for researchers
Pressure-test your proposal while you can still edit it
Grant panels reject for boring reasons: the significance is asserted rather than argued, the workplan looks optimistic, the budget invites questions. Those are all catchable before submission — by someone who isn't invested in your success. ToughCrowd reads your proposal as a review panel would and reports what each member would object to.
Not ready to sign up? Try the free defense-question tool first — free, no account.
Why the feedback you get now doesn’t help
- The deadline eats the time you meant to spend getting outside eyes on it.
- Everyone who could give useful feedback is submitting their own proposal that week.
- You've argued significance so often internally that you no longer argue it on the page.
- Feasibility concerns are obvious to a stranger and invisible to the person who wrote the workplan.
your panel
Who reads your work
A suggested panel for this material. Each reviewer has explicit biases and instructions to be useful rather than kind — and they are free to disagree with each other.
Reviewer #2 · Hostile Academic Reviewer
Significance claimed rather than demonstrated, and workplans that assume everything works.
Ingrid Halvorsen · Skeptical Data Scientist
Whether the proposed analysis can actually answer the question posed.
Gideon Price · Cost-Focused CFO
Budget lines that don't match the workplan, and costs a reviewer will query.
Dr. Alan Whitfield · University Lecturer
Whether a non-specialist panel member can grasp the case for funding.
How it works
- 1Paste your text, upload a PDF, or import a public URL.
- 2Pick your reviewers — or describe your audience and let ToughCrowd generate matching personas.
- 3Each reviewer writes an in-voice critique, scores a four-part rubric, and lists concrete fixes.
- 4A synthesis pass reports where the panel agrees, where it conflicts, and what to fix first.
faq
Questions
Can it check against a specific funder's criteria?
Not as a rubric, but you can describe the panel you're facing in the audience description — 'an interdisciplinary panel with two non-specialists' — and ToughCrowd will generate reviewers matching that description.
How late is too late to run this?
An audit takes minutes, so even the night before is useful for catching overclaims. You'll get more out of it a week ahead, when the workplan can still change.
Do credits expire if I only submit grants twice a year?
Credits never expire and there's no subscription. Buy a pack, use it whenever the next deadline arrives.
Try it on a tough crowd first
New accounts start with free credits, so you can run a real audit before paying anything.
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