Case Study: How a Quillify customer used Quillify to get $1.2M through Grant subcontracting
Growing your business through grants creates funding channels that many companies miss. A recent case study shows how one company secured $1.2 million in grant-funded contracts by adding their services into 26 different organizations' grant proposals.
This smart approach brought immediate revenue and built a clear path to long-term enterprise partnerships - without competing directly for grant funding. The company developed a repeatable method to find aligned grant opportunities, build compelling service packages, and embed their solutions into multiple organizations' grant applications. You can apply these proven steps to expand your own funding opportunities and client base.
Strategic Grant Funding Opportunities
Imagine securing enterprise contracts and exploring strategic use cases of grants to grow your business. This case study focuses on a Quillify customer who successfully leveraged the platform to be written in as a line item on the budget of 26 different organizations for a specific grant with an enterprise value of up to $1.2 million, completely funded by the grant opportunity. The successful implementation of this grant will likely lead to longer-term enterprise contracts worth much more.
Helping Small Businesses Understand Commercialization Potential
This customer of Quillify, which wishes to remain anonymous, provides a specific service related to helping small businesses understand their commercialization potential. They service organizations such as:
Incubators
Accelerators
Tech transfer offices
Business centers
The company used Quillify to keep track of all the opportunities where someone may be able to take advantage of their service, not to get a grant for themselves but for another organization that could execute on a project using their service.
Discovering the Build 2 Scale EDA Grant
Three months into their Quillify subscription, the company found an EDA grant called Build 2 Scale, which aims to fund organizations like Business Development Centers (BDC) to create programs that stimulate small business commercialization. These programs could include investment vehicles like VC firms, venture studio firms, or incubators and accelerators.
Upon discovering this opportunity, the company knew they could reach a couple of BDCs within their network. They developed a plan to reach out to all 50 of these BDCs in America with a compelling offer.
Analyzing Grants and Developing Offers
The company used Quillify generally to analyze the grants that came in, determining how much each grant was worth and how much they could ask for as part of the grant. They developed their offer accordingly, considering factors such as:
What each specific BDC should apply to this grant under
How much money they should ask for to accomplish this purpose
How they should be written into the budget as a line item
What services they should specifically provide
How to position their service as essential and complementary to the overall project and its goals and needs
Essentially, they were doing the bulk of the grant research for each individual BDC. Under normal circumstances, this would have taken hundreds of hours, but with Quillify's AI grant writer, the proposal included the bulk of the grant research and they spent only a few minutes of additional effort per BDC.
Leveraging Grants for Risk-Free Service Trials
The important aspect here is leveraging the grant to make use of the company's services. While a larger grant is preferable, and the company can likely overcharge a little if they help the business secure the opportunity, the primary goal is to establish an in with the organization to try their services risk-free, as it's being paid for by the grant. This allows the organization to experience the advantages of using the company's solution and services, increasing the likelihood of converting them to a high-value client once the grant is over.
Determining Eligibility and Availability
After understanding what they could offer and ask for, and how they would be written into the grant proposal, the company focused on determining which organizations had bandwidth and were eligible for the grant. They also considered the time remaining until the grant proposal submission deadline.
In this specific case, their search alerted them about a month before the deadline, giving them four weeks to act. The company spent the first week analyzing the grant, determining the feasibility of their ask, and crafting their pitch. The following week, they pitched to all 50 BDCs.
Securing Commitments from BDCs
With two weeks remaining before the grant deadline, the company secured commitments from 26 of the 50 BDCs. These centers were willing to apply for the grant and write the company in as a line item on their budget with a negotiated price tag.
Business Growth Through Grant Partnerships
This Quillify customer was able to effectively reach out to the BDCs because they had previous encounters with a number of them and with an authority figure, the president of the consortium, which the BDCs were all part of. They got the offer distributed to all 50 through this person with his blessing and recommendation that everyone take it seriously and that it's quite an exciting offer.
Building a Foundation for Success
For many businesses seeking grants, having prior experience working with the federal or state government is often necessary before being successful on their own. The way most businesses tend to succeed when applying to grants is by being written in as a subcontractor or a line item in an actual federal grant opportunity. This builds a history of work and a pattern of success that will create the foundation for them to then go and apply to other grant opportunities that they might want to execute on themselves. Thus this strategy of using grants to secure enterprise contracts is dual-use in establishing credibility of this company.
Aligning Services with Grant Opportunities
This Build 2 Scale EDA grant was perfectly aligned with the commercialization services that our customer at Quillify provided. In most cases, it was pretty straightforward to say, "This BDC will spin up a venture capital arm with some seed funding using matched funding from this grant. Our unique angle will be being able to analyze the commercial opportunity and the business development that this specific company that's inquiring for capital has available to them."
