We bring over 20 years of experience on both sides of the grant funding relationship — writing bids, assessing them, and managing what happens after the money is awarded.
Vantage Grants Assessors was founded by Amie Elliott — a specialist in UK grant funding with over 20 years of professional experience and a track record that spans the full funding relationship: writing applications, assessing them, and managing the performance of funded organisations in delivery.
As founder of Gecko Fundraising, Amie has spent two decades helping UK charities develop compelling funding applications and secure grants from some of the most competitive and respected funders in the country. She knows the Lottery, Esmée Fairbairn, Paul Hamlyn, Garfield Weston, Henry Smith, City Bridge and many others not as names on a list, but as funders whose priorities, processes and expectations she understands in detail.
When Amie assesses a grant application, she is drawing on that accumulated knowledge. She knows what a fundable project looks like — and she can articulate clearly and confidently why a given application does or doesn't meet the bar.
Her experience also extends well beyond the charitable grant sector. Amie has assessed bids on behalf of district councils, public health commissioning bodies and the Ministry of Defence — environments where deliverability, value for money and financial rigour are paramount. She has also held responsibility for performance managing statutory sector service level agreements with voluntary and community sector organisations, overseeing how funded organisations actually deliver against their commitments.
This means Amie brings something to every assessment that is genuinely unusual: she understands the full arc of a funded relationship — from the moment an application lands to what good (and poor) delivery looks like in practice. That informed perspective strengthens every recommendation she writes.
Over many years working in UK grant funding, Amie observed the same problems playing out again and again across the sector.
Charities submitting repeat applications to funders who will simply never fund them — not because the work isn't good, but because the fit isn't right and nobody has told them so. Grant funding bodies carrying an ever-growing administrative burden from this cycle of repeat applications, with teams stretched and assessment quality suffering as a result. Applicants waiting months for decisions, receiving no feedback, and unable to plan or budget meaningfully because their funding pipeline is full of bids that are unlikely to succeed.
These aren't isolated problems — they are connected. And they are largely solvable with better assessment practice: clearer eligibility guidance, more rigorous and efficient assessment, and meaningful feedback to unsuccessful applicants that enables them to improve, redirect their efforts, and stop wasting their own time and yours.
Vantage was founded to provide a better service for everyone in the funding relationship — foundations, applicants, and the communities whose lives depend on grants going to the right places.
Full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising
Over 20 years of experience in UK grant funding — charitable, statutory and public sector
Track record of successful applications to 25+ major UK trusts and foundations
Experience assessing bids for district councils, public health bodies and the Ministry of Defence
Experience performance managing statutory sector service level agreements with voluntary and community organisations
Approach informed by the ACF's Stronger Foundations framework and IVAR's Open and Trusting Grant-making principles
Registered company in England and Wales — [COMPANY NUMBER]
Vantage Grants Assessors is a separate legal entity from Gecko Fundraising Ltd. The two businesses have different clients, different purposes and different markets — by design.
We maintain a formal Conflict of Interest Policy, available on request, and we declare all relevant connections at the outset of every engagement. If a conflict exists that we cannot manage — for example, if we have recently written a bid for an organisation you want us to assess — we will tell you immediately and decline the instruction. We do not charge for work we cannot properly undertake.
This separation isn't just a legal formality. It is fundamental to the integrity of what we do, and it is something we are transparent about with every foundation we work with.
We'd welcome a short, no-obligation conversation about whether Vantage is right for your foundation.
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