

  • Describe how your proposed project meets the criteria set out in the call

 

  • Demonstrate how your idea  is aligned with the objectives of your college or institution, including what buy-in you have from senior management

 

  • Carry out an initial assessment of the risks of undertaking the project – and then mention this in your bid

 

  • Include an initial project plan and show how the project will be managed

 

  • Think ahead – include information about dissemination, embedding and evaluation mechanisms

 

  • Show that your project is sustainable once the funding has ceased – not just financially but also in terms of the skills sets of the people involved, and any data/software preservation

 

  • Go green – show that you have considered the environmental impact of your project, eg. server power and data storage space you need

 

  • Consider the wider benefits of the project  for UK education and research to show that your project is good value for money.  You might think about generating workshops, briefing papers or web pages to help disseminate the findings of your project more widely

 

  • Don’t let your bid fail on the easy stuff: make sure you stick to the page limit and get your bid in on time

 

More information on specifically what JISC are looking for and the funding available can be found on their website.

 

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