Charities
Stronger bids for charity contracts and grant funded work.
Velstrian Bid helps charities, voluntary organisations and community groups find public contracts and grant funded opportunities that suit them, and answer each one from their own documents, whether the funder is a council, an integrated care board, central government or a grant maker.
Your first 7 days are free. A card is needed to start.
Who asks you to bid
Lean teams, many funders, the same evidence again and again.
Charities, voluntary organisations and community groups, often called the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE), win work two ways. Public contracts are advertised on official listing sites and bought under procurement rules. Grants are where a funder gives money for an agreed purpose and set of outcomes. The questions overlap a great deal, so the same evidence serves both.
What makes this hard is the number of funders and the lean teams. The same questions, about your objects, governance, safeguarding, outcomes and finances, come up on nearly every application, and the person writing the bid is usually also running the service. Reusing a weak or out-of-date answer, or missing a deadline, costs work your community needs.
Velstrian Bid gives one place to find the opportunities, write the application from your own documents, and track the outcomes you promised, which matters most once a grant is awarded.
Search open opportunities with the free Tender Finder, or check application requirements and word counts with the free Tender Compliance Matrix.
How Velstrian Bid helps
From opportunity to a consistent, evidenced application.
One place to find the work, write the application and reuse your strongest impact and governance answers, for an organisation where the person writing the bid is usually also running the service.
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Find the work that fits.
New public contracts and grant funded opportunities arrive every morning, matched to what your organisation does and where. A funder sent you an application pack? Upload it.
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Answer from what you already have.
Each answer is drafted from your past bids, policies, outcomes and case studies, so your impact and governance answers read the same every time. You review every one.
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Keep the claims true.
Every figure has to come from your own records before an answer is shown, so an outcome or a number served is never made up. Where AI helped write an answer, it says so, which public funders now expect.
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Track what you promised.
After you are awarded a contract or grant, keep proof of each outcome you committed to, ready for the funder's monitoring and reporting.
For when you need it
The rules and words, explained.
You do not need any of this to start. Open a line when a rule or a word comes up in a tender.
Where public contracts come from
Public buyers must advertise most contracts on official listing sites. Velstrian Bid reads Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland and EU TED every morning at 06:00 UTC and names the site on every notice. Canada, US federal and World Bank notices are available per organisation on request. Private clients rarely advertise, so you upload the tender they send you.
Contracts and grants
Charities and community groups, often called the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE), win work two ways: public contracts, advertised on official listing sites and bought under procurement rules, and grants, where a funder gives money for an agreed purpose and outcomes. The questions overlap, so a consistent, evidenced answer helps with both. Velstrian Bid gives you one place to track the outcomes you promised, which matters most for grant monitoring.
What funders ask for
Funders commonly ask about your charitable objects, governance and trustees, safeguarding, how you measure outcomes and impact, your financial health and how you manage risk. The same evidence recurs across applications, so reusing a strong, current answer saves a lean team real time. Velstrian Bid drafts each answer from your own documents and keeps your best answers in your Answer library.
Social value
Many contracts and grant funded services ask how you add social value, such as volunteering, local employment and reducing inequality, and a public body may score your answer. PPN 026, the next edition of the Social Value Model, was published on 5 August 2026 and applies to central government procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027 at 1 million pounds inc VAT or above, so it binds central government contracts rather than most grants. Velstrian Bid adds up the figures in code from a curated library of measures aligned to National TOMs conventions (Themes, Outcomes and Measures, a UK way of counting social value).
PPN 017 and AI
PPN 017 is the government's guidance on being open about AI in bids. Velstrian adds a short note to every answer drafted with AI saying AI helped, and a person approves it before it is sent.
Questions
Charity bidding and grants, answered.
Does Velstrian Bid help with grants as well as contracts?
Yes. Upload a grant application pack the same way as a tender, and Velstrian Bid drafts the answers from your own documents. It also gives you one place to track the outcomes you promised, which is what grant funders monitor after an award.
What does Velstrian Bid do for a small charity with no bid team?
It finds the contracts and grants that suit your organisation, drafts each answer from your own policies, outcomes and case studies, and keeps your strongest answers in your Answer library so your impact and governance answers read the same every time. You review and approve every answer.
How does social value apply to charity bids?
Many contracts and grant funded services ask how you add social value, and a public body may score your answer. PPN 026, the next edition of the Social Value Model, applies to central government procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027 at 1 million pounds inc VAT or above, so it binds central government contracts rather than most grants. Velstrian Bid works out the figures in code and drafts the words from your own records.
Will Velstrian Bid invent figures to make an application look stronger?
No. Every figure has to come from your own records before an answer is shown, so an outcome or a number served is never made up. You review and approve every answer, and where AI helped write it, the answer says so.
Find the work. Win it. Prove you delivered.
Start with the contracts and grants your organisation should be applying for this month.