A big, boring chore: How to write funding proposals

Anybody who has ever written more than a few grant proposals knows what a big, sometimes boring chore it is. But it’s an instructive chore: It forces you to articulate exactly what you plan to do and why it’s important. And that makes your work even better. Each grant-maker has their own particular guidelines, but most of them will ask at least the following three questions. What is the problem? The first part of a grant proposal discusses the need or problem that you’re responding to, or the opportunity you’ll fulfill. Let’s say you’re working on poverty among women in Nairobi. That’s a good start, but you have to get at the causes behind urban women’s poverty. Maybe your target population doesn’t have the skills to get living-wage jobs; or maybe they have the skills but don’t know how to find work; or maybe have the skills and the information, but they’re discriminated against in the job market. These and other factors may be at play, but you should state only the ones that correspond to your solution, which you’ll write about in the next section. Also in this section, you’ll have to give evidence to demonstrate that the problem is indeed a problem. A few choice statistics are typically the best bet — such as the unemployment or pay rates for women in Nairobi as compared with those of the population at large. You might also support your case with anecdotal data or quotes from program participants, community leaders, or government officials. A common pitfall to avoid is circular reasoning. If your program does job training for women in Nairobi, you should not say, “Women in Nairobi need job training, so we’re going to give it to them.” Instead, you should state the underlying problem, such as in the examples above. Then your reader will be set up to learn about your solution. What are you going to do about it? Once you’ve defined the problem or need, you have to say what you’ll do in response. This part of the proposal is usually divided into several sections. A funder might ask for a strategy, goals, objectives, a work plan, and more. Your strategy is your approach to solve the problem. Let’s continue with the example above. Depending on how you’ve defined the problem, your strategy might be to give job skills training, to provide information and referrals for available jobs, to advocate for stronger anti-discrimination laws, or to build a movement of low-income women to press for broader change. Typically, you’ll have to state both your strategy, or overall approach, and your tactics — discrete methods to carry out the strategy. If your strategy is to do anti-discrimination advocacy, then your tactics might vary from organizing rallies to visiting legislators’ offices to writing issue briefs. Your strategy has to describe exactly how the work you’re going to do will help you reach your goals. Your goal matches up to the problem you’ve defined, and it might be “to reduce poverty among women in Nairobi” or maybe “to empower women in poverty to advocate for gender equality.” In most cases, your goal will fall under one of two broad categories: behavior change or policy change. Another way to think about this is individual versus institutional change. Training women in job skills is an example of individual change — you want to equip individuals with new skills. If you’re pressing for stronger laws against sex discrimination in employment, that’s public policy change, and stronger anti-discrimination regulations at a company would be corporate policy change. Those are institutional changes. What will happen as a result? You’ve stated the problem and your solution. Now is your chance to talk about the impact your program will have. There’s a fine but meaningful distinction between three terms you’ll see in many requests for proposals. The definitions — and how they apply in your particular case — may overlap. So many factors go into social change that it may seem hard — if not impossible — to attribute an outcome or impact solely to your work. Most funders understand this and expect you to explain only how you are contributing to positive change and how your work fits into the larger scheme. Tell a story There’s a lot more to writing a grant application. You have to show how your work aligns with the funders’ priorities, why your organization is equipped to do this work, who your partners are, when you’ll carry out the proposed work, and what your budget is. But the three questions above are at the core of just about any proposal. Together, they form a story that you tell. In the beginning of your story, you set up the problem or conflict. In the middle, you say what your organization — the protagonist — will do in response. And at the happy end of the story, your community is better off. + Our in-house recruitment specialists are currently compiling talent pools based on specific global development skill sets, including grant and proposal writers. We prioritize the most up-to-date profiles and CVs on Devex when reviewing candidates for inclusion. Get recruiters’ attention and update your profile now. If you have yet to create a profile, here’s how.