Bid writing for charities and NFPs

Our client, Willowdene Rehabilitation, a social enterprise, commissioned us to prepare nine Selection Questionnaires so they could go on to bid for contracts supporting women with complex needs across West Mercia. For many, their chaotic lifestyles lead them to become involved in offending or puts them at risk of doing so, and our client offers services that help them recover from trauma and turn their lives around.

We worked closely with the client, interviewing their management team to identify the evidence to demonstrate their capability, experience, and capacity to deliver successful outcomes for the women, their children and families, and their communities. We also articulated the benefits of the client’s approach to wider society by breaking links with issues that lead people to commit crime.

All nine of these SQs were successful in passing to the next stage of the competition.

We have also supported the client to prepare a tender to the Ministry of Justice to provide residential support to women who need significant intervention to help address substance misuse. Again, we worked closely with the client’s team to understand, and then articulate, their approach and evidence to show it would deliver positive outcomes and benefits.

This was also a successful bid, and the client was awarded the contract.

Freeva (Free from violence and abuse) is a charity that is working towards reducing domestic violence, rape and sexual assault in Leicestershire. They empower and support victims of domestic and sexual violence/assault, and challenge abusive behaviours. They also support perpetrators who recognise the need to change their behaviour. Freeva works to break cycles of violence and abuse to build cohesive families and communities.

We worked with Freeva on three tenders to the Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire.

All three of these bids were successful.

Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW) are a membership organisation for Rape Crisis Centres across England and Wales who deliver specialist services to those affected by sexual violence. They aim to educate, influence, and make change by providing expert information and support.

We supported the charity in 2022 for a bid to develop and launch a service for victims-survivors of sexual violence which would be available 24/7. Two writers supported this high priority bid in which RCEW planned on making a partnership with their South London Centre who currently run the existing national helpline. RCEW already run a Live Chat service, and therefore this bid involved gaining a deep understanding into these services that would amalgamate into one and expand to become a new service for this tender.

This was a successful bid, leading to a contract with the Ministry of Justice.

We supported a small charity in Dover providing practical support and advice to homeless people across the district. We provided support for two bids over 12 months to compete for funding from the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner to advance its work with those with mental health issues living on the streets.

For the project, our writer worked with the charity’s management team to understand the nature of their work, issues they were facing, and how their proposed diversionary interventions would meet the Commissioner’s objectives. These objectives were to have positive outcomes for those being supported and prevent them from becoming victims or perpetrators of crime. Beneficiaries were, therefore, both the homeless individuals and the police, and ultimately, the people of Dover.

These two funding bids were both successful and the charity was able to advance its work in the town.

We worked with a charity based in the South West providing support to women who are victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and were at risk of becoming offenders themselves.

We worked with the client to develop their proposal for the South West Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) to provide a combination of interventions to help the women desist from crime and to help them heal from trauma. For us, this meant interviewing subject matter experts, exploring their solution, and identifying evidence that supported their methodology. We also needed to evidence outcomes for the women and how the service would support the CRC to achieve its outcomes and offer value for money.

This was an urgent project, with a tight turnaround of 3 days to prepare the submission, and we worked flexibly with the client to fit around their schedules.

The outcome was a successful tender with our client being awarded the contract.

Free From Violence and Abuse (Freeva) are a registered charity delivering specialist and holistic support to victims of abuse. They work towards reducing domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault in Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland by supporting and empowering victims, challenging abusive behaviours, and building cohesive families and communities.

In 2023, we provided support for two coinciding bids for Freeva: one bid to secure funding from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), and one bid for provision of a Whole Family Relationship Service on behalf of Leicestershire City Council (LCC).

For the MoJ bid, we provided a team of four bid writers, including one senior writer, to answer both technical and qualitative questions on behalf of a newly formed consortium of four localised charities. We worked with the lead partner to outline how the partnership would use the funding in alignment with the principles of the 2019 End-to-End Rape Review, consequently increasing access to quality support for victims-survivors.

The coinciding LCC bid was an urgent project with a tight turnaround of ten days to prepare for submission. The mobilisation of services for this contract was also expected to begin just three months later, outlining the need for a clear yet highly detailed mobilisation and delivery plan. Our writer worked with the charity’s CEO to prepare answers on mobilisation, staffing, reporting, service operation, and social value. The responses were well received by the charity and submitted on time.