Top Tips for Writing Grant Proposals
Writing grant proposals is a time-intensive process, and it can feel overwhelming. However, the rewards are more than worth it as federal government grants annually total almost $2 trillion and foundations and corporate giving annually equals over $110 billion. So here are three tips for staying organized while keeping your proposal content fresh.
Tip number one: keep basic facts in an easy-to-access place. A great place to start is your organization’s Candid profile. In this profile, you can store key information such as the year the organization was founded, your mission statement, your financials, a list of your board of directors, and descriptions of key programs.
- Bonus: Not only does keeping this information in your Candid profile current give you information to use for multiple grant proposals, but it presents a positive public face to your donors and funders. Funders look at these profiles when making funding decisions. In fact, a 2018 study showed that nonprofits that achieved the GuideStar (now Candid) Seal of Transparency “averaged 53% more in contributions the following year compared to organizations that didn’t earn a Seal.”
Tip number two: Even though proposal questions may seem exactly the same, pay attention to nuance or slight wording differences. For example, Funder A may have a question that says “describe your location and the populations you serve.” Funder B may have a question that says “describe your location and how you reach under-served populations.” Although these are both asking questions about populations, your response to Funder B is going to have a different emphasis than your response to Funder A. Addressing these types of nuances acknowledges funder priorities and it’s going to make your application stand out from the competition.
Tip number three: For content that’s more than basic facts, develop a system for keeping track of frequently-used information. You could store all of your previous proposals in a proposal “library” on a shared drive. Some people prefer to have a spreadsheet with a different tab for each commonly asked question. For others it’s as simple as creating one document for, say, “the sustainability question,” and dumping into there most of your recent responses to that question so you can use them in future applications.
Whatever technique you use, the key is knowing how to use and update previous content. Resist the urge to copy and paste and call it done, especially if you’re going back to the same funder year after year.
Copying and pasting, updating, then tweaking is a best practice.
Finding this balance between not reinventing the wheel while addressing each funder’s precise question will save you time and energy and lead to better proposals in the long run.
For more tips on seeking grants for your nonprofit—and specifically government grants—check out Government Grants 101: Readiness, Research, and Writing the Proposal, an eLearning course created by Cheryl Kester with Candid.
Learn more about writing winning grants by attending the REVENUE: Grant Writing & Evaluation class as part of the Sunshine Certificate in Nonprofit Management. Click here for the yearly schedule to find the next class.
May all of your grants be winning grants!
Source: Candid Learning. Candid has been a preferred partner since 2018 when Florida Nonprofits became an outlet for the Foundation Center Funding Network. https://learning.candid.org/training/three-top-tips-for-writing-grant-proposals/
Author: Cheryl Kester, CFRE GPC