Taken for granted

The National Lottery Charities Board (THES, December 13) is prohibited from making grants to individuals. It can only give funds to charitable, philanthropic or benevolent bodies. Therefore, individual researchers, GPs and doctors based in National Health Service hospitals or elsewhere, were not eligible themselves to apply for medical research grants.

In addition to these general eligibility criteria, the board stated that for the health, disability and care grants programme: "We will consider research proposals submitted by health or medical research charities, or by disability or care organisations. Applications from university departments or research institutes must be made through this route. We cannot accept applications from individual researchers." Furthermore, as with all other charities board grants programmes, organisations were restricted to a single application.

This would apply equally to a medical research charity and a university, all of which could put forward just one proposal. It is also wrong to imply that medical research charities or the wider medical research community did not know that they might be able to apply. The board responded to over 3,300 requests for research application packs but received just 3 applications. Thus, 91 per cent of those who had indicated an interest, chose, after seeing the advice to applicants and the criteria clearly stated, not to apply for a research grant.

There are two reasons for this. The first relates to the number of charitable organisations which support medical research. The number of research proposals put forward did not surprise the Association of Medical Research Charities. Our database, which we shared with the board, identifies just 650 charities which support medical research in the United Kingdom on a regular basis. Many of these organisations are not interested exclusively in medical research and may have chosen to apply for other types of grants, just as our own members also did.

The second reason is that the board's very clear information and advice for applicants set out the criteria on which research applications would be judged. This initial filter would limit the applications received to those of high quality which were within the board's general objectives and appropriate for the particular programme.

All grant-givers appreciate that a high volume of applications does not necessarily improve the quality of the proposals. This is one reason why good grant-making practice means the establishment of clear assessment criteria to help potential applicants make a sensible judgement about whether it is appropriate for them to apply.

This is exactly what the board had aimed to achieve, and, in respect of the health research grants, did achieve. The success rate for research applications was around 20 per cent, much higher than has been the case for the boards other grants rounds.

With a lower volume of appropriate and high quality applications it is possible to undertake a more rigorous and knowledgeable assessment procedure, something which all involved in making lottery grants will want to achieve.

Thus, my unanswered question to the board is: If they had received a higher volume of research applications would more money have been made available or would the same money have been distributed and an increased number of applicants simply have wasted their time in applying?

If the latter is nearer the truth, how can the chairman of the board justify the position he presented at its press conference last Tuesday?

Diana Garnham

General secretary, Association of Medical Research Charities