In 2021, I spent about 20-35 hours per week working on my startup, Mockmate, and 20-35 hours per week working on freelance work for clients. Here’s a short summary of my freelance client work, which is mainly writing grants, bids and tenders.
Q1 started with a few grants in the nonprofit cultural field, for Creative Europe and Erasmus+ Partnership for Creativity. I rarely do nonprofits these days, so this felt familiar and retro.
Then I managed a very large tender for DG Comm Media Relations.
Q2 brought the UK Innovate SMART deadline and two proposals for small-medium businesses.
An education startup (edtech) contracted me to conduct research on grants/tenders, and I led a 2 hour training workshop on how to follow-up and submit applications.
Plus another large tender for DG Comm, where I wrote a Case Study on Climate Change and Gen Z. And finally a smaller tender for EIT Entrepreneurship.
In Q3 I had 3 technical/scientific bids covering the European Green Deal, The European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, and the Algae Stakeholder Forum. That last one was super interesting, about algae in the food chain.
Finally Q4, an interesting food tender for DG REA/Chafea, I dabbled in writing material for a pamphlet for the European Animal Health Law. After a long haitus from USA tenders, I got back to it with a bid for the US State Department on antisemitism. And finally, I closed out the year with a tender for the EU Intellectual Property Office.
Overall stats:
Large tenders (< 70 pages, greater than 5 Million): 8
Smaller tenders (>70 pages): 6
Won: 5 + as of May 22, Q3-Q4 bids are still awaiting results
Ideally I’d also collect the approximate number of pages written and the total amount applied for/won, but the idea of going back through my 2021 files (about 3GB) to calculate it. At this time…