Should I ask a funder why my application was rejected?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same position, with no difference in principle — the funder practice described here is not jurisdiction-specific, and the funders concerned operate across the UK. Northern Ireland: the same position, for the same reason.

Why feedback on a rejected funding application is thin

Thin feedback is normal practice across funders, and one funder has published research that shows it. That changes how you should read the two sentences you are about to get back. The rejection goes in the tracker you set up when you tracked your applications and responded to funder questions.

The Garfield Weston Foundation commissioned a survey of its own applicants and published what it found. Only 36% of unsuccessful applicants rated the foundation’s reasoning as very or quite clear. The benchmark it was measured against — an average across 13 other funders — was only a little higher, at 42%.

Read that twice. A funder paid for research into whether its rejections made sense, discovered they often did not, and published it anyway. The sector’s own numbers say that thin feedback is normal practice. Most funders are not much better at it than the one that admitted the problem.

So the reply may say “we received more applications than we could fund”. That is probably true, and it is probably all you are going to get. It is not code for anything. Treating it as a hidden message about your project is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

How often are funding applications rejected?

Most are. The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation publishes its whole funnel, and it is the only complete one this guide found.

• 11% of eligible expressions of interest reach an assessment call.
• 52% of those go on to a full proposal.
• 91% of full proposals are funded.

Compounded, about 5% of eligible expressions of interest end in money. The large majority do not.

That is one funder, and other funders will differ. But it is the only funnel anyone publishes, and nothing else in this guide’s survey contradicts it. A charity that is rejected four times out of five is not doing badly. It is experiencing the ordinary arithmetic of grant funding.

The shape of the funnel carries the more useful message. The brutal stage is the first one, which is why the care goes in when you read and decode the funder’s criteria.

Almost every application that fails, fails at the early screen — and almost everything that survives to a full proposal is funded. So the effort that changes outcomes goes into eligibility, fit and the first few hundred words. It does not go into polishing a proposal you have already been invited to write.

Which funders publish success rates?

Of the eleven largest funders this guide surveyed, eight publish neither a success rate nor their reasons for refusing applications. That includes the National Lottery Community Fund, the Heritage Fund, Comic Relief and Lloyds Bank Foundation.

The absence is itself worth knowing. It means a charity asking “what are my chances?” cannot get an answer from most funders — and it means any website quoting a sector-wide success rate is quoting a figure nobody measured. Be suspicious of one.

BBC Children in Need’s published rejection reasons

BBC Children in Need publishes the reasons applications are turned down. It is the most specific list any funder in this guide makes public, and it is worth reading before you apply rather than after.

• not meeting the Minimum Standards for Grantmaking — safeguarding, governance, finance — the most common reason an application is not even assessed
• weak evidence of the difference made to children, insufficient disadvantage criteria, or insufficient inclusiveness or consultation
• organisational capacity, financial viability, or unsecured match funding
• weak project planning or budgeting
• requests that are a statutory body's responsibility

The first one is the one to sit with. The commonest reason an application is not funded is not that the project was wrong. It is that the organisation did not clear a governance and finance screen, so the project was never assessed at all.

That is fixable, and it is fixed in the governance and reporting hubs rather than in the next bid. It takes a current policy set, and accounts on the register once you file your accounts.

One honest caveat about this list. The page it comes from is dated 2021 and now sits in the funder’s own archive, although current pages still link to it. Treat it as published guidance that may have been superseded, and check the live pages before relying on any single line.

How to ask a funder for feedback

Ask once, in writing, within a week or two of the decision. Keep it short, with a question the funder can answer in a line.

• Thank them and accept the decision. Not politeness for its own sake — you are asking a favour of someone who does not owe you one, and you may well apply again.
• Ask one specific question rather than “why?” The most useful version is whether the application failed on eligibility, on fit with the programme, or only on available funds. Those three have completely different consequences for you.
• Ask whether you may apply again, and when. A resubmission is a new application for the same project to the same funder. Some funders bar one for a period; some invite one; some will say what would need to change first. This is the single most valuable thing the reply can contain.
• Do not argue. A rejection is not an appealable decision, and contesting it costs you the relationship you are trying to keep.

If the answer is thin, let it be thin. Chasing a fuller explanation rarely produces one. The Garfield Weston research says why: the funder often does not have a crisper reason recorded than the one it sent you.

Logging the rejection and moving on

Write it down in the tracker while it is fresh. Use three lines: what the funder said, what you think happened, and what will change next time.

The third line is the one that makes the step worth doing. Sometimes it is nothing — the fund was oversubscribed and the application was fine. Sometimes it is a pattern you can only see across several rejections, which is exactly what the log is for. If two funders in a row raise governance or finance, the next task is not another bid.

Then go back to the funder list and pick the next one: that loop starts again where you find funders that genuinely fit. It is a better use of a bad afternoon than rewriting the application that has just been refused. If the answer was yes instead, the next step is to read and negotiate the grant agreement.

Common mistake: treating rejection as a verdict on the project

It feels personal, because the application was personal. The arithmetic says otherwise: on the only published funnel available, the large majority of eligible expressions of interest do not end in a grant. Rejection is the normal outcome, not the exception. And the funnel’s shape shows that most applications fail at the first screen, before anyone has formed a view about the project itself.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO is rejected and receives two sentences of feedback: more applications than funds, and the trustees wish the charity well.

That is typical, and the research says so. Tollgate logs it: the date, the programme, the two sentences, and one line of its own — “no information about fit; assume oversubscription; nothing to change.” It asks one question by email, whether it may apply again next year, and gets a one-line yes.

The following year it applies to the same funder for the same project, with the budget updated. That is a reasonable decision precisely because the feedback contained nothing to act on. What would not be reasonable is rewriting the project on the strength of two sentences that said nothing about it.