This paper reports on findings from an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) special initiative project that investigates institutional resources, activities and processes that support applicants to develop OLT learning and teaching grant applications. The project is developing an online resource to assist institutions to benchmark their practices in order to lead quality improvements and professional development. Thirty-five institutions responded to an ethics compliant online questionnaire which sought information about institutional approaches that support authors to develop competitive OLT grant applications. This paper considers the responses for three questions from the larger questionnaire, namely, what respondents believe their institutions did well in this area, whether or not their approaches have been benchmarked since 2012 and the nature of any benchmarking exercise. The project’s findings constitute the first mapping of practice in this area of endeavour across the sector. Analysis of the data for the question of what respondents thought their institutions did well identifies a range of resources, processes and activities which can assist institutions to benchmark their approaches. The data also suggest that there are differences in the level of resourcing between smaller and larger instititions which impact on the layering and complexity of practice. The data indicate that only four out of the 35 respondent institutions have benchmarked their approaches since 2012.

Keywords: Learning and teaching grant applications; Benchmarking; Professional development; Institutional support