From Transactional Asks to Strategic Coalition-Building: Repositioning a Pre-Clinical Pharma Company for DoD Funding
"Before, we just submitted letters of support. Now we realize there's a whole strategy behind it, and BW&CO is helping us be strategic about every part of it."
Overview
A pre-clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing a novel therapeutic platform engaged BW&CO to pursue Department of Defense funding opportunities aligned with its clinical and commercial objectives. What began as support for a single proposal evolved into a broader strategic engagement, with BW&CO reframing how the company approaches stakeholder alignment, evaluator psychology, and the role of supporting documentation in competitive federal funding pursuits.
The Challenge
Like many scientifically rigorous early-stage companies, the client had strong technical foundations and a credible leadership team but limited prior exposure to the strategic mechanics of federal funding. Previous funding pursuits had treated letters of support as a procedural box to check: identify a few willing parties, request a letter, and attach it to the submission. The result was a stack of generic endorsements that did little to differentiate the application or address the specific evaluation priorities of the funding entity.
For DoD opportunities in particular, this approach is a significant disadvantage. Defense-aligned funding mechanisms place real weight on demonstrated relevance, end-user pull, and evidence that an innovation has a credible pathway from research to operational impact. Without a deliberate strategy behind external endorsements, the client risked submitting technically strong proposals that failed to tell a compelling, mission-aligned story to evaluators.
Our Approach
BW&CO partnered with the client to overhaul how they approach stakeholder engagement and supporting documentation across their DoD funding pursuits. Workstreams include:
Funding strategy and opportunity alignment. Mapping the client's technology and clinical development plan to specific DoD priorities and identifying the funding mechanisms where the company is best positioned to compete.
Stakeholder identification and prioritization. Building a deliberate map of which voices carry weight with evaluators, including end-user perspectives, clinical authorities, and partners whose endorsements signal real-world demand.
Outreach sequencing and coaching. Advising leadership on how and when to approach each stakeholder, what to ask for, and how to frame the conversation so supporters understand the strategic role their letter plays.
Letter drafting and evaluation-criteria alignment. Working directly on the substance of each letter so it reinforces specific evaluation criteria rather than offering generic praise, and ensuring the full set of letters reads as a coordinated narrative rather than a pile of disconnected endorsements.
Proposal narrative integration. Connecting the supporting documentation back to the core proposal so reviewers encounter a consistent, mutually reinforcing case across every section of the submission.
Results
The engagement is ongoing, with proposals in active development. The most immediate shift has been in how the client thinks about competitive federal funding itself. Leadership now approaches each pursuit with a clear stakeholder strategy in place before drafting begins, treating letters of support as a strategic asset rather than an administrative task. The company is engaging a broader and more carefully selected set of supporters, and the conversations with those supporters are sharper and more purposeful. As the company prepares additional submissions, it is doing so with a repeatable framework for stakeholder engagement that will continue to compound in value across future DoD pursuits and beyond.