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Bid-writing support

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A big part of my job, as I have said before, is to support income generation for the University. This income normally comes through what we call “third stream funds”, which means anything outside the traditional routes of tuition fees and government funding. So it basically means pursuing external funds for various purposes, including research, market research, enterprise projects and development.

Bid-writing

For such funds to be obtained, we first need to go through a long process called “bid-writing” – in other words, writing applications to external funding bodies in order to convince them that we have the relevant expertise and specialization to be awarded the grants they’re offering.

How does bid-writing work?

Obviously each institution has their own rules and policies on how to go about bid-writing and putting in applications for external funding. In my institution, we work closely with the academic concerned, as they are the ones who will be using up the funds. The academic fills out the specialized parts of an application – i.e. how they plan to go about doing the research or managing the project etc. Our office helps by providing full economic costing analysis for the amount applied for, proofreading the application to make sure it’s in plain English, adding supporting data, and occasionally obtaining references to support the application. Also, more often than not, we are the ones who will chase signatures from the academic’s managers, and the ones who will actually gather all the required documents and submit the application. Keep in mind that all this often needs to be done within very tight deadlines.

It’s hard work, but whenever a bid is successful and a grant is awarded, it’s great satisfaction!

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Written by Christina Tsirou

I work for Roehampton University in South West London as the Research and Business Engagement Officer. The Research and Business Development Office, which forms my department, was created recently, and therefore I am the first holder of the above mouthful-of-a-role. This is very exciting, as I get a lot of freedom in forming tasks and developing areas of responsibility for the post. At the same time, it is also very challenging, as how things will be organized and work in practice remains to be seen. Together with the rest of the team, I contribute to various aspects of the so-called “third stream income generation activity” on behalf of the University. Third stream income is a relatively new term, meaning revenue that comes from outside the traditional sources of government funding and tuition fees. Some sources of third stream income can be Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, IP Commercialization, business start-ups and spin-offs, Development and Innovation Grants, executive courses, and partnerships with the private and public sectors. I am also heavily involved in the team’s efforts to encourage entrepreneurial thinking and work across campus by coordinating internal and inter-collegiate events and workshops for both students and academics. Finally, part of my work is devoted to fostering strong links with the local community, mainly through relationship-building events.

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