December 31, 2016
If you are interested in securing multimillion-dollar grants, you’ll soon hear that you need to conduct a competitor analysis. If you want to win, the thinking goes, you need to know who your potential competitors are and their strengths and weaknesses.
Although it sounds like a good idea, in practice, a competitor analysis rarely (if ever) makes a difference when it comes down to writing the proposal. Hours go into researching competitors and summarizing their programs, funding, and presence, but ultimately, few people pay much attention to the compiled information.
So why is the competitor analysis done if it doesn’t deliver any real value?
There are several arguments for conducting a competitor analysis, some more persuasive than others. However, the main (if unspoken) benefit of completing one is to give an organization a sense of control. Having a competitor analysis in hand fosters the belief that everything possible is being done to create a winning proposal. The value of the security and confidence this belief creates should not be dismissed. The key is to remain aware of the limitations of the competitor analysis process and not lose sight of other activities that could have a greater impact.
What Is Covered in a Competitor Profile?
Competitor analysis in the context of grant writing involves compiling information on organizations that perform similar work to your organization. Collecting information on competitors can be an ongoing activity for some organizations. For others, the profile work begins only when a funding opportunity of interest is anticipated or released.
When completing a competitor review, the organizations of greatest interest will be the ones that consistently tend to pursue the same kind of grant opportunities as your organization. However, these same organizations are also your potential collaborators because of your shared interests. In fact, you probably know your major competitors quite well because you have partnered with them in the past and see representatives from these organizations on a regular basis at professional meetings, conferences, and workgroups. Most likely, you, or members of your staff, have been employed by one or more of your major competitors.
But knowing who they are may not feel like enough. This is where the competitor analysis comes in. You may want to compile as much information as possible on the current status and activities of your well-known competitors. In addition, you may want to dig deeper to identify any lesser-known organizations that could pose a new or emerging threat to you.
As part of building a profile of a competitor, you might want to collect some or all of the following information:
Organizational Structure
Does the organization have non-profit or for-profit status?
Does the organization work alone or does it work with partners? If it has partners, does it have multiple partners that vary by project or does it have a fixed group of partners it works with as part of a consortium?
Does the organization regularly work with subcontractors? If so, who are the main ones (and does your organization also work with them)?
Current projects
What are the names, project periods, and focus of the organization's current projects?
Who are its funders?
Financial Status
Is the organization doing well financially? Did a large project recently end, and now it needs to replace the funding stream?
Did it just land a huge contract? Could the organization be too busy with start-up activities to pursue another large grant at this time?
Hiring trends
Has the organization laid off (or hired) a lot of employees recently?
Does it appear to be actively recruiting in anticipation of a funding opportunity that your organization is also interested in applying to?
Interests
Is the organization trying to move into new areas (like the ones typically dominated by your organization)?
Does the organization have a comparable (or even greater) capacity to lead a particular kind of project than your organization?
Staff
Who are the key people at the organization?
What are the strengths of the staff (what unique skill sets, if any, is it known for)?
Location
Where (city/region/country) does the organization work?
Where is it headquartered?
Does it have other office locations?
Reasons to Complete a Competitor Analysis
One rationale for conducting a competitor analysis is that the insights it yields will inform a proposal that more effectively profiles organizational strengths. Armed with the knowledge of your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can write the proposal in a way that highlights your organization's strengths and counters the strengths of your competitors.
A second argument for conducting a competitor analysis is that it helps identify your main competitors.
Once you identify your primary competitors, you can seek to reduce competition by inviting some of them to join your team. This could remove one or two competitors from the field, which is good news. The downside of this “win” is that adding partners to your team immediately adds complexity to the proposal process.
A competitor analysis can positively impact your work. The problem isn't so much with the information as with the time spent collecting it relative to the benefits received. Fortunately, there is an easier way
Talking to Your Colleagues May Be Better Than Research
A more efficient way to gather information about competitors than online research is to talk to your colleagues. Find out what they know. Not only will it be a faster way to get information, but you’ll also likely receive more relevant, actionable insights. While talking to colleagues is a step in the traditional competitor analysis process, under this scenario, talking to your colleagues is where you begin (and possibly end) the process. Based on what you learn from your colleagues, you'll decide what to do next, which may or may not involve doing further research.
In most cases, a short conversation with co-workers will quickly identify the organizations you have the greatest likelihood of bidding against. With this information in hand, you can decide what to do next. If you determine you need more information to evaluate the threat a particular organization poses, you can start your online research—but now it will be a targeted search for specific information rather than a broad sweep.
It is reassuring to create detailed profiles of your competitors. However, if the information you amass will not impact your decision to apply to a funding opportunity or how you plan to approach the proposal, it isn't worth doing. In comparison, by talking to your colleagues, you are gathering kernels of information, deciding what you need to know more about, and collecting the information you actually need to make decisions.
Focus on Being Responsive to the RFA
If you ask funders why a proposal was not funded, 9 times out of 10, you’ll be told it wasn’t responsive. The request for applications (RFA) is your guide, and when it comes down to writing a winning proposal, it’s the only thing that matters.
It is more important to write a proposal that is responsive to the RFA than to write a proposal that counters your competitors' strengths.
Think about it this way: When you prepare your cover letter and resume for a specific job, are you thinking about all the other applicants who might be applying for the job and what they have on their resumes? Probably not. You are thinking about the job description in front of you, what you know about the employer, and how best to present your skills, your story, and your experience so you appear to be a strong match for the advertised role. You are focused on aligning with the job description and the employer’s needs.
The same applies to an RFA. The RFA is the job advertisement. If you want to spend a few hours researching your competitors, that's fine. It may uncover useful information about potential partnerships or give you an idea of how stiff the competition will be for a particular opportunity.
However, before you dedicate a lot of your time to researching your competitors, ask yourself how you’ll use the information collected and what practical benefit it will have on how you approach the proposal. If the answer is that you already know you will submit a proposal and already have an outline and strategy for your response, you may have all the information you need.