A grant advisor is an expert or a company that guides a client through obtaining and drawing down support. The market is broad and quality is uneven, and the difference does not show up when the application is submitted, but only years later during a check or an audit, when it becomes clear whether the project was set up sustainably. When choosing one, look at references from your sector and type of call, not just the number of projects submitted, and ask about the success rate as well as how many of their clients had to repay something. Warning signs include promises of certain approval, willingness to inflate indicators just for points, pressure to apply to a call where you clearly do not meet the conditions, and unwillingness to put the scope of service after approval into the contract. A good advisor will sometimes tell you that you should not apply to a given call.
See also: Turnkey processing of a grant application, Success rate of projects in a call, Irregularity.
