Need help becoming freelance charity bid writer!

[Louchic]

I hope someone out there can help me please. I'm a mum struggling to fit work around my child and always feeling guilty about time spent away from home. I've looked into various ways to work from home and one type of work that appeals to me is becoming a freelance charity bid writer. I have found lots of information on writing bids but nothing on how to get started or the ins and outs of it all. If somebody who does this could point me in the right direction and give me a helping hand I would be very grateful! Thanks for reading x

I do this, but not for charities. Having worked in charities, it’s unlikely they would have the resources to pay someone to do it - it’s usually a trustee or paid member of staff. It’s time consuming and disheartening.

Have you had any experience of bid writing?

If not, perhaps volunteer for a charity for a few months to get your experience up. Your local home-start scheme would probably jump at the chance for some voluntary support like this.

You'll need to think about how you charge? Whether it's a flat rate or a percentage of successful bids?

Do you have experience in charities? If not then being a bod writer is not the job for you. To write effective bids you need to have a really good understanding about how the voluntary sector works, what founders are out there, what individual finders are looking for and how to incorporate specific programmes and projects into a bid to fit those requirements. Without this you can’t write effective bids.

Have you looked at any bid application forms? If not then download an application form from the Big Lottery website and look in detail at what is involved - Awards for all is their entry level form and relatively straightforward but then look at their Reaching Communities Form and look at the level of detail required. I simply don’t think you can write an effective bid without really good understanding of the sector.

There is plenty of work out there for good bid writers but it’s not a job you can do around kids without childcare although you can do a lot of it from home. You will need extremely thorough briefings from the client and will need to spend a lot of time with them reviewing and rewriting. They will often also expect advice and guidance from you around writing the bids and the information to put in and you need to be able to challenge them if you don’t think that their ideas will meet funder requirements

I don’t want to put you off, good bid writers are like hens teeth and can command a very good daily rate but it’s definitely not just a bit of writing up someone else’s notes and if your bids aren’t successful you will struggle to get more work

To add, it’s against the institute of fundraising good practice to charge a percentage of successful bids. You need to charge a set fee or a daily rate. Good bid writers with an excellent track record are £350+ a day and worth every penny but they’ll know their niche inside out.

Hi ya,

Are you still looking for work in bid writing?