Bill Foster

Director @Foster Brandt Ltd

Southampton, GB

Foster Brandt is a network of longer-established consultants, mentors and trainers. We work internationally improving the way people develop bids, tenders, proposals, pitches and grant applications. We are - unusually in this market - active on all sides of this work - bidder and buyer/funder - and have scored bids at regional to international levels. Here, we are particularly known for design of tender and grant scoring systems and procurement frameworks, which help both bidders and evaluators to maximise time and achieve meaningful feedback, more compliant with EU legislation. We typically work with a team for a period of time, often after an initial benchmarking and have moved from a decade of open training courses to now focus on delivery of highly tailored, higher level training, for key bid contexts. These often involve the creation of new bespoke tools and models, building out from from our core BID4 P-C-O-T model, now widely used in UK tenders and grants.Our network was formed in Brussels in to resolve learning from key European Commission multi-sector programmes, each involving hundreds of bids from many countries. Some conclusions from this work are now mainstream across EU and other international donor programmes.Foster Brandt\'s work now spans many disciplines and clients of all sizes in the public, private and third sectors. One week we will be supporting a mid-scale charity with Lottery bids, the next coaching a 25-strong bid team tackling a major government framework - via ongoing critical friend via bid review and issue-responsive workshop sessions.Our thinking and tools sit within various UK and international bodies of practice and it is quite likely that if you are in bidding you are using principles, or approaches, we have had a hand in.APMP conferences are one place where you access our recent additions to proposal thinking.

University College Cardiff

Post-graduate Diploma, Journalism

University of Bradford

BA Hons, Modern Languages with Politics