About

01 Person

Dr. Chris Doering, founder of Grantivity

Dr. Doering is the founder of Grantivity, a strategic grant design consultancy. With a background spanning academic research, policy analysis, and funding strategy, the founder brings a distinctive combination of methodological depth and practical orientation to every engagement.

This intersection of rigorous analysis and creative problem-solving defines the Grantivity approach: funding is not an administrative task but a strategic instrument that shapes how organisations pursue their most ambitious goals.

02 Path

Credentials

The path to Grantivity began in academia. A doctoral degree provided the foundation for understanding how research questions are framed, how evidence is structured, and how arguments are built to withstand scrutiny. This training in analytical rigour remains central to every engagement.

From academia, the trajectory moved through policy analysis and into the world of funding strategy. Working across sectors — from public institutions to research organisations to social enterprises — revealed a persistent pattern: organisations with excellent ideas often struggled to translate them into fundable propositions. The gap was not in quality but in strategic framing.

The intellectual foundation draws on two disciplines that rarely converge in the funding world: Future Foresight and Design Thinking. Foresight provides the tools to anticipate where funding landscapes are moving. Design Thinking provides the creative, iterative process to develop proposals that respond to those shifts. Together, they form the basis of a new discipline: strategic grant design.

03 Why

Why Grantivity

Traditional grant writing treats proposals as documents. A brief arrives, a text is produced, a submission is made. This approach is reactive — it responds to opportunities rather than shaping them. It optimises for compliance rather than for impact.

Grantivity was founded to change this. The premise is that the funding process itself is a strategic instrument. When approached with the right methodology, it becomes a means of organisational development: clarifying priorities, building partnerships, and opening new horizons for growth and impact.

The ambition is to build a new field — strategic grant design — where organisations do not merely apply for grants but fundamentally rethink how they approach external funding. In a landscape of increasing competition and shifting priorities, this strategic capacity is not a luxury. It is a necessity.