Grant funding is an extremely competitive process. Only top-scoring applications are successful.
The Innovate UK SMART competition is on of the most competitive grant funding streams, with success rates of 5 – 10%. Only the top-scoring applications will be considered for funding, meaning applicants need to score over 80% to have a good chance of success.
The EIC Accelerator is extremely competitive, the success rate under Horizon 2020 was ~2.5%. Only the most promising and game-changing projects are supported.
Other themed competitions receive fewer applications but remain competitive. The average success rate across all competition sits between 15-20%.
Over recent years we’ve seen the score required to achieve success increase significantly. A few years ago you could score 75% but now we’re looking at more at the early 80s – 82 % to 83 % for success. The success score depends on what scheme you’re applying into. The more themed a competition is the more chance there will be fewer high-quality applicants so the lower the funding threshold. Whereas if you go into an open call then you do need to be up at 83/84 % so it’s very competitive.
As experts in writing funding applications TBAT pride ourselves on the ability to provide clients valuable, high-scoring applications to maximise their chance of success. For Innovate UK applications we have an overall success rate of 76%.
To maintain awareness of funding thresholds and assessor expectations we track feedback and review assessor commentary to pick up on the detailed nuances of what they’re looking for. Our clients benefit from these learnings as we can provide pointers and insights to maximise the scoring potential of an application. Please contact us to discuss further.
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