By Mark Winter, managing consultant at 50 Degrees. Mark has spent more than a decade developing bids for public service contracts, working across the private and third sectors in the UK and internationally. Earlier in his career, he worked at ACEVO, where he ran its trading arm. He writes here about what that experience has taught him about business development in the charity sector.
Charity leaders have been reporting the same issue for well over a decade. Grant programmes are oversubscribed, increasingly restrictive, onerous to apply for, or closing altogether. At the same time, government spends billions each year buying the kinds of services charities deliver: employment support, health, housing, community support. So why aren’t you bidding?
Because contracting isn’t just another funding stream. It’s a market to enter, with buyers, competitors and a going rate for the work. A bid is a sale, and you compete for contracts at a price that must cover your costs. Some charities thrive in that market already. Others burn money and goodwill, only to find out they weren’t ready. The difference is rarely luck. It’s preparation, and it starts with an honest review.
What’s your strategy, and do you have a plan? Contracting is a strategic choice, not a reaction to a bad fundraising year. Decide what you’ll offer, which services you’ll sell, to which buyers, and how much of your income you want from contracts in three years. Write it down, ‘own’ that target and review it regularly. Without a plan, you risk chasing everything and winning nothing.
What’s your market knowledge? Who are the buyers, and who are your competitors? Name the councils, health bodies and government departments that buy what you do. Then name who wins that work now (is it even currently outsourced?). If you have operated in your service area for a long time, you’ll likely know a lot more than you think. Award notices on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder show who won recent contracts, and sometimes at what price. If you can’t describe your market, you’re not in it yet.
How will you review the market, and judge what’s worth going for? Set up alerts (see links above), check them weekly, and agree on your bid or no-bid rules before opportunities appear. A simple test works: can we deliver it well, does the price cover our full costs, does it fit our purpose, and can we evidence it? If any answer is no, walk away. Bidding can swallow weeks of your time, and you’re likely already overstretched! So every bid must be targeted, realistic, and intelligence-led, not a shot in the dark. The bids you decline may protect more staff time and cash than the ones you win can recover.
How good is your current grant-writing function? Be honest, because the skills do transfer. If you’re not winning grants now, the same weakness will show in a tender. Tenders ask for the same evidence, approach to delivery, compliance and track record. But bidding can, in theory at least, be easier: the buyer publishes the specification, the weightings and how they’ll score you. Instead of guessing what a funder really values, you’re responding to a brief. But if your applications already struggle, fix that first. Get training or buy in a specialist. If you’re writing the response yourself, get feedback. Three things will lift a bid response faster than anything else. Answer the question the buyer asked (not the one you wish they’d asked), in the order they asked it. Use the language of the specification, so the evaluator can find the marks. And evidence every claim with hard results.
Have you got a grip on the commercials and the real cost of delivering? You can’t price a contract if you don’t know what a unit of your service costs, including rent, management and overheads. Grants can often part-fund a service, but if you’re to be sustainable, a contract must pay the whole bill. Remember, too, that contracts usually pay in arrears, so cash flow matters. If the value of a contract is many multiples of your current income, buyers may not take the risk. Also, contract income can attract VAT where grant income doesn’t. Talk to your accountant before bidding for contracts.
Start in the supply chain
If your income is under £100,000 a year, you don’t need to begin by holding a public contract yourself. Many providers I have worked with started as subcontractors. It’s how they built the experience and track record that government looks for, without carrying the compliance load, the cash-flow gap, and the delivery risk alone.
The Procurement Act 2023, in force since February 2025, requires public buyers to consider and reduce the barriers facing smaller organisations. Just as importantly, social value carries real scored weight in bids, often 10% of the marks or more. Large providers can’t manufacture what small local charities already have: trusted relationships, reach into underserved communities, and outcomes that match what government says it wants to see. The government appears to be increasing social value weightings further still, with a focus on local employment.
That’s currency. Take your offer to the large organisations bidding for contracts in your area. Have a clear proposition: the local connection, the added value, and the community reach you bring to their bid, along with the service you can deliver within it. Subcontracting earns you contract income, gives you named delivery to point to in future bids, and teaches you how this market works, while the prime provider stays on the hook for the contract itself.
What to do next
Put these questions to your team and board and score yourselves. Weak answers aren’t a reason to give up. They’re your development plan. If you’re small or not quite ready to bid yourself, list the large providers delivering public contracts in your area and open one conversation about what you could bring to their next bid. And talk to a fellow chief executive who has already made the shift. Ask what they wish they’d known. In this market, the connected learn faster than the lucky.
If you’d like a more structured version of this exercise, the free Growth Accelerator snapshot from 50 Degrees rates you ‘red’, ‘amber’ or ‘green’ across eight capabilities that we think are the foundation blocks for growth. It takes less than five minutes and shows you where to focus first.