Bid writing is a different discipline from grant writing, and many fundraising teams in Kenya and across Africa were only ever trained in the second.
When an organization answers an open grant call, it is explaining a change it wants to create and why the funder should back it. When it answers a competitive Request for Proposals, the funder has already decided what it wants done. The organization is competing to deliver it, against a published set of requirements, and it will be judged in two rounds.
More than 40% of proposals never reach the second round. This guide explains why, and sets out the process I teach for getting through.
What is a bid in development funding?
A bid is a competitive response to a formal solicitation, usually a Request for Proposals (RFP) or a Request for Quotation (RFQ), in which an organization sets out how it will deliver a specified piece of work, at what price, with what team, and on what evidence of past performance. Unlike an open grant proposal, a bid is judged against the funder's own specifications and evaluation criteria.
An RFP gives detailed specifications of what the funder wants, directions for preparing the proposal, and the evaluation criteria that will be applied. An RFQ asks mainly for price quotes, with brief narratives on matters such as quality control. In both cases the funder dictates the format, the technical content and often the award terms, and there is usually a hard deadline. If you are unsure which kind of call you are holding, start with grant, bid, tender or EOI.
In Kenya, public-sector tenders run under the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act 2015, regulated by the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority and advertised on the Public Procurement Information Portal. UN agencies post opportunities on the UN Global Marketplace, and bilateral donors and their lead contractors run their own portals. The discipline is the same across all of them.
How is bid writing different from grant writing?
| Grant proposal | Bid | |
|---|---|---|
| Who defines the work | You do, within the funder's priorities | The funder does, in the specifications |
| First hurdle | Fit with the funder's strategy | Administrative review for full compliance |
| What is assessed | Need, design, credibility, fit | Response to specifications against published criteria |
| Budget | You propose it | Usually capped, often on a prescribed template |
| Track record | Helpful | Frequently decisive, supported by references |
| Relationship | Often influential | Cannot rescue a non-compliant submission |
The adjustment that matters most is this: in a bid, you are not persuading someone to share your vision. You are showing an evaluator, line by line, that you meet what they asked for.
Administrative review comes before technical review
This is the finding that changes how teams work, so I will state it plainly.
Competitive RFPs usually go through an administrative review before any technical review. The administrative review checks for 100% compliance with the guidelines: format, size, length, font, budget ceilings, the submission deadline, the number of copies submitted and the correct contact details.
From my experience, and from discussions with donors and grant evaluators, the reason given most often for why proposals fail is simply that they do not follow the guidelines. More than 40% of proposals fail because of not following the guidelines set. An excellent technical proposal that fails administrative review is never scored at all.
Deadlines are the harshest example. A proposal submitted late, even by a minute, is likely to be disqualified.
How do you write a bid? Eight steps
Step 1. Review the call and decide whether to apply. Read the full solicitation before anyone commits time. Only submit a proposal if you can fulfil all of its requirements. Anything else wastes the funder's time and yours. More on this decision below.
Step 2. Identify the right partner, if you need one. Many calls are best answered as a collaborative proposal, with one lead organization and others delivering parts of the work. Decide this early, because it changes the team, the budget and the track record you can show.
Step 3. Set up a multi-disciplinary team and read every requirement together. Proposal writing is teamwork. Programme staff know the detail of the work, finance staff build the budget, research staff supply baseline information, and communications staff find the case studies. One person must still be responsible for getting the proposal done.
Step 4. Build a requirements checklist before drafting. List every requirement in the guidelines, seek clarification from the funder on anything unclear, and use the list to cross-check the proposal before submission. This checklist is what gets you through administrative review.
Step 5. Hold a stakeholder meeting, then appoint a lead writer. Bring together representatives of beneficiaries, partners and collaborators to agree the goal, purpose and objectives. Then appoint one lead writer to produce the first draft, rather than asking five people to write five sections that never fit together.
Step 6. Run a proposal workshop. Agree the objectives, activities and design, with technical people leading on the interventions that will be budgeted for. The workshop should produce a complete first draft.
Step 7. Have someone outside the writing team review it. The reviewer peer-reviews, edits and, for an RFP, checks compliance line by line against the checklist. The people who wrote the proposal are too close to it to see a missing annex or an exceeded page limit.
Step 8. Validate, package and submit early. Share the final draft and budget with stakeholders in a validation workshop so the proposal is endorsed for submission. Then prepare the submission letter, package the documents exactly as required, and submit well ahead of the deadline.
Answer the specifications, not your own logic
Evaluators compare proposals against the criteria they published, often under time pressure and across many submissions. Donors are busy people, and in a competitive process they compare how each organization has framed its activities and strategies.
So structure your response the way the funder structured the request. If the evaluation criteria give the most weight to technical approach, then to team, then to past performance, your proposal should follow that order and spend its effort in that proportion. Mirror the funder's own wording, so the evaluator can find each answer without hunting for it. Read the questions carefully and answer them directly, without adding extra information.
Pricing: clear, itemised and defensible
Muddled pricing, inaccurate figures or cost ranges that are too broad all tell the funder you do not fully understand the work. Present an itemised, easy-to-follow cost breakdown and make it clear what each figure pays for.
