Rogers - Write of Way | Writing For Your Life |

| Proposals and Funding Applications |

Want to borrow some money from the federal government's student enterprise program to start your own business this summer? Does the playground equipment at the local park need refurbishing? You need to write a funding proposal.

Private charitable foundations (e.g., the Body Shop Charitable Foundation) and governments, particularly provincial/territorial and federal, promote projects in our communities by inviting concerned groups to apply for funds. There are always more proposals than money, so an ability to write grant-winning funding proposals is a valuable skill.

Organizing a Funding Proposal

Grant applications are a kind of persuasive writing. To be convincing, show savvy grant reviewers that their money will be well spent. Here are some suggestions for how to do it:

Know your project

Research so you know the rationale for your project, how it can be carried out, the resources you will need, and who can get the job done. The details will differ for each project, but successful applicants always show a deep understanding. Let's imagine that you want funding to replace a roof that leaks rainwater onto a skating rink. To show you know your project, you'll have to get estimates from potential contractors so you can cite convincing statistics to document the specific amount of funding you're requesting.

Know your audience

Every granting organization has a mission. Do a little homework to find the mission statements of groups to whom you're considering applying. Study the projects they have chosen to fund in the past. You can study the grant application package itself for clues as to what objectives the organization pursues. Apply to groups that fund projects like the one you are proposing. Newsletters and brochures from the organization will give you further information that can help you demonstrate how funding your project will help the funding source reach its goals. (e.g., one funding request I wrote had to emphasize that the project would hire social assistance recipients because the government wanted to fund projects that would help people on welfare become self-sufficient).

Creating the Organization of a Funding Proposal

Sometimes the funding agency will require you to use a form to make your proposal, limiting how much control you have over the organization of the project. If you can, scan the form into your word processing program and then answer each question with the amount of information that you think will make them want to fund your project.

Even when the granting organization does not require a form application, they may specify how to apply. Take their guidelines very seriously. Try to give them what they request. Even if they want you to apply by writing a letter, be careful to supply all the information they request, in the order they request it, unless you can see a compelling reason to organize it differently.

Creating Funding Applications with Great Appearance

If you create a good first impression, you improve the chances that your funding request will be granted. It's hard to create the best looking documents on an electric typewriter. This is another reason why you should scan any forms into your word processor: It will be much easier to correct mistakes so your final copy will be perfect.

If you are writing a grant application letter, you may want to create sub-headings with bolding or a larger font. Such enhancements make readers aware of how your report is organized. If the guidelines for the funding application include questions, they can be used-verbatim or paraphrased-as sub-headings.

Activity 1: Practice Writing Grant Proposals

The Ministry of Community and Social Services through its jobLink Ontario Innovations Fund financed community economic projects that would help social assistance recipients become self-sufficient. Friends of the Norval Johnson Heritage Library, in the first church founded by Blacks at the Niagara end of the Underground Railway, felt the museum could train social assistance recipients as tour guides and history researchers, and make the church an even bigger tourist attraction, if we could win some funding.

After carefully reading the information and application package, I decided to organize it under these sub-headings.

How Your Funding Would Enable Us to Do More
Who We Are and What We Do
Our Funding Needs
How We Will Measure Our Success
The Objectives for our Project

Read through the funding proposal letter (figure 1). Make it more powerful by showing where to add the subheadings, making the organization more evident and improving the appearance by breaking the text into smaller, less text-dense sections. Do this by writing into the document the number of each subheading; show where you think the subheadings should appear in the text.

Figure 1: Rough Draft of Funding Proposal

Answer to Activity 1: Practice Writing Grant Proposals

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