A Few Essential Tips for Writing Grant Proposals, Part 1: The Mindset

“Good luck can be enticed by accepting opportunity.”

― George S. Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon

Writing grant proposals seems a lot harder and scarier than it should be to people when they’re doing it the first time. A big worry people have is that they don’t want to look like they’re desperate or begging, but a more common worry is that they feel that they don’t deserve to ask for fiscal sponsorship or donations.

If you go into the grant writing process with the wrong mindset, then even if you do the process right, you won’t put out the most effective and compelling grant worth considering. 

The proper mindset isn’t just positive thinking, it’s a mixture of having realistic expectations and informed understanding with a confidence and self-worth that lets you know that not only do you earn the right to the money you receive, but that you deserve it. 

Here are three things to help build the mindset for anyone looking to write a grant proposal:

You aren’t the only one asking for money

A good reminder to anyone writing a grant is to recognize that there is an unknown number of other proposals coming in asking for money. If this doesn’t inspire you to adopt a little bit of a competitive attitude, then you absolutely should because everyone needs to make a compelling argument as to why they should receive the grant. 

In order to be competitive, it helps to look sensible rather than desperate, because by appearing desperate, it comes off as manipulative since people can make up all sorts of stories to tug at the heartstrings, like a common Facebook and e-mail scam where people whose accounts are hacked have the scammers contact people telling them that they are trapped in a foreign country and need a lot of money to get home. 

Guess what? By appealing desperate, you don’t create urgency, you might inspire the same disinterest and apathy that you yourself have when seeing another e-mail scam. 

To appear sensible, you need to be able to demonstrate that it makes sense to support you and your organization or project financially. You do this by showing the work you have done and are already doing, and how a little extra financing could improve your efforts and increase the impact on beneficiaries–think of showing that you are already a star athlete in triathlon, but offering fiscal sponsorship will make it easier for you to improve your performance times.

Not everyone is giving away money for the same reason

Some people won’t give money away for noble reasons, some do it for tax deductions, to the point that they only award money if it’s above a certain threshold in order to make a bigger tax deduction. Anything smaller than that amount is not worth it to them. Knowing this, you have the pragmatic attitude, which helps you understand that sometimes you can do everything right, but it’s not what determines whether you are selected to receive a grant or not. 

Practically speaking, you may not know this or it may not be even implied when information on the grant is listed, but it becomes apparent after investigating beyond the scope of what is publicly stated. Naming no names, the example of the foundation that only awards donations above a certain minimum amount is very well-known, and it’s through this that you gain insight on looking beyond what’s presented to you in order to find the right match. It’s almost like a dating app: look beyond the photos with filters taken at weird angles and the way someone describes themselves, and you will see the kind of person you want to connect with or not. So choose your prospective donor carefully, just like they are discerning if you are the right match for them too!

You do deserve to receive a grant or sponsorship

Probably the most difficult thing to believe is that you are worthy. A classic Gen-X comedy film based on the Saturday Night Live sketch, Wayne’s World has a scene in the sequel where the protagonists meet the band Aerosmith, resulting in the two of them falling to their knees and bowing while shouting, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” to which an indifferent but encouraging Steve Tyler (lead vocalist of Aerosmith, which you already knew, of course, but we just want to remind you!) nonchalantly replies, “You’re worthy, you’re worthy, stand up.”

If we take that example as inspiration, then you have not the confidence or optimistic outlook, you have the winner’s attitude. A winner is simultaneously accepting, open, graceful, and looks for learning opportunities even when “losing”. 

When adopting the winner’s attitude, instead of beating yourself up for not being awarded a grant, you keep on moving and accept gracefully that it may not have been the right timing or the right match, or perhaps there is still room for improvement for the next attempt for that particular award. A winner doesn’t hedge all his or her hopes on winning one race, but on being able to show up for multiple races and do their best, and when their best is not enough, to improve each time by learning from where they were deficient. 

The combination of the competitive, pragmatic, and winner’s attitudes will thus make your grant writing process much more manageable and enjoyable.