Another portal, the same eleven questions
The bid writer, who is also the office manager two days a week, opens a new application. Describe your organisation in 250 words. What need does this project address? How will you measure outcomes? Describe your safeguarding arrangements. Provide a budget. They have answered every one of these questions before, for other funders, with different word limits.
So they search the shared drive for the last application, find three versions of the organisation description, and are not sure which figures in them are still current. The beneficiary numbers came from an old annual report. The safeguarding answer mentions a lead who left. By the time the answer is rewritten and checked, half the week has gone and the actual project description, the part that wins or loses the grant, gets what time is left.
Why every bid starts from a blank page
Past applications are stored as finished documents, not as reusable parts. Reusing them means untangling which bits are still true.
- Answers are scattered across Word files, portal copies and emails, with no approved version.
- Figures such as beneficiary numbers and income go out of date, and nobody tracks when.
- Each funder has different word limits, so the same answer is cut down differently each time.
- Policies and named contacts change, and old answers keep describing the previous arrangement.
- Nobody records which answer went to which funder, or which bids succeeded.
The underlying gap is that the charity's standard information has no owner and no review date.
What the rewriting costs
For a small charity, bid writing capacity is often the limit on how much funding you apply for. Every hour spent reassembling the standard sections is an hour not spent on the project itself or on another application.
There is also accuracy risk. Out-of-date figures and names end up in applications, and inconsistent numbers across funders can raise questions, especially when the same funder sees several of your bids. Deadlines are missed because applications take longer than expected to pull together.
How we build the application library
- We gather your past applications, annual reports and policies, and break them into reusable answers by topic: history, need, outcomes, governance, safeguarding summary, finances, partnerships.
- Each answer has an owner, an approval date, a review date and versions at common lengths, for example 100, 250 and 500 words.
- Figures used in answers, like beneficiaries supported or volunteers active, are held as named values with a source and date, and appear in answers from there.
- When a new application arrives, its questions are pasted or uploaded, and a language model proposes which library answers fit each question and trims them to the word limit.
- The bid writer reviews every proposal, edits, and writes the project-specific parts, with the relevant library material shown alongside.
- The final submission is saved with which answers were used, the funder, the date and later the outcome.
- Answers past their review date are flagged to their owner, so stale text stops being reused.
| Library item | Owner | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation description, three lengths | Director | Used in almost every application |
| People supported last year | Operations lead | Source and date shown, updated once |
| Safeguarding summary | Safeguarding lead | Review date prevents old names reappearing |
| Outcomes framework | Project leads | Consistent across funders |
The library speeds up the standard parts. The case for a specific project still needs to be written by people who know it.
Writing a bid afterwards
A new application opens with most standard questions already drafted from approved text at the right length. The bid writer checks them, adjusts tone for the funder, and spends the bulk of their time on the project need, the plan and the budget narrative. Figures match across every bid because they come from one place.
When the director asks what you told a funder two years ago, the answer is a search away, along with whether that bid succeeded.
Is your bid writing like this?
- Standard sections are copied from the last application you can find.
- You are not sure which version of the organisation description is current.
- Out-of-date figures or names have gone into a submitted bid.
- There is no record of what was sent to which funder.
- Applications take longer than planned because the basics are rebuilt each time.