How price is scored depends on the solicitation. Some procurements, particularly public-sector ones, award to the lowest evaluated compliant bid. Many donor and UN solicitations weigh quality against cost, so the cheapest bid does not automatically win. Read the method before you price. Under either approach, a price far below the field suggests you have misunderstood the scope, and if you win at that price you will struggle to deliver.
Check the budget rules as carefully as the narrative: whether overheads are allowed and at what rate, whether fee rates are capped, which per-diem rates apply, and whether the ceiling is firm. Breaching a budget ceiling is an administrative failure, not a technical one.
A realistic implementation plan
A funder must be convinced that you understand the programme and that, if funded, implementation will run without hitches. That can only be shown through a practical, realistic implementation plan with credible timeframes.
Unclear timeframes damage a bid in the same way muddled pricing does. Be as accurate as you can.
Track record and references
Positive testimonials and strong references carry real weight in a bid. Nothing is more convincing than evidence from people who have already benefited from the kind of work you are proposing.
If your organization cannot yet show comparable work at the scale a call requires, bidding as a partner under a stronger lead organization is a legitimate way to build that record. In a collaborative proposal, the lead organization's submission must set out the roles of each partner, the management arrangements, and the advantages of working together.
Collect testimonials and references as you deliver work, so they are ready when a call asks for them.
Reuse past bids, carefully
There is nothing wrong with reusing sections from past proposals. Some material, such as organizational background, policies and standard methodologies, is relevant to almost every submission. But read every reused paragraph and make sure it fits the funder you are writing to now. A proposal that reads as one-size-fits-all tells the evaluator you did not take their call seriously.
The decision to bid, or not
Not every call deserves a response. Before committing anyone's time, ask:
- Do we meet every eligibility requirement, without exception?
- Can we fulfil every requirement in the guidelines?
- Can we evidence comparable past performance, with references?
- Are the right people available for the whole delivery period?
- Is the budget ceiling realistic for the work as specified?
- Do we have enough time to run the full process properly?
- Do we need a partner, and do we have the right one?
If several answers are weak, decline and put the effort into a call you can win. This is the same discipline that drives good donor mapping: prioritise the opportunities that fit.
Why bids fail
The most common reasons proposals and bids are rejected:
- Failing administrative review on format, length, budget ceilings, documents or deadline
- Answers that do not follow the funder's specifications and criteria
- Unclear or inaccurate pricing
- An unrealistic implementation plan or unclear timeframes
- No testimonials, references or evidence of comparable work
- Generic, recycled content that does not fit the funder
- Poor packaging and writing that make the proposal hard to read
For the grant-side view, see why grant proposals get rejected.
Bid writing is a system
Grant writing rewards a compelling case. Bid writing rewards a process: a disciplined decision to apply, a requirements checklist, a proper team, an outside reviewer, a validation step and early submission.
African organizations that build that process can compete credibly for work that has too often gone elsewhere by default. I set out the full proposal development process in The Art and Science of Designing Projects and Writing Winning Proposals, and the complete grant writing guide covers the underlying craft.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a bid and a grant proposal?
A grant proposal is your case for funding work you have defined within a funder's priorities, assessed largely on need, design, credibility and fit. A bid is a competitive response to work the funder has already specified, usually through a Request for Proposals or Request for Quotation, judged against the funder's specifications and published evaluation criteria after an administrative review for full compliance.
Why do most bids and proposals fail?
Most fail because they do not follow the guidelines. Competitive requests for proposals usually go through an administrative review before technical review, checking for full compliance on format, size, length, font, budget ceilings, deadline, number of copies and contact details. More than 40% of proposals fail at this stage, which means they are never scored on their technical merit.
How do you write a winning bid?
Review the call and decide whether you can meet every requirement, identify a partner if needed, set up a multi-disciplinary team, build a requirements checklist, hold a stakeholder meeting and appoint a lead writer, run a proposal workshop to produce the draft, have someone outside the writing team review it for compliance, then validate it with stakeholders and submit well before the deadline.
What is administrative review in a request for proposals?
Administrative review is the first screening stage in many competitive requests for proposals. Before evaluators look at the technical content, the submission is checked for full compliance with the guidelines: format, size, length, font, budget ceilings, the deadline, the number of copies and the correct contact details. A proposal that fails this check is usually eliminated without its technical content being scored.
Who should review a bid before submission?
Someone outside the proposal writing team. That reviewer should peer-review and edit the draft and, for a request for proposals, check compliance against every requirement in the guidelines. The writers are too close to the document to notice a missing annex, an exceeded page limit or a budget that breaches the ceiling.
Can a small NGO bid without a track record?
It is difficult to win as the lead organization without evidence of comparable work, because funders rely on testimonials, references and past performance. A practical route is a collaborative proposal led by a stronger organization, with clearly defined roles, management arrangements and added value for each partner. Meanwhile, collect testimonials and references as you deliver work, so the evidence exists when a call asks for it.
Dr. James Ngungu Njagu, PhD is a resource mobilization and fundraising advisor with more than 25 years of experience, and the author of The Art and Science of Designing Projects and Writing Winning Proposals. Resmob Solutions runs proposal and bid writing training in Kenya for NGOs, universities, corporates and government agencies.
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