Grant writing: the mistakes we see most often

Grant funding remains a vital revenue stream for many charities we support, and yet we regularly see strong programs miss out because of avoidable errors in the application itself.

The most common issue is a mismatch between the funder's stated priorities and the framing of the project. It's tempting to reuse a proven narrative, but each application deserves a fresh read of the guidelines.

Other recurring pitfalls include vague outcome measures, budgets that don't tie back to the narrative, and missing evidence of organisational capacity to deliver.

A little more time spent on structure and specificity almost always pays back in higher success rates.