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Submitting a tender or a grant application

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Overview

If you are applying for funding for traditional 'investigator developed and driven' research funding you can seek advice from the Faculty Research Office within Academic Services, where expertise in relation to the genre and technical aspects of the conceptualisation, structuring and presentation or research grant application is available. The University Research Grants and Ethics Branch also provides advice and services which you can call upon. You may also call on the resources of the faculty's Academic Services team more generally to assist with preparation of your grant application. Typically, you will not require the particular services offered by the Development Office for such submissions. However, where the services offered by the Development Office can help with such an application, they can be drawn upon.

Academic staff are, however, increasingly submitting tenders (which are typically contractor driven or jointly negotiated between a contractor and investigator) or alternatively applying for grants that are in an 'in between' category. An example might be when a foundation advertises funding to projects that fit within tight guidelines in terms of social or other agendas (eg a call for interventions in relation to the early childhood years, or school refusers) but do not specify particular deliverables.

In such cases, you should first register your intention to submit a tender or grant application. You may then be happy to go ahead and apply for the tender or grant unassisted. However, the advice and assistance of the Development Office, in conjunction with the support available from Academic Services, may enable you to submit a better application or as good an application, but one in which you concentrate on the academic facets of the application while others focus on the administrative facets. Either way, the Faculty recommends that you at least seek advice on determining whether the project will 'count' as research.

Getting help

Strategic advice

In many cases, you will be the expert on how best to approach or frame a tender or grant application to a particular organization. In other cases, you may be relatively new to the process or the organization. In any case, the Faculty Development Manager and other colleagues may be able to provide you with strategic advice in order to maximise your chances of succeeding.

This advice may take the form of:

  • Particular knowledge of the funding or contracting body, its orientations and what may or may not appeal to the organization. The Submissions and Contracts Register can provide case history of past successes and failures.
  • Suggestions about how to draw on the faculty's strengths to improve your tender, or knowledge of the work of colleagues who have relevant expertise, could advise or could collaborate.
  • Whether partnerships or consortiums might have more chance of success, what sorts of people you might try to link with, possible partners and possible competitors.
  • What sort of pricing is likely to succeed and where and how to value add without it costing more than you will earn.
  • Whether others in the faculty are thinking of tendering or applying and the implications of this for each.

Templates, examples and information needed for an application

The Development Office has the following prepared and ready for your use. They can be obtained by contacting the Development Office directly or by using the Submissions and Contracts Register (SCR).

  • Tender templates and examples
  • Faculty and Centre capability statements - the SCR has a number of capability statements about the Faculty and various Faculty Centres
  • Staff capability statements - the SCR contains short CVs of most academic staff appropriate for commercial purposes
  • Financial viability statements
  • Quality, probity and insurance statements

Administrative and tender design support

The Development Office can provide you with administrative support in submitting the application including tender design assistance and its professional presentation. This will enable you to concentrate on the academic substance of the tender, its conceptualisation, and so on.

Registering your intention to submit a tender or grant application

If you are planning to submit a tender, and often also a grant application, you should, at an early stage, register your intention to do so with the Development Office or, if appropriate, directly into the Submission and Contract Register.

Why?

This is not intended to constrain your opportunities to apply for funding and engage in work that interests you . It is important, however, that the faculty generally and your colleagues, in particular, know of your intentions. Some contracting organizations, where only one contract will be won, would find it odd for the same body to compete with itself rather than putting all of its resources behind one good bid. They may have reservations about contracting with an organisation in which one part does not know what other parts are doing, or if different capability statements are made, or if bids with similar deliverables are widely divergent in costs. Similarly, some bids involve consortiums and partners might feel that they had been misled if we competed against the joint bid, or at least did not inform them that this could occur so that they could seek an alternative partner should they wish.

When?

For many grants, of course, multiple applications from the same organisation are not only normal but expected. This would be the case with most National Competitive Grants and often also with foundations, government funding programs, and other granting bodies. It would often apply where there are likely to be multiple awards, but may also apply where there is only one 'winner'. Even so, it might assist a colleague trying to decide between competing priorities or whether to seek out and form partnerships, to know that you in particular, or a number of others, are already putting in applications to the same funding pool. Registering your intent to apply could enable them to make an informed decision about whether or not to apply. In some cases, this may actually lead to joint applications that together are stronger than either. In other cases, two or more applications may go forward but each would be aware of the others. This same process, of course, will enable you to make an informed decision on how to proceed if alternative bids are proposed and possibly to seek a joint submission. At times, some negotiations about priorities will be necessary.

Costing and budgeting : your time and other project components

Budget guidelines

The precise nature of a budget for contract research, tenders (research or non research) and other grant applications (research or non research) will depend upon the nature of the activity and of the granting or contracting body. However, normally in determining the budget all costs should be factored in as realistically as possible including all infrastructure costs and a return to the faculty. (The main exceptions are certain national competitive grants such as ARC and NHMRC, for which basic infrastructure costs cannot be included in budgets, and some internal funding applications.)

Having accurately costed the project, however, the faculty may approve the offsetting of some of these costs by the following benefits:

  • The potential generation of research quantum
  • The prestige or positioning of the Faculty
  • Contribution to the community good
  • The development of goodwill
  • The potential generation of on-going business

Costing spreadsheet

The Faculty has developed a costing spreadsheet that can be used to calculate the costs in setting up contract research, consultancy or indeed any projects or grant applications. It automatically includes the following costs, which may apply differently to different projects:

  • Academic and general salaries
  • Administration
  • Printing/stationary/books
  • Travel
  • Faculty infrastructure
  • University central charges

This spreadsheet is available to all staff and is on the Faculty's Submissions and Contracts Register.