Why the Word “Application” is Misleading
TLDR: Why do so many grant applications fail? We think it’s because the word “application” creates false expectations for those applying. The word “application” makes the task sound formulaic and implies it’d be a simple weekend project. The reality of the task is 30-80 hours of complex work and planning. This linguistic disconnect leads to rushed submissions and missed opportunities. Better terminology which frames the task more effectively would be, “funding proposal” or “funding bid”. This simple reframing alters how you prepare, resource, and will ultimately succeed in producing a competitive grant submission form.
If you’ve ever applied for a grant, this scenario might seem familiar: You think you’ve found the perfect grant for your project. The funding amount aligns with your needs, the criteria seem to match, and the deadline is three weeks away. You confidently tell your team or board, “I’ll handle the paperwork this weekend.” After all, how long can it take to fill in an application form, right?
Fast forward to 3am on Sunday night. You have seventeen browser tabs open, half-finished sections scattered across multiple documents, and a growing sense that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what this task would involve. What’s going on? This wasn’t supposed to be complicated. It’s just an application form.
It’s so common for people to realise way too late that the word “application” creates time and effort expectations that don’t reflect the reality of what applying for grant funding actually needs. This linguistic disconnect leads to missed opportunities, failed submissions, and enormous amounts of wasted time and resources because applications are often rushed and incomplete.
What “Application” Means to Most People
When someone mentions they need to complete an application, their brain makes immediate assumptions about the task ahead based on years of encountering applications in various contexts. This history of applications creates a surprisingly consistent mental model.
Most applications encountered regularly are a page or two long and only require data type answers, like contact details, maybe a few tick boxes, and perhaps some short-form typing. Even long, or ‘complex’ applications that fewer people experience completing feel fairly familiar and/or logical to complete, take for example:
- Job applications that might take an hour or two (perhaps longer for senior positions), but the structure is familiar: employment history, qualifications, a cover letter explaining your suitability.
- Planning applications involve data forms and supporting documents, but councils, more often than not, provide templates and clear guidelines.
- Business loan applications, whilst requiring financial documentation, follow standardised formats with predictable information requirements.
The common thread in those examples is that the process is linear and most importantly, it’s possible to estimate how long it will take based on the number of questions.
This mental model is comforting. It makes the task feel manageable and allows you to plan accordingly. However, this model bears almost no resemblance to what creating a competitive grant proposal looks like – hence the common problem of rushed and incomplete or poorly answered applications.
What Grant Funding Actually Requires
A grant proposal isn’t like most application forms in that they’re not exercises in ticking boxes or in simply sharing easy to find information like contact details or details that are well-known to the applicant like what the business sells or what the organisation does. Instead, they’re documents that must simultaneously accomplish multiple complex objectives:
- Demonstrate alignment with funding body priorities
- Provide evidence of costs and budgets often with quotes, financial records, and contact with designers/planners/architects/construction experts
- Outline measurable outcomes
- Establish your organisation’s capability and demonstrate how the project will be managed
- Create measurable outcomes that align with both your project goals and the funder’s priorities
- Provide evidence about community need or market opportunity through detailed research and stakeholder consultation
- Address assessment criteria that may be deliberately open-ended
- Present a compelling narrative that creates emotional and logical connections in the funding assessor’s mind that position your project as the obvious choice for the funding
Of course, ‘usefully’ (said with sarcasm) the application form often doesn’t spell out that it needs all this information and where in the form to actually put it once you have it. This means that on top of the ‘simple’ data-type information, you are expected to translate the details about your project and capacity to deliver it into the specific language and frameworks that assessors use to judge your submission against every other applicant’s.
So whilst a job application can absolutely be completed to a good standard in an evening or a weekend, a competitive grant application can often take 30-80 hours of solid work, and that’s just the moderately complex ones. Complex grants requiring extensive evidence, multiple outcome frameworks, or detailed budget justifications can easily hit 100 hours once it has gone through several vital rounds of refinement. Each iteration is time consuming, and unlike a job application where you submit and wait, grant proposals demand an extraordinary amount of ‘tinkering’ with as every word counts. Of course, it’s possible to complete an application more quickly than this, but the likelihood of the final product having hit the brief or being competitive is… well… as a professional, let’s just say I wouldn’t fancy its funding chances!
The Consequences of This Language Gap
Misunderstanding the word “application” leaves the common problem of organisations believing they’re facing a form with a three-week deadline. By the time they realise what’s actually required to craft a winning application, they’re attempting to compress 60 hours of work into 48 hours of increasingly panicked scrabbling just to end up with a “That’ll have to do!” submission.
Assessors can identify rushed proposals immediately (two of Whitney Consulting’s senior staff are former assessors and can say this with a high level of certainty and experience!). The evidence is thin, the narrative lacks coherence, and the alignment with funding priorities feels forced rather than genuine. These proposals end up in the ‘unsuccessful’ pile not because the underlying project lacks merit, but because the application didn’t do the project justice.
Then there’s the consequences of resource miscalculation. Organisations underestimate not just time requirements to complete the form, but also the breadth of skills required to do it justice. They assign the task to someone who writes well, assuming that a good level of general writing capability is sufficient in creating standout applications. Competitive grant writing, however, requires more than ‘good writing’. It needs research skills, strategic analysis capability, outcome framework development, evidence synthesis, planning and collation of documentation, and deep understanding of how funding bodies think. Assigning a funding submission form to a project planner or team leader to complete is like asking a medical researcher to write poetry – specialist skillsets are required for each job.
Finally, perhaps the most insidious consequence of misframing the word “application” is the budget shock that occurs if organisations choose to engage a professional grant writer. The cost expectation of “filling in an application” means that when they get quoted thousands of dollars instead of hundreds, it can often come as a bit of a surprise. Having mentally categorised the work as form-filling, these figures can seem outrageous. Some organisations walk away, convinced that grant writers are overpriced, when actually the quote accurately reflects the work required. The disconnect isn’t in the pricing but in their understanding of what “application” actually means.
A Better Framework for Thinking About It
Language shapes how we approach tasks, and using more accurate terminology changes how organisations prepare for and resource their funding efforts. It might be more useful to think in terms of “funding bids” or “funding proposals” rather than “applications” or “forms”. This change of framing that comes with some linguistic tweaks immediately signals what’s required. Preparing a “bid” naturally implies that competitive positioning, differentiation, and presenting projects as the superior choice will be required. Using “proposal” reinforces that you’re proposing something to a funder, not simply applying and hoping by centering the relationship between the project’s benefits and the funder’s objectives.
This article doesn’t mean to imply that everyone needs a specialist grant writer. Many organisations and businesses apply on their own, often successfully, but doing so means approaching the process with accurate expectations about what’s required. Leaders must understand that they need the right combination of time, expertise, and evidence. It also needs them to consider the cost of diverting skilled staff for weeks and ensure that this cost doesn’t exceed that of simply outsourcing the task to a skilled expert.
Regardless of whether you hire a professional or not, the first step to completing a grant application form is understanding what you’re actually taking on, and that’s developing a proposal that positions your project for success. Language matters, because it shapes how you think about the task, prepare for it, and ultimately approach one of the most valuable funding opportunities available to your organisation.
