Before you ask anyone for a quote
What you'll pay a bid writer, and what changes it
What should this cost? Below are the fees charged here, and what moves a quote up or down whoever you buy from, so you can read anybody's price and know what you are paying for.
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What moves the number
Two suppliers can quote very differently for the same opportunity and both be reasonable. These are the things the gap is usually made of.
- How many scored answers there are, and how long each one is. A tender with fourteen quality questions is a different piece of work from one with three, whatever the contract is worth.
- How much of your evidence already exists in writing. If your outcomes, your case numbers and your policies are written down and current, the writing is faster and the quote should show it.
- Whether you want it checked or written. A review reads what you've drafted and marks it against the criteria. Writing starts from your evidence and a blank page. It costs more because it is more work.
- How the marks are split. Effort follows weighting, so a scheme that puts most of its marks on one section changes where the hours go and what the work is worth.
- How much time is left. A short run makes some evidence impossible to get, and a quote that ignores that is quoting for a document rather than for a result.
Every one of those is arithmetic, so any honest quote can be taken apart along those lines.
The fees charged here, and what sets them
What a bid writer costs depends on whether you want a draft checked or a document written, and on how many scored answers there are. Checking a draft you've written yourself is £195 for a charity and £395 for a company or a tender. One written grant application or small tender is £500 to £2,500, and a full tender written from scratch is £1,950. A month of applications starts at £750 a month for a charity and £1,500 a month for a company. Every one of those fees is fixed in writing before the work starts.
What to ask before you pay anyone
These are the questions worth putting in an email, whoever you're talking to. The answers tell you more than the headline number does.
- Is the fee fixed before the work starts, and does it move if the work turns out longer than expected?
- How many rounds of changes are inside the fee, and what happens on the round after that?
- Who owns the words afterwards, and can you reuse them on the next application?
- Who presses submit, and who is responsible if the portal closes first?
- Is anything payable on a result, and is it a fixed amount or a share of what you win?
- What happens if the funder's guidance or the buyer's clarification changes the question halfway through?
- Is there VAT on top of the number you've been given?
Take the last one first. The fees here are what you pay, and there is no VAT to add.
Why the figure is hard to find
Look up half a dozen bid writers and most of them will route you to a call before they give you a figure. That is not dishonest. Scope varies. It does mean the research you're doing right now is harder than it should be.
That's the gap this page is trying to close. The fees on this site are published for that reason, so you can price the option before you speak to anybody. You can also hold any quote you get against what was published on the day you read it.
What each piece of work buys
- A bid review is one read against the published criteria, your budget or pricing schedule checked line by line, and the weakest answers named with the fix. Rewriting is a separate job and it is quoted first.
- A grant application or a small tender, written comes out of your own evidence, against the criteria it's marked on.
- A full tender, written covers the quality answers, the method statements and the social value section, with the compliance list.
- A month of applications runs with no minimum term and a month's notice either way. At the charity entry band that is £9,000 a year.
The full fee tables, including what a month at each band includes, are on the pricing page.
Is anything payable when you win?
Yes, once. There's one payment on a result in each lane, and each one is agreed in writing before any work starts. The figures are printed on the pricing page, so you can see them before you send anything.
On a company tender you choose the shape of that payment. The fixed win bonus is the same amount whatever the contract turns out to be worth. The other is 5 per cent of the first-year value of the contract you win, capped at £15,000 and agreed in writing before anything begins. You pick before any work starts and it doesn't change afterwards. A charity's payment on an award stays a flat amount and is never a share of the grant, because grant money is normally restricted to delivery.
Which of the three is right for you
All three are bought to make a bid you have decided to enter a better one. If you've already drafted it and you want to know what's weak, that's a review. If you've got the evidence and no time to turn it into answers, that's a written application. If the same problem comes back every month, a retainer costs less per application than buying them one at a time.
If you're still deciding whether this one is worth bidding for at all, work through the bid or no bid scorecard first. It's free, there's nothing to sign up for, and it takes about the time a quote request would.
Price this one against the three quotes you get
You hear back within 24 hours. If you send a deadline, you hear inside one working day whether we can meet it, and that comes before you pay anything.