Between a good idea and a funded project sits a body of work that most coastal organisations have never been shown how to do: feasibility, budgeting, logframes, governance, and the specific dialect that funding institutions read.
We do that work with organisations rather than for them, because a project written entirely by a consultant is a project nobody in the room can defend when questions are asked.
From concept to submission
The sequence is consistent even when the project is not.
We start by testing the concept against the market and the existing supply chain. A surprising number of proposals solve a problem that the intended beneficiaries do not rank highly, or duplicate something an intermediary already provides more cheaply.
Then feasibility: what it costs to build, what it costs to run, who operates it, and what happens in year three when the grant has closed. That last question is where most proposals are weakest and most reviewers look first.
A budget without operating costs is not optimistic. It is incomplete, and experienced reviewers read it that way.
Writing for the reader
Different funders read for different risks. A development bank reads for financial sustainability; a conservation funder reads for ecological outcome; a bilateral programme reads for alignment with its own strategy. The same project, honestly described, needs a different emphasis for each.
We adapt the emphasis. We do not adapt the facts, and we will not write a claim the organisation cannot evidence at evaluation.
What you receive
- A concept note and full proposal in the funder’s required format.
- A budget including operating costs, with the assumptions written down rather than buried.
- A logframe or results framework with indicators that can actually be collected by the people who will have to collect them.
- A governance and procurement section that survives due diligence.
- Support during the clarification round, which is where applications are most often lost.
After the award
We also support implementation start-up: setting up the record-keeping the reporting will require, and the first quarterly report, which sets the tone auditors apply to everything afterwards.