Typical Proposal Elements

I recently spoke to this year’s Venango Vision Leadership Institute about writing a grant proposal.  As a group they will be developing a project to address real-life problems faced by members of our community, and crafting a grant proposal to fund their project.  None of this year’s participants had ever written a grant proposal, so I was asked to give a brief summary of what is involved in writing one.  Here are my notes:

Typical Elements of a Grant Proposal (a framework to work with; must personalize each proposal according to funder’s specific layout and guidelines)

1. Executive Summary (1 page)
-  Presents an umbrella statement of your case and summary of the entire proposal.
2. Statement of Need (2 pages)
-  Why is your project necessary?  Help the reader understand the problem.
-  Sources of statistics:  the United Way’s Venango County Statistical Profile, FOOF’s $25 CD of stats on Venango County and comparisons to other PA counties, census data available for free at www.census.gov/
3. Project Description (3 pages)
-  Outline the nuts and bolts of how your project will be implemented and evaluated.
-  What will happen if this project is funded?  Why use this particular strategy to address this problem?
-  How will you know your project has been a success?  What will you track to show this?
-  What staffing will you require?   Will you use existing staff, volunteers, new hires?
4. Budget (1 page)
-  Financial description of the project with explanatory notes.
5. Organization Information (1 page)
-  Sort of like your organization’s resume, including its history, accomplishments, governing body (board, executive director), primary activities, audiences, and services.
6. Conclusion (2 paragraphs)
-  Provide a summary of the proposal’s main points.
-  How will things be better if this project is funded?
-  Will this project be able to continue after the grant money runs out?
7.  Appendices
-  Only include as requested by the grant maker, or if you are specifically partnering with other agencies (then include letters of support from those agencies)

Press Release Help

I’ve been thinking about hosting a Press Release Writing Workshop in the upcoming class schedule.  What do you think?  Its important for nonprofits to write effective press releases to spread the word about the good they do, and also (to tie it back to grants) to share the word when they receive a grant.  I found this in my reader this morning via the useful Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog : the Knight News Release Workshop.  In their own words:

“You do good work.  You want people to know about it.  But how do you spread the word?  This web site will show you, with a step-by-step guide to creating a media plan and writing a news release.”

Wal-Mart Gives Away $1 Million a Day

Go read this right now:  How to Get Money from Wal-Mart Foundation over at Katya’s blog:

“Margaret McKenna of the Wal-Mart Foundation is presenting at Independent Sector right now, and boy is she a pistol.  She’s refreshingly irreverent.  I’m blogging her remarks live.”

Katya mentions that Wal-Mart does well during recessions, so perhaps you should keep them on your potential funders radar?