About Us
Your guides to innovation funding
Welcome, to Grantwise—your trusted guides to non-dilutive funding success. Here, we blend strategic expertise with imaginative storytelling, helping your groundbreaking ideas stand out and succeed.
Our philosophy
Grantwise guide innovative organisations on their quest for funding success, crafting high-scoring, award-winning applications that shine. No generic templates. No lifeless, machine-generated bids. Just bespoke, expertly tailored proposals that distil the brilliance of your innovation into funding-winning masterpieces.
Why we are right for you.
Proven Expertise
Our founder’s track record speaks volumes, with successes spanning almost all industry sectors, growth stages, and funding bodies.
Bespoke Strategies
No one-size-fits-all formulas. Each proposal is a hand-tailored narrative designed to standout against AI generated templates to grant evaluators; enabling you to gain maximum marks without being marked down.
Magical Storytelling
We translate complex ideas into narratives that resonate—captivating minds, sparking imaginations, and inspiring evaluators to say “yes.”
Long-Term Partnership
Think of us as your funding companions committed not just to a single application, but a partner who will accompany you throughout your development, proactively ensuring you maximise your grant funding potential at every stage.
Who we are.
Dr James MacFarlane
CEO
Dr James MacFarlane
Having spent over 15 years at the forefront of innovation, prior to founding Grantwise, James supported >300 UK businesses to design technology development roadmaps and has secured over >100M in non-dilutive funding for his clients.
James has deep experience with Innovate UK awards, EU funding streams (Horizon) and Scottish Enterprise and enjoys working with companies in various sectors, including medical devices, agritech, green tech, advanced materials and digital solutions.
Previous to his work in innovation consultancy, he left academia, supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to launch a startup that commercialised his research into radiological contamination, for which he received the prestigious ERA Foundation Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
James has deep experience with Innovate UK awards, EU funding streams (Horizon) and Scottish Enterprise and enjoys working with companies in various sectors, including medical devices, agritech, green tech, advanced materials and digital solutions.
Previous to his work in innovation consultancy, he left academia, supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to launch a startup that commercialised his research into radiological contamination, for which he received the prestigious ERA Foundation Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Frequently asked questions
What grants are available to me?
The most effective grant schemes are those that closely align with your company’s roadmap and objectives. By developing a strategic grants roadmap, you can maximize your chances of success when new competitions are announced. These opportunities often appear regularly but come with tight deadlines—typically as short as four to six weeks.
Get in touch to learn how we can match your innovation with the right scheme and help secure the funding you need.
Get in touch to learn how we can match your innovation with the right scheme and help secure the funding you need.
What sectors have you worked in?
We’ve navigated funding applications across a broad spectrum of sectors and awarding bodies. We have successfully secured funding from AgriTech projects including next-gen crops to to medical devices to fintech digital solutions and everything in between. So whether your ideas is in engineering biology at the molecular level, medical devices enhancing human health, or sustainability-driven technologies shaping a greener future, our experience ensures we can adapt, strategize, and enchant the right funding opportunities for your unique innovation.
What are the next steps?
Here’s how we can move forward:
1) Reach Out & Connect: First, get in touch with us. We’ll schedule a quick consultation to understand your innovation, goals, and current position on the funding map.
2) Discover Your Opportunities: Next, we’ll analyse your tech, and align it with the most promising grant schemes, pinpointing the competitions that are best suited to your project to maximise success.
3) Craft a Bespoke Roadmap: Once we’ve identified the opportunities, we’ll guide you through the preparation you need to undertake by designing a grants roadmap that ensures you’re ready to go swiftly when the opportunity arrives.
4) Begin Your Journey: With a clear plan in place, we’ll help you create compelling, high-scoring applications that enchant evaluators and secure the funding you need to advance your innovation.
Simply put: reach out, explore your options, craft a plan, and let’s embark on this adventure together. Your next step is to contact us—ensure we are a good fit, and from there, we’ll create some funding magic.
1) Reach Out & Connect: First, get in touch with us. We’ll schedule a quick consultation to understand your innovation, goals, and current position on the funding map.
2) Discover Your Opportunities: Next, we’ll analyse your tech, and align it with the most promising grant schemes, pinpointing the competitions that are best suited to your project to maximise success.
3) Craft a Bespoke Roadmap: Once we’ve identified the opportunities, we’ll guide you through the preparation you need to undertake by designing a grants roadmap that ensures you’re ready to go swiftly when the opportunity arrives.
4) Begin Your Journey: With a clear plan in place, we’ll help you create compelling, high-scoring applications that enchant evaluators and secure the funding you need to advance your innovation.
Simply put: reach out, explore your options, craft a plan, and let’s embark on this adventure together. Your next step is to contact us—ensure we are a good fit, and from there, we’ll create some funding magic.
I have a failed application, can you help?
Simply, yes.
As a longer answer: we have plenty of experience breaking down assessors comments (which are often contradictory to each other) into actionable improvements to a bid. We consider the application as a whole, and often when assessors disagree, it is a result of an early narrative question.
Reach out and contact us—and from there, we’ll form a path forward to maximize your chance of resubmission.
As a longer answer: we have plenty of experience breaking down assessors comments (which are often contradictory to each other) into actionable improvements to a bid. We consider the application as a whole, and often when assessors disagree, it is a result of an early narrative question.
Reach out and contact us—and from there, we’ll form a path forward to maximize your chance of resubmission.
Start today
Get in touch with the team today, and start your funding journey.