You’ve found the perfect bid or grant opportunity for your business or practice. The submission deadline is looming. You’re starting to stress. I’m here to help. Here’s how:

Alice-Anne Writes combines my experience in and knowledge of the creative and design sectors and my love of writing.

From art museum director to bid professional

I’ve worked in the Australian visual arts and design sector for over 30 years. I’ve launched and managed public art museums and multi-arts centres. I’ve supported artists by hosting (often their first) solo or group exhibitions and helping them with grant applications.

I’ve served on numerous evaluation panels for competitions, grants, and tenders. This experience gave me a unique insight into why submissions win or lose.

More recently, I’ve worked with built environment and design consultancies, creating and managing business development initiatives.

My guiding light: clear communication

Persuasive writing is critical to professional practice and crucial to winning work.

As an evaluation panel member, I’ve seen talented people with competitive concepts miss out on a contract or funding.

Having read applications and submissions containing confused descriptions, unclear approaches and vague claims, I want to help submitters get it right. ‘Right’ means writing plainly and to the point, answering the questions asked.

Alice-Anne Writes … to help you win

The cornerstone of my bid writing and design agency is winning work for creative people and projects. Your talent is conceiving and producing the work. My talent is extracting ‘selling points’ from your words to persuade evaluators.

Engaging me as your bid writer means you can focus on providing remarkable client solutions and designing amazing things. Meanwhile, I’ll be dedicating my expertise to your success.

Submitting a generic suite of responses won’t win the job. My approach is to understand the client’s needs and write responses that meet those specific needs. I manage the bid process by:

start at the end

Meeting the deadline is, of course, the most crucial part of the submission process. Working back from the closing time, I map milestones and tasks. I manage the submission workflow.

Go/no-go and capture planning

I can help you decide whether the proposal is worth submitting. If your decision is ‘go’, I create a capture plan, which distils the bid requirements and our agreed-upon responses. It’s a rationale and roadmap for how we’ll win.

writing

There’s an art to translating information (often technical) into clear written responses. I can work independently with the raw material you send me or in tandem with your designated subject matter experts. The choice is yours, and I’m here to make the process as easy and efficient as possible.

Editing, proofing, polishing

In a perfect world, there'd be ample time before a deadline to check, rewrite, polish and re-polish text. In reality, breathing space for editing is rare. That’s why I’ve developed speedy and efficient checking and sign-off processes.

design and layout

I’m a dab hand at completing schedules and response forms in Acrobat or Word. However, my best contribution is designing supplementary material. Pictures (and diagrams) say a thousand words. Using your brand elements, I create visually appealing and compliant addenda that showcases your work and illustrates your points.

Coordination

There are often many (stressed) cooks in a bid development kitchen. I can calmly help you coordinate deliverables and inputs from dispersed and distracted people. This includes arranging WIP meetings and check-ins, engaging headshot photographers, fact-checking and updating profiles.

In these roles, I've:

I’ve worked with bid team members, practice managers and/or directors of these firms.

As Queensland State Manager for the Australian Institute of Architects I worked with over 2,000 members. I coordinated Chapter Council and special interest committees including Education, Heritage, Practice, Regional and the Emerging Architects network.

My role also involved both written and in-person advocacy to government agencies and committees and peak stakeholder groups including the Board of Architects and Architects Accreditation Council of Australia.

I worked closely with allied member organisations including Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, Engineers Australia and the Planning Institute of Australia.

I managed the annual Queensland Architecture Awards, including editing and proofing project citations from multiple juries.