Artists are grateful for any money they can get, but too often the project is squeezed to fit the funding available – not the other way around

How much money do you need to make your next show? A fiver? £5,000? Or – like some artists on the international festival touring circuit – perhaps you don't get out of bed for less than half a million? The vast majority of theatre-makers are getting by on very little, and in the current belt-tightening climate are likely to have to manage on even less. It means that, when they are applying for money, many companies feel under pressure to prove just how cheaply they can make a piece of work. The risk is that they end up selling themselves and the show short.

Which makes the kind of opportunities that appear on my Twitter line from time to time, offering the chance for theatre-makers to apply for specific sums of money, look all the more enticing. Some of these are long-established and substantial awards such as the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust award. Others are for small amounts of money, from £1,000 upwards, regularly offered to young people by an organisation such as IdeasTap to develop creative projects. In the case of IdeasTap, indeed, they come with few strings attached and minimal accountability. If recipients want to run straight down the pub with the money, rather than spending it on a show, so be it. So far, it should be said, nobody has drunk the awards away. Plenty, including rising young companies such as Rash Dash, have been able to mount work that wouldn't otherwise have been possible.

IdeasTap has been enormously generous with its cash and nobody, certainly not me, is going to complain about such philanthropy, and in particular their no-strings approach. No strings in particular is a rare thing: many companies looking for money, either through private or public sources, are so eager to get the cash that they end up jumping through hoops and shape-shifting to fit the funders' agendas. Even stamps of approval such as the London 2012 logo that come without a penny of funding attached have proved to be time-consuming and frustrating to negotiate – as many have discovered to their cost over the last few months.

But is the growing culture of offering £1,000, £5,000 or £10,000 opportunities the best way to fund creativity, or does it lead to a situation where the starting point of any project is always the money, not the idea? Just as availability of particular spaces defines and shapes new work, so the availability of particular pots of money means that the idea becomes in thrall to the arithmetic. A £10,000 idea becomes a £5,000 show (perhaps, on rare occasions, vice versa).

It was a point raised by Annie Rigby of Unfolding Theatre at the Stronger Together conference in Newcastle last year. She cited the producer Michael Morris who never says "we've got x amount of money", but always puts the idea first, then raises the full amount of money necessary to fund it.

As many companies discover, while cash in the pocket is nice, it's not just about money but about support and sustained relationships. Most importantly, it's about not selling your best ideas for less than they're worth.