Red Tape Busters

The experienced tender writer finds it hard enough to get their tender considered after applying and following the guidelines, ensuring that the lodgement time is met and that they have crafted a decent tender response. Tender writing requires some skill to prepare a great application yet a lot of writers ensure their tender response is rejected at the first review by making some simple errors. Here are some of the pitfalls you need to avoid to ensure your application is not rejected without first being serious considered. Remember the assessment panel on first review of all the responses will be seeking to reject as many as possible initially to get down to a manageable number and to make the task easier. Following are the mistakes that will almost certainly see your response put into the NO pile. Failure to answer every question or tick every box on the application form This might seem just plain ridiculous. How can anyone fail to fill out the application form completely? W...

Tender writing can be a very challenging process but the effective tender writer will have a personality, a skill set and an approach that sets them apart from the run of the mill tender writer. I believe the really important qualities that a tender writer needs to possess are an ability to stay calm under pressure; an ability to org anise other people within the organisation and to organize resources, information and supporting documents or material and an ability to develop the strategy and approach that pitches the organisation in the right light to win the attention of those assessing the tender response. I will now discuss these qualities in further detail. Calm Under Pressure Tender writing can be a very pressurized situation. There are deadlines to meet. Responses need to be submitted by a specified time, in a specified format and in a specified way. Sometimes tenders need to be hand delivered, sometimes they need to be electr...

Grant writing is not just about the writing – grant writing is more about the preparation and the development of the strategy. People always ask me about the skills required to be a great grant writer. Everyone always thinks that you have to be someone with experience in writing – maybe someone who writes for a living or someone with a passion for reading/writing novels. To us at Red Tape Busters we focus more on being strategic and getting all our “ducks in a row”. To us the preparation and our strategic approach sets us apart from other grant writing businesses or other grant writers. Our team are all highly skilled writers but they didn't all start at Red Tape Busters with extensive writing experience. We can train and teach people how to improve their writing – it is far more difficult to teach potential Consultants or grant writers how to be strategic, how to prepare and in essence how to significantly improve the chances of success. You can write a great grant submi...

Grant writing can seem to be a complex process and not something for the feint hear ted to take on. However as I always say it isn’t rocket science and there are some strategies you can put in place to ensure your grant submission stands out from the crowd. In this article I will discuss 4 easy steps to grant writing that will help you to win that much needed funding.   {1} Prepare     Preparation is the key. You need to prepare – develop your project concept to ensure it is findable is a key part of the preparation phase. Most organizations have a thought bubble that they need funding for project x – let’s say upgrading fields. So they decide the fields need to be upgraded – they probably haven’t sought feedback from members, players, stakeholders if this is THE most important project requiring funding. Someone on the committee just has a vision of new fields. Now mind you the fields might need to be improved but have they done the groundwork to ponder o...

Our grant writer Brisbane is very experienced in debunking the myths of grant writing for non profit organisations. There are many myths around that really need to be addressed to set those running non profits straight and to reinforce that a good quality grant writer is worth their weight in gold. Myth 1 – Government cuts mean there are no grant opportunities available Plain wrong – yes Government cuts have been savage recently at both the State and Federal Government levels and yes loads of organisations have had their recurrent funding cut and yes some funding programs have been cancelled or disbanded but there still are Government funding opportunities at a Local, State or Federal level, there still are opportunities through commercial entities and there certainly are opportunities available through Trusts and Foundations. Myth 2 – Competition is too fierce for the available funding so why bother Wrong ...