Consistency Across Organizations
One important thing they had to keep in mind is that all the BDCs talk to each other. Putting something in writing for one means the others would find out. They had to ensure that all of the pitches and offers, while unique to the individual organization, made sense between all the organizations that were going to apply. This strategic use of grants and enterprise contracts can lead to significant business growth opportunities through these partnerships.
Strategic Use Cases in Multi-Organization Grants
Expanding your business through grants can be a game-changer, and multi-organization grants offer unique opportunities to secure enterprise contracts and pilot programs that showcase your offerings to potential long-term customers.
Aligning Your Service with Grant Opportunities
Picture this: you have a packaged service that perfectly aligns with the focus of multiple organizations applying for the same grant, such as the 26 BDCs. Each center has its own proposal for the grant, outlining their specific offerings. To make the most of this opportunity, you'll need to determine your pricing for each center and establish an execution time limit for a pilot program partially covered by the grant. Don't forget to include a description of how the centers can upgrade to a full program purchase after the pilot.
Structuring a Winning Pilot Program
A well-structured pilot program is key to securing long-term partnerships through multi-organization grants. Here's an example of how you could set it up:
Three-month engagement at $$$
Evaluate 1,000+ small businesses for their commercial opportunities
Provide a clear path for centers to continue working with you beyond the grant period by purchasing your services using their own budgets
This approach allows the BDCs to try out your service essentially for free, as the grant covers the initial funding. If you deliver a successful pilot program and the grant yields positive results, the centers will have the data they need to justify investing in your services for the long haul.
Streamlining the Grant Application Process
In the past, evaluating grant opportunities, identifying potential partners, and structuring individual proposals for each organization was a time-consuming process. One organization discovered that even with a full-time effort from multiple people, they only managed to secure a handful of organizations to include them as a line item on their budget.
But there's a better way. By using Quillify, the same organization streamlined the process and achieved impressive results. In less than a day, they crafted grant proposals for all 26 BDCs and sent them out with a two-week timeline. The outcome? All 26 centers were able to submit for the grant, which they would have otherwise missed due to the tight deadline. Quillify's efficient platform made it all possible.
Embracing Strategic Use Cases
Embracing the strategic use cases of multi-organization grants can open doors to new business opportunities and long-term partnerships. By crafting compelling pilot programs and leveraging tools like Quillify, you can:
Streamline the grant application process
Showcase your value to potential clients
Secure enterprise contracts that drive your business growth
So, what are you waiting for? Start exploring the possibilities of multi-organization grants and take your business to new heights!
How to Replicate this Method Yourself
Offering a multi-million grant can be an attractive first engagement when your business interacts with an enterprise client. You'll write the bulk of the proposal for them, provide the service they need to execute on it, pre-negotiate your part in the grant, and all they have to do is accept it by writing you in and fine-tune the grant application to submit for themselves.
Enabling Business Growth
This sets you up as an enabler of their business, providing essentially free money for their business development and growth. It allows them to do things they would not have otherwise been able to do. Once the relationship has been established and the deal closed, these organizations will have a positive view of your business, even if they don't get the grant.
They may evaluate using your services in the short term before the grant gets announced. Providing the same opportunity for many businesses increase the odds of your success. Some of them will win the grant, while others may not. However, all of them will seriously evaluate whether they want to personally buy your services.
Benefits of Applying as a Service Provider
Applying to a grant as a subprime or service provider on the grant opportunity provides several benefits:
You get a history of work with federal grants
Guaranteed business paid for by the grant
The ability to charge what you like within reason
As long as it makes sense and doesn't detract from the quality of the application, you can put free money into their pockets that they would not have been able to access otherwise. Grant funders carefully vet applications to ensure there's no fraud, abuse, or excessive waste with grant funds. While you can ask for a good amount, you should not ask for unreasonable amounts.
Quillify's AI Grant Writer Can Help
Quillify's AI grant writer can generate grant proposals by understanding an organization's history, current state, and potential future by leveraging the grant funds. It can perform all the required grant research and write the entire budget plus budget narrative, providing an approximate value of the services the funder would expect to see. This gives you a great starting point to work from and customize plans for each organization. All you need to do is input the organization's "about us" page or impact report into Quillify to make this possible.
Our platform has helped companies obtain millions in grant-funded contracts through smart partnerships. Let our team show you how Quillify can improve your grant strategy and build strong connections with funded organizations. Book a demo now and put our AI-powered solutions to work for your strategic business expansion.
