RedKnight has its office in Cardiff, and is located in the heart of the city’s professional services district.

With every passing deadline, our success rate fluctuates. However, it typically falls between 38% and 50%. We are extremely proud of this achievement at a time when some competitions have a success rate of less than 10%!

We pride ourselves on making life as easy as possible for our clients. Our bid-writing consists of three phases:

• Draft version
• Optimised version
• Final version.

Delivering our service in this way keeps the process structured and means the client isn’t endlessly reviewing drafts. In parallel with this process, we will also collate all necessary information to create supplementary documents e.g. appendices and financials. We’ll even upload it to the portal and click the submit button!

We like to allow between 4 and 6 weeks to develop a comprehensive funding application. If you’re applying as a single entity then 4 weeks is often sufficient. If you are working in collaboration, additional time is required to collate information and allow the full project team to review drafts.

Due to the size of our team and the number of applications we submit each year, we cannot offer a no-win no-fee service. However, our charges are extremely competitive with industry norms and our testimonials speak for themselves!

We operate a mixed model costing structure with an upfront fee for the bid-writing and a success fee if the application is successful. The upfront fee is based on the page limit of the application and the success fee is a % of the grant we help you secure. For a detailed quotation please contact our team today.

The UK definition of SME is generally a small or medium-sized enterprise with fewer than 250 employees. The European Commission adds that they must have either an annual turnover not exceeding €50 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding €43 million.

SMEs make up around 99.9% of all businesses in the UK, and so are enormously important to the UK economy. For grant funding, there are also issues that relate to the company’s status i.e. whether it is strictly autonomous, a partner, or a linked enterprise. We can help you to ensure that you are eligible in this respect.

There are a number of issues that affect whether your company is eligible to access a particular funding stream. You should consider:

• Company size – some programmes are designed for SMEs only whilst others may just need an SME in the consortium.
• Consortium size – some programmes are designed for single entities, just one SME for example whilst others need a group of partners fulfilling discrete roles.
• Location – some programmes require companies to be in different countries. This is typical of many European funding schemes.
• Company status and ownership – whether you’re an autonomous or linked or partner company is an important aspect which can affect your eligibility. (See SME ).
• Your innovation project idea – different funding streams may have different ideas about the level of development of your project – the starting point and where it’s expecting to end up. This is usually defined by Technology Readiness Levels.

Be aware that different competitions within the same overall funding programme can also have different eligibility criteria.

Different competitions have different rules, but you can generally apply to multiple competitions at the same time. However, if you are successful with more than one application for the same project, you will need to decide which fund to progress with.

On 24th December 2020, the UK Government announced that it had reached a post-Brexit agreement with the European Union. Importantly, the deal confirmed that the UK will continue to participate in a number of EU programmes for the period 2021-2027. This includes Horizon Europe – the EU’s €95.5 billion framework for research and innovation, for which it will have Associated Country status. You can find more information here.

1. Fundamental Research – the earliest stage of research and development, where an organisation undertakes experimental or theoretical work to gain new knowledge of “underlying phenomena and visible facts.”
2.  Feasibility Studies – a feasibility study involves analysis and evaluation of a project’s potential to support the decision-making process.
3. Industrial Research – it involves planned research or critical investigation to gain new knowledge and skills.
4. Experimental Development – the use of existing knowledge and skills in order to develop a new or improved product. Projects may involve prototyping, demonstrating, piloting, testing, and validation in environments representative of real-life operating conditions.

Created by NASA in the 1980’s, the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale is a tool to help measure the current developmental stage of a piece of technology. Most funding programmes expect applicants to have an awareness of where their technology sits on the scale. In fact, most competitions will only fund technology between certain points. You can find an introduction to TRLs here.