Skip to main content
Before you write a word of the application, ask Anara to read past winner announcements, judge profiles, and program descriptions to identify what the funder is actually rewarding. Then map your project to those criteria and find out where you need to reframe. For researchers and founders who want to write to the funder’s real priorities, not the ones stated in the brochure.

​
1. Describe the task

The program description says it rewards innovation and scientific excellence. Every application says the same thing. What distinguishes the winners is something else: a credible route to market, visible societal impact, founders who can explain their work to a non-specialist judge. Most applicants do not read the public record that reveals this. Anara can do the pre-application research pass before you draft anything. It reads past winner announcements, judge bios, and award citations to identify what a program actually rewards. You upload your project description and ask how your work maps to those patterns. Here a chemistry startup founder is applying to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition and has spent two hours reading past winners before realizing the judges are looking for something different from what she initially planned to write.

​
2. Give Anara context

Required context
  • The competition name and the relevant funder. Anara searches publicly available sources.
Optional context
  • Your project description or abstract. Once Anara understands the competition’s actual criteria, it can map your work directly.
  • Any funding opportunity notice or program description document you have already downloaded. Uploading it speeds the criteria analysis.
  • Geographic or sector focus: some competitions weight regional impact or specific verticals; knowing this helps Anara look for the right patterns.

​
3. What Anara creates

A research brief covering what the funder has historically rewarded, derived from public evidence rather than the program description alone. It identifies the stated criteria, the implied criteria revealed by past winners, and the gaps between the two. When you provide your project description, the output extends to a mapping of your work against each criterion with recommendations for reframing. The brief is what you write from.

​
4. Follow-up prompts

​
Map your project to the criteria you found

Once the research brief is complete, run the mapping against your actual work.

​
Draft the application narrative section

When you have the mapping and need to turn it into the application itself.

​
Compare two funding opportunities

When you are deciding which competition to enter before committing the time.

​
5. Tricks, tips, and troubleshooting

​
How you word your prompt shapes what you get

Ask for past winner announcements specifically, not just the competition website. The program description is what the funder says it cares about. Winner announcements are what it has actually rewarded. These are not always the same. Judge profiles add a second layer: if most judges have commercialization backgrounds rather than academic ones, the evaluation criteria are weighted accordingly, regardless of what the program description states.

​
Check the output against your own understanding

Web search pulls from publicly available sources. If a competition has limited public records of past winners, the brief will be thinner. For competitions that do not publish winner citations with rationale, supplement Anara’s research with network intelligence: a conversation with a past winner or panel member is worth more than any public record.

​
What to do with the output next

Complete the mapping before you write a word of the application. Applications written without it tend to lead with the science and leave the commercial or societal case for the end. Once a draft exists, re-read it against the criteria brief and check whether the first paragraph of each section addresses the criterion it should. If not, reorder.