A Few Essential Tips for Writing Grant Proposals, Part 3: Practicing With Friends and Family

“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”

― Warren Buffett

Our first two articles on grant proposals talked about the mindset and the process, and this time, we’re going to take some of those ideas and apply them to do a little practice. When people think of grant proposals, they have this idea of a formal process to get foundations, organizations, and government programs. But you should remember you can even get private individuals to contribute, some of whom don’t even need to be strangers or people waiting to give money away, but people around you.

There are several things to think about here: the first is intrapreneurship, followed by crowdfunding, and finally, even principles used by network marketers. Let’s start by clarifying what an intrapreneur is according to Stanford:

Intrapreneurs are not starting a new business in a competitive market, rather they are internal entrepreneurs who work within the structures of an established company. They are the hardworking individuals who constantly find ways to innovate and improve their roles, the quality of work, and sometimes their entire entity.

Then, let’s look at the crowdfunding definition:

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance.

Finally, let’s zero in on a very specific part of network marketing that is tied to our reason for including it alongside intrapreneurship: the person-to-person relationship that is built by sales representatives, especially those with high energy and initiative.

Now that you know what we’re working with here, it’s time to play a game.

This is a simple game to get you used to learning to apply some of the principles that make writing a grant proposal much easier when you understand your cause and concept, your audience and how to adapt to them, and the personal relationship you build to establish trust and willingness to support.

Let’s make it clear that for this game, it will involve no exchange of money, it is a learning experience for you and the people you invite to participate.

First, take an existing project you have (or make one up) that you would like to raise funding for, and create a Google Document describing it as briefly as possible, and include pictures as well. No need to go into details, just a quick overview of what it is in no more than 1 page, as you will be sending a link for this out for others to see (Don’t worry! It’s just your friends and family!). This is your invitation card to send out asking people to play the game with you, describing your project and that you are inviting them to let you do an exercise that will help you practice for fundraising and grant proposals.

Second, choose a few people whom you know well enough to feel comfortable playing the game with, but don’t know the details of your project or your fundraising goal. Send out the link to the invite and then wait to see who is willing to roleplay as a donor.

Next, invite them to meet with you for fifteen minutes and no longer, where you will use that time to introduce yourself and get familiar with them, then at the end, introduce the project and talk about what you want to do with it, your fundraising goal, and what you expect to do with the funds alongside the expected outcomes of your project assuming you secure funding. Your key here is more to learn about your donor, their interests, their available funds, and how you can make your project their passion too.

After you’ve had your fifteen minutes, inform them of the next step, which is to take a day or two to write a personalized letter to them asking them to donate imaginary money to your real project. This is a letter, not a proposal–you’re leveraging personal relationships and thus personal communication rather than formal communication to see if you can appeal and persuade them to support you and your project. Then, it’s up to them to decide upon receiving the letter to respond with their authentic answer and the actual imaginary amount they would hypothetically give with what they actually have–they aren’t millionaires of course, so just remember if you’re asking your cousin in college, and they get excited enough to offer $100 of imaginary money they have for that month, then this is a success. Regardless of whether you secure funding from the prospective donor actor or not, ask them to explain in their response why they did or didn’t choose to support you.

Finally, compile all feedback for successes and rejections into a document for yourself, and a crowdfunding document to show how much money you would have hypothetically raised towards your imaginary project goal, then upon the conclusion, post the amount that you raised in the document and share it with the players who volunteered to be donors, and the lessons learned from the feedback shared.

Congratulations: you just ran through some of the hoops involved in fundraising within your own social network and did it for feedback. You adapt your messaging to each individual donor, and see where your successes and failures are, and can take that to improve your messaging for future attempts. By building relationships and changing your personal message, you can apply the same procedure to an actual grant proposal and take your lessons learned to be concise, informative, and exciting.