Research a grant competition

Before you draft an application, Anara reads past winner announcements, judge profiles, and program descriptions to show what a funder actually rewards, then maps your project to those criteria. Use it to write to the funder's real priorities, not only the stated ones.

Prompt

A chemistry startup founder researches the Royal Society of Chemistry's Emerging Technologies Competition before writing her application.

I am applying to the RSC Emerging Technologies Competition. I need to understand what this competition actually rewards, not just what the guidelines say.

Search for: past winner announcements for the RSC ETC going back five years, judge and advisory panel profiles, any program descriptions or evaluation criteria published by the RSC, and any post-award coverage or interviews with winners.

Based on what you find, tell me: what is the pattern across winners? What do they have in common that goes beyond "scientific excellence"? What does the competition appear to weight most heavily that is not stated in the program description?

What to add to your library

• Required: the competition name and funder. Anara searches publicly available sources.
• Optional: your project description or abstract, so Anara can map your work to the criteria.
• Optional: any funding notice or program description you have already downloaded.
• Optional: your geographic or sector focus, since some competitions weight regional impact or specific verticals.

What you get

• A research brief on what the funder has historically rewarded, drawn from public evidence.
• The stated criteria, the implied criteria revealed by past winners, and the gaps between them.
• With your project description, a criterion-by-criterion mapping with recommendations for reframing.

Follow-ups

Map your project to the criteria.

Here is my project description. Map it to the criteria patterns you identified. For each criterion, tell me: does my project meet it as described, does it meet it but I have described it poorly, or does it genuinely not meet it? For the gaps, tell me whether I should address them or whether they are outside the scope of what this competition rewards.

Draft the narrative section.

Using the criteria mapping and my project description, draft the 500-word project narrative for the application. Lead with the strongest fit to the competition's actual priorities, and frame the scientific contribution in terms the non-specialist judges will find credible. Cite the specific criteria you are addressing in each paragraph.

Tips

• Ask for past winner announcements specifically. They show what the funder has rewarded, not what it says it values.
• Judge profiles matter: a panel with commercialization backgrounds weights criteria accordingly.
• Competitions with few public winner records produce a thinner brief. A conversation with a past winner fills the gap.
• Once drafted, check that the first paragraph of each section addresses the criterion it should. If not, reorder.