A recent article on the Third Sector website - Why funders rarely give feedback - looks at some of the reasons why funding applications fail and why funders may not provide feedback.... read more.

Tamara Essex has listed the top eleven reasons why applications to the Lottery fail on her blog. Not surpringly the main reason is applicantants not sufficiently demonstrating that they meet the aims of the fund.

As she points out all of the reasons are clearly avoidable. Interestingly, not sufficient money to fund all the applications or too much good comppetition does not feature on the list!

More details from Tamara Essex. It is also worth having a look at some of the other listings on her blog as there is some very good advice there.

The Directory of Social Change (DSC) have produced a report looking at some of the reasons for funding applications being rejected as ineligible. The report is based on research that DSC have carried out with 2,500 funders.

Findings

DSC found that 36% of applications to these funders were ineligible because applications didn't meet funder's criteria, information was missing, or the funder wasn't sufficiently clear in making their criteria known. 113 of the 2,500 found 90% of their applications to be ineligible.

The Report

The report - Ineligible Applications: the Wasted Work of the Voluntary Sector - can be downloaded from the DSC website.

DSC also have a page on their website looking at Top tips to reduce ineligible applications

Follow Up

One of the blogs on the NCVO website has picked up on some of the findings in the DSC report. See 'What can we do about so many wasted grant applications?' for details of the ongoing conversation.