The best way to learn how funding applications are assessed, and therefore how to write them better, is to become an assessor yourself.
Read time: 2 mins
The act of reading other people’s applications, determining how well they address the assessment criteria, and having to score them, will give you fantastic insights into what works well and what fails miserably. If you’re on an assessment panel, you will also meet other assessors, some of whom will have many years of experience, from whom you can learn.
Being an assessor can require a considerable time commitment, but it does look good on your CV. In fact, as your career progresses it will become an essential part of your track record.
With some schemes (e.g. ARC), you are required to become an assessor as a condition of being funded by that scheme – in other words, you have to ‘give back’. This process is automatic; just wait to hear from the funding body.
In all other cases:
