A Few Essential Tips for Writing Grant Proposals, Part 2: The Process
“Proper preparation is the key to our success. Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts. Our thinking can be no wiser than our understanding.”
― George S. Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon
After last week’s entry on the right mindset to help prepare you for writing grant proposals, here are three essential tips for the writing process, which you could very well do even without having the right mindset, but doing so with the right mindset only makes your appeal much stronger and more compelling.
Concision, concision, concision
When submitting your proposal for consideration, remember that you aren’t the only one applying for funding. This means that whomever is reading through all the applications is going to be very grateful if you can make your proposal short and to the point.
Contrary to popular belief, quantity does not improve quality. If you can say something in twenty words or less, why give a whole speech when all the fluff doesn’t even achieve the intended effect of increasing perceived legitimacy? Talking too much puts people off and doesn’t make anyone seem more knowledgeable or charming, it just exhausts everyone.
Being concise means making sure every word and sentence counts. As an exercise, you can try setting a limit where every word you write in excess of that limit will cost you money, such as a dollar for every word more than necessary and a hundred dollars for each page longer than needed. It is true because if you don’t get the grant, you have indeed missed out on some cash!
Answering who cares and why anyone should care
Going back to one of our blog articles on who cares and why anyone should care, this is especially true when applying for a grant. You can ask for funding, but you’ll need to demonstrate why you deserve it in the eyes of your prospective donor and why what you hope to do upon receiving the grant that it will make a difference.
If you can’t answer these questions, then you should really not be applying for funding and instead asking yourself how to answer these questions, since it will ultimately reveal not only a weak application, but an undefined mission statement and purpose for your organization and cause. In 20 words or less, you should be able to make anyone, whether they’re a middle school student or the president, what you do, why it’s important, why they should care, and why it’s awesome.
It doesn’t have to be verbatim or repeated by everyone in your organization the same way, it has to be able to be restated in their own words and contain the spirit of your mission, just like you’re explaining the mission statement to someone who needs it simplified because their first language isn’t English.
So make sure that you are able to confidently and comfortably answer who cares and why anyone should care about you, your organization, your mission, and what you could potentially do upon being awarded grants or fiscal sponsorship. With this taken care of, applying for grants becomes significantly easier.
Telling stories, dumping information, and hard numbers
Going back to the reminder that you’re one of many people applying for funding, in addition to the first tip, the content of your application is what will make you stand out. Let’s forget about whether you think you are “good enough” (that was addressed in Part 1), but now look at how you present yourself to make that innate fabulousness clear to the people reviewing your application.
Firstly, people just want to dump as much information as possible to paint a complete picture of their organization and their cause. This is like trying to get someone to watch the entirety of Breaking Bad into a five minute video, sped-up, to get people who have never seen the TV series interested. Most often, this will fail spectacularly and confuse prospective fans of the show, and so we can reasonably compare this to say that this is what an info dump feels like in a grant proposal.
Even if you strive for concision, you can still fall short of the actual content by listing more than necessary; for example: why talk about the entire history of your organization when you can focus on specifics such as what you’ve achieved in the past two years? This gives a clearer picture of who you are now, not what you were. It’s a nice feeling to congratulate yourself, but this won’t always help your grant proposal.
Instead of talking about yourself when you want to convey the impact of your organization, personal stories, in the words of your beneficiaries ideally, help convey a lot more information in a far more impactful manner. There is a huge difference between talking about securing equipment for treating patients for retinoblastoma in a children’s hospital and having the parents of the first child in the country to receive that treatment that was otherwise unavailable without the support of other donors, so ask yourself how stories contain not only facts, but truths.
Finally, even with all the stories, concision, and carefully curated information, the last thing you must address are the numbers, because after the emotional appeals through stories, you will have people who want to fact check and see if you have both your heart and your head in the right place, since nice stories might not lead to good mathematics and financial management.
Reviewers want to make sure that you really know how to plan and organize to enact your dreams and mission capably and efficiently, otherwise, even if you are awarded far more money than you need, mismanagement of funds means you also spend more than you need instead of making every dollar count. So get your numbers calculated properly and make sure you present it clearly, ideally with tables and graphs to give a better visual.
Conclusion
Grant proposals are not hard, and they never should be, but taking the proper mindset and following the right process will make something that seems scary and unfamiliar simple, enjoyable, and replicable. Don’t overthink it, and don’t give up even if you don’t get selected the first few times you apply
