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I’m writing a bid

If you’re looking for funding for a digital service, these principles can help you write an effective bid. The funders involved in this work all recognised the value of these principles in delivering effective digital services.  

Four principles in particular are helpful when pulling a bid together. Use them as a checklist of things that show your funder you have completed the right research and have the right approach to deliver a successful digital project.

Start with user needs and keep them involved. All funders have more applications than funds, so they need to know that your proposal is really meeting a service user’s need. Can you articulate the evidence from user research that identifies a need among your service users?

Understand what’s out there already. Funders need to make the best use of their money, so they need to know what they are funding is really needed, and isn’t duplicating what’s out there already.

Build the right team. You need to give the funder confidence that you will be able to deliver the project through having built the right team of technical, subject and user expertise.

Build for sustainability. Do you have a clear and realistic understanding of the costs of your proposal – taking into account now just the costs to launch the project but ongoing costs?

Your checklist

Start with user needs, and keep them involved
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  • I have researched directly with my user group to understand their needs from their perspective. This means understanding their behaviours, attitudes and needs. For example, I’ve conducted semi-structured interviews with users or undertaken or contextual research
  • I have a plan to continue to engage with my intended service users over time, such as conducting usability studies
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Things you might have:
  • User needs based on user research
  • Personas
  • Jobs to be done
  • A research plan for ongoing usability testing
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Tools you can use:
  • User needs – the Government Digital Service has great guidance on identifying and writing up user needs
  • 1:1 user research interviews – here’s a handy how-to for charities on NCVO
  • Personas – there’s lot of guidance on the web, this is a helpful overview on Personas
  • Jobs-to-be-done – this Harvard Business Review article a is useful introductory article, more practitioner-focused information can be found on these dedicated sites jtbd.info and jobstobedone.org  
  • Usability testing – Nielsen Norman group have many good resources like this introduction, Steve Krugg has published two very helpful introductory books
  • Contextual inquiry, or shadowing – there’s a good introduction here
  • Form software such as Typeform or Google Forms can be helpful for signing up users for research and gathering short bits of information
  • Acumen parted with IDEO.org to produce a free introductory course to human centred design – Acumen / IDEO Human-centred Design Course
Case studies

Youth Business International

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Understand what’s out there first
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  • I have looked both inside and outside of my sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that offer something similar to what I’m trying to do and achieve a similar social outcomes
  • I have looked both inside and outside of my sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that are using a similar process or technology
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Things you might have:
  • Market scan, competitor analysis or map of other services out there already doing something similar
  • A business canvas showing how your product or service differs from what’s out there
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Tools you can use:
  • Alidade can help you create a plan for finding technology tools that suit your social change project
  • Charity Catalogue helps nonprofits easily and quickly discover the best online tools and resources
  • Nesta’s DIY Toolkit has been designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results
  • Squarespace, Tilda and Github pages can be useful for creating simple websites
  • The Lean Canvas and Superhero Canvas can help you map out what’s unique about your service.
  • Tech trust marketplace gives charities tailored access to discounted software
Case studies

Refugee Action

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Build the right team
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  • I have dedicated technical resource, whether in-house or through an external agency
  • I have senior management buy-in
  • I have access to expertise in the social area I’m working in
  • I have users represented, either through an ongoing plan for user research, or through their involvement directly in the work
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Things you might have:
  • Contracted teams of staff who are clear on the budget and timescale of their work
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Tools you can use:
Case studies

Shelter

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Build for sustainability
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  • I have mapped out the likely ongoing cost of the service depending on its growth. That includes future technical development, marketing and staff support costs
  • I have considered the lifecycle of the service, and when the service might need to change, or be retired. For example by considering it against the GDS stages of an agile project
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Things you might have:
  • An Agile roadmap and a rough budget based on required people and resource
  • An ethical revenue generation model, so you have the money to evolve the product
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Tools you can use:
Case studies

Breast Cancer Care

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Other things you might want to consider:

These items are part of a larger overall Checklist for Charity members. Take a look at the whole collection here:

The Charity Checklist

See the Checklist

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