Celebrating 100% NRRHIP Success

Melbourne, Australia July 6, 2010 – The results of the latest NRRHIP funding round (a competitive program providing $46 million for health infrastructure and equipment in small rural towns) were announced today. The 4^th round attracted 302 applicants from all across Australia, 42 of them (including 4 clients of Grant Solutions) being successful.

Each of the 42 successful applicants received a personal phone call congratulating them... with the official confirmation (funding agreement, bank account details, and etc) due to arrive shortly. Concurrently, 260 letters were sent to unsuccessful applicants, providing an opportunity to obtain application feedback and to reapply for the 5^th NRRHIP round.

Ross Turetsky, Managing Director of Grant Solutions, explains… “With 302 NRRHIP submissions, an application had to be in the top 13.9% to be approved”. Grant Solutions submitted 4 NRRHIP applications on behalf of their clients, and all were successful.

Getting comfortable in his ultra-ergonomic office chair, Ross is not surprised by this exceptional result (the probability of which is just 0.04%) … he expected it. “Two of our clients applied by themselves last year… and were unsuccessful… so they came to Grant Solutions because they wanted a different outcome this time around”.

“Getting government grants is our core business. This is what we do during business hours and what I primarily ‘think about’ after hours”.  Ross admits that running Grant Solutions is certainly not a typical 9-5 arrangement. "When your clients depend on you… there is no such thing as ‘downtime’...at least not in practice".

So what’s the secret to getting NRRHIP grants?

“Well, it’s a LOT of hard work… which is why most applicants don’t put in enough time and effort” Ross explains. “Our consultants spent days reading through NRRHIP guidelines and policy documents, trying to understand what outcomes the government was trying to achieve with the allocated funding.

They also talked to perspective NRRHIP clients, trying to understand their projects… in order to establish eligibility and merit potential. Senior consultants then developed a grant application strategy and spent around 70-90 hours addressing the selection criteria. Quality assurance then further refined the applications until they were close to 100%”.

The final step Ross is reluctant to talk about.  “Look, I would rather not go into details because it’s our unique IP”.  TRIZ is something Ross discovered while developing an innovation framework at Westpac and has refined over the last 5 years.  "Our MBA qualified consultants got the application 90% there… then TRIZ got it over the line. It’s our competitive advantage… without it, all we'll be doing is ‘writing stuff’ … just like some grant consultants out there”.

In the next couple of months, Grant Solutions will travel around Australia, presenting their clients with large commemorative cheques.  “These days when an applicant is successful, the government pays electronically… companies don’t even get a cheque. So we’ll make the day memorable by giving clients a large commemorative cheque and perhaps a bottle of bubbly”. It’s also a good PR exercise for Grant Solutions.

“When businesses contact us, some don’t believe our success rate is close to 100% …especially in competitive programs where 75%+ of applicants are rejected”. Having photos with clients holding large cheques should help address this… although there will still be skeptics. That doesn’t bother Ross, who believes that they’ll eventually come to Grant Solutions once their friends and business associates get government grants with our help.

“I’ve long ago learned that it’s nearly impossible to convince anyone of anything… and that’s why we only work with clients who want to work with us” says Ross. Fortunately for Grant Solutions, their 100% success rate with NRRHIP applications will ensure a flood of enquiries for the next NRRHIP round.