What’s up with Smart?
Late in September, Innovate UK announced the results of the latest round of Smart Grant, their flagship R&D grant programme supporting the most innovative SMEs in the UK. The email included a breakdown of statistics for this round of Smart Grant:
“We received 1,645 submitted applications for this competition and 1,348 were sent for assessment. The lowest funded project in the Stream 1 (6-18 months projects) scored 86.1% and the lowest funded project in the Stream 2 (19- 24 months projects) scored 89.4% in this competition. The highest funded project in the Stream 1 (6-18 months projects) scored 95% and the highest funded project in the Stream 2 (19-24 months projects) scored 96.1%. With the funding we have available, we were able to fund 46 projects.”
This means a success rate of 2.8%. A quick analysis of stats from Freedom of Information Requests made to Innovate UK in 2023 shows the trend to higher numbers of applicants and lower success rates. The three Smart Grant calls in 2023 produced success rates between 3.1% to 5.5%. Now we have seen the success rate drop under 3% in 2024.
What is driving the lower success rate in Smart Grants?
There are a few factors to consider here:
- AI Tools: As an R&D grant writing company, we have been contacted by numerous tech companies offering us AI-based grant writing tools. “Speed up the grant writing process” is the core sales pitch of every offer. More grant applications delivered in less time inevitably means lower success rates (assuming public funding budgets remain constant). So, grant writers’ adoption of AI is one driver of lower success rates in Smart Grant (one of the more accessible and template-able grant programmes).
- Call Budget: Each Smart Grant call (normally 4 per year) has a budget of £25m. This figure has not been adjusted for some years now. While everything else has become more expensive, the call budget for Smart Grant has remained constant, in effect reducing >10% in this period of high inflation. So, a non-inflation-linked Smart Grant budget is driving lower success rates.
- Accessibility: Smart Grant has been designed to be open, accessible and straight forward to both eligibility and application. The funding is attractive – around £350k of non-dilutive and non-repayable funding per project at the upper limit of Stream 1. So, the admirable approach taken by Innovate UK in making Smart Grants accessible is attracting a growing number of applications – and driving a lower success rate.
What can be done about low success rates in Smart Grants?
My thoughts:
- SMEs need to see Smart Grant as a backup option instead of the first port of call. Make every attempt to find more specific thematic grant calls. Look beyond Innovate UK. For example, the EU-programme Eurostars offers a similar amount of funding per project (€360k) and is proud of a 29% success rate.
- Government needs to increase the Smart Grant budget and fund more of the most innovative SMEs in the UK. A no-brainer.
- Innovate UK need to put up a few more barriers to applicants. This could be achieved by setting broad themes for each round of Smart over the year to reduce applications by technology or target sector.
What about the rise of AI?
At Venturenomix we are exploring how we can best use AI to improve the quality (not quantity) of our work, both for our clients and our writing team. We have all attended courses on AI in Grant Writing and we have a shared knowledge base about how to use AI tools (Chat, Claude and Perplexity). We have found these incredibly useful in:
- Notetaking during online meetings
- Initial market, competitor and current state-of-the-art research
- Cutting 430 words down to 400 words
- Checking references and sources
We remain curious about the application of AI in grant writing. We are using it to drive quality, not speed. We continue to help our clients set an overall strategy for identifying and securing R&D grant funding, not chucking applications into Smart.
Alex Chalkley
I have over 20 years experience in founding and scaling businesses, mainly focused on the non-dilutive funding sector. Since 2008, I have built, trained and mentored teams to successfully draw down over €100m in non-dilutive funding from the UK and EU for clients spanning multiple sectors.
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