What you get
- A compliance check against every requirement in the funding notice or guidelines.
- A mock score for each criterion, using the funder's own scale, with the reasoning.
- Margin comments on the draft marking where points are won and lost.
- A revision plan ranked by effect on the score, so limited time goes where it counts.
- Optional: we make the revisions ourselves, from line edits to restructuring.
Grant proposal review is an independent read of your draft before submission, done the way the funder's reviewers will do it. We check it against every requirement in the funding notice, score it criterion by criterion on the funder's own scale, mark the draft where points are being lost, and give you a revision plan ranked by impact. If you want, we then make the revisions ourselves, so the review becomes a full grant editing service.
Why the author is the wrong person to judge the draft
The people who wrote a proposal know what they meant, so they read intent into gaps a reviewer will see as missing. They have stopped noticing the requirement on page nine of the notice, the acronym never defined, the objective that is never evaluated, the budget line the narrative never mentions. Internal review rarely fixes this, because colleagues share the same context. A reviewer who sees only the page, and the scoring sheet, sees what the panel will see.
Our analysis of why grants get rejected shows how often strong projects lose on responsiveness and compliance rather than substance.
What the review covers
Compliance. Eligibility, page and formatting limits, required sections and headings, attachments, forms, and consistency between forms and narrative. A proposal that fails here is not scored at all.
Responsiveness. Whether each criterion is answered where a reviewer expects it, in the order and language the funder uses.
Mock scoring. A score for each criterion on the funder's scale: points out of the maximum for a federal program grant, the NIH 1 to 9 scale for the scored factors, an NSF-style overall rating built on Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, or a structured rating against a foundation's stated priorities. Each score comes with the reasoning a reviewer would write.
Substance. Whether the need is evidenced, the objectives measurable, the plan feasible, the evaluation adequate, and the budget consistent with the narrative.
Clarity. Whether a reviewer outside your specialty can follow the argument on a single read.
What you receive
A scored review with the reasoning for each criterion, margin comments on the draft itself, a compliance list of anything missing or out of format, and a revision plan with the changes ranked by their effect on the score. "Add two local data points to the need statement" is useful; "strengthen the need" is not. A team short on time fixes the top of the list first.
Then you choose. Your team can revise from the plan, or we can make the revisions: line editing, rewriting weak sections, or restructuring the whole draft to follow the criteria. If the review shows a draft needs rebuilding rather than polishing, we will say so; for federal applications that usually becomes a full federal application engagement.
Resubmissions
If you were declined and received reviewer comments, an NIH summary statement or a federal panel's feedback, the review starts there: which criticisms are fixable, which reflect a misreading the next version should prevent, and which point to a deeper problem with the project. For NIH, it also covers the one-page Introduction; see NIH grant writing for how we handle those.
What you provide, and timing
Send the draft, the funding notice or guidelines, any required forms already completed, and prior reviewer comments if you have them. A review is most useful when there is time to act on it: send the draft at least two weeks before the deadline for a long federal application, less for a short foundation proposal. The review turnaround is counted from payment, when the engagement begins. and we confirm the delivery date at scoping.
For a self-check before sending a draft, our grant proposal checklist covers the baseline items, and our annotated sample proposal shows a complete one for comparison.
