5 Tips for Writing a Winning Grant
As a nonprofit professional, you know your audience. Your donors, your clients or the population you serve, your volunteers, maybe even your neighbors, and more. The audience members you reach get to know you over time and may be used to acronyms or terms standard to your industry.
What if you’re writing a grant to a foundation that you don’t already have a relationship with, or that relationship is new, and they have a lot to learn about your nonprofit?
Read on for Arreva & Nonprofit Media Solutions’ best grant writing advice, the top five must-have details to include in your next grant proposal:
1. Don’t abbreviate anything until you’ve defined it first.
Spell out program names, organization names, acronyms that define your clients, etc. on first reference, and include the abbreviation in parentheses just after. Then you can use the abbreviation from there on out. Don’t assume that everyone speaks your organization’s language. Example: Nonprofit Media Solutions (NMS) was co-founded by Lori and Betsy. NMS helps small to mid-sized nonprofits with a variety of communications.
2. Statistics are great for painting a picture of need.
Is there a task force that collects data on your organization’s issue? Use their data but credit them if it helps you make your case. For example, a feeding initiative might know that poverty creates hunger and might cite data from a nearby university that states where your state falls against the rest of the nation with regard to programming to alleviate hunger. You can credit your source in the sentence where you use their data, or possibly in a footnote at the end of the proposal.
3. Paint that picture of need before getting into the program specifics of your organization.
Start with the big picture, then narrow down on what your organization is doing to combat the problem. And, your organization doesn’t have to solve the whole problem. Likely, the whole problem is big. What’s the thing your organization is doing to lighten the load for one set of circumstances, or one population or community?
4. Don’t create more work for yourself.
If you say you’re going to create a program that doesn’t already exist if you win the money, if you win the money, you have to come up with this new program. If you’re not prepared to do that, consider writing the grant for existing programming.
Another way to streamline your work is by tracking all grant information in a grant management software application. For example, with Arreva’s Grant Management Module, you can record grant applications, site visits, reports that are due, and schedule reminders for yourself or your team. You can also attach unlimited documents to the grant record to help keep everything documented in one place.
5. Include anticipated outcomes.
Show a potential grant funder that you already have a plan in place should your organization be awarded their money. Brainstorm about your current situation. What does your nonprofit do right now because of a generous donation or grant investment? If this funding continued, and you received new money for the same purpose, how does your population benefit?
What are your organization’s best practices for covering all your bases in a grant proposal? Share your ideas with us.
If you’re interested in streamlining grants management, you can request more information about Arreva’s Grant Management module, which is part of its ExceedFurther platform for nonprofits.
