External Research Funding: Support Resources
Colleagues in Research, Business and Innovation (RBI) have developed a comprehensive collection of self-serve support resources to help researchers, at any career stage, understand the process of applying for external funding, and the support available to them.
Developing Your Bidding Skills
Resources to support bidding activities include:
- Developing a bidding strategy. This guide takes you through how you can identify strategic research aims and the steps you will need to take to achieve them.
- A summary of the funding landscape. This document explains both different types of funding available (such as research grants, fellowships, and KTPs), and the range of UK funders (including the research councils, academies and trusts, and government funding).
- Information about the internal bidding process (also see the PIMS training videos)
- Writing a funding application. This guide covers what the project lead needs to consider, and include, when drafting a funding application. Also see the Tips and Text for bid writing document.
- An introduction to costing a project, which sets out different costs that may be involved in a project, such as staff costs, costs for different types of research, travel and accommodation, and other non-staff costs.
- A bidding checklist, for project leads to ensure they follow all necessary steps involved in submitting a funding application.
- Information about tenders (see the main resource page) and the process for tender submissions.
Self Service Resources
Guidance has also been developed to help researchers navigate and understand:
The Invest in Yourself programme is a researcher skills development programme, with sessions coverings aspects such as ‘Planning for Impact’, ‘Using infographics’ and ‘project Management for Researchers’. Colleagues can sign up through ESS.
The Internal Research Funding page explains the internal funding available, and how to apply.
Also see the following useful external resources:
- Pivot RP (funding search platform) and guidance videos for Pivot RP
- The UKRI Funding Finder
- The Gateway to Research (a search platform to discover what projects UKRI have previously funded)
- Guidance on writing a narrative CV (where you’ll find a video by University of Glasgow and a narrative CV presentation).
Who Can Help
The Grant and Award Hub can help with the internal and external processes relating to submitting funding applications, PIMS, using Pivot RP, and Researchfish submissions.
See the Research and Knowledge Exchange team intranet page for information about the team, how we can help with developing bids, and who the support contacts are for each college. For any questions email us at research.uwe@uwe.ac.uk.
The Impact Team can help ensure impact is embedded throughout your bid, and Business Services can help connect you with the business community, who may be potential end users of your research or project partners.