the amount you’re requesting from the funder (round off to the nearest dollar).
Total project cost
Include the total cost of the proposed project. Double- and triple-check to make sure the number you enter here matches the total cost of the project listed in the budget narrative and on the budget forms. (For more about budgets, check out Chapter 18.) For example, “The total project cost is $200,000.”
Geographic area served
Describe the location of your project in this order: city, county, state. You can even narrow your target-population area down to census tract numbers, specific names of neighborhoods, or congressional districts. (Some funding is designated for specific geographic regions within a state.) For example, “The geographic area is the District of Columbia. The 179 census tracts impacted are listed in Attachment 1.”
Signatures
Most federal government applications are submitted online through one of the feds’ e-grant portals, Grants.gov, so you type the requested contact information for the authorized contact person for your organization into a signature field box instead of submitting an original signature. Even foundations and corporations are using typed names for e-grant signature boxes.
Storytelling with facts
Over the years, the field of grant writing has shifted from technical “just the facts and nothing more” writing to a kinder, friendlier way of cozying up to the grantmaker’s decision-making staff. Now, if you want to secure a grant, you must put life, personality, and compassion into your request. This type of writing approach is referred to as storytelling.
Background/history of the grant applicant organization: Write with passion about your organization: its founding date, its purpose, its mission, and its location. Include quaint, not-so-common information about the founder and their reason for creating a nonprofit organization.If you’re writing about a unit of municipal government (city, town, township, village, hamlet, or county subdivision of government), include trivia on how the community was named, started, incorporated, and so forth. Also, include information on any major grant-topic-related accomplishments the grant applicant organization has achieved.
Current programs and activities: Write with excitement about the current initiatives the grant applicant organization is involved in. List in chronological order all the organization’s programs and activities.Include specific program names, dates started, and outcomes-to-date, such as the number of participants who have received services and the benefits they gained because of their involvement in the program.
Description/demographics of your constituency: Write with accuracy about the population the grant applicant organization provides services to. Include age range, gender, ethnicity, economic status, educational level, and other characteristic descriptors. The funder needs to know whom you serve and what’s special about your target population.Include a case scenario, a story about how a participant has encountered multiple life barriers and is now on a waiting list to be served by the grant applicant organization.
Description of community: Write with innate knowledge about your community’s makeup where the grant applicant organization is located or where its services will be provided. Describe the community by providing a combination of city and county information. This section is about the virtual picture of your community — facts and statistics — not trivia, which belongs in the background section.Use compelling words and colorful (but true!) descriptions; funders don’t want to read a book report about your town. Don’t just copy and paste census information from the Internet. Where you do use statistics, incorporate them into tables, graphics, and figures.Cite your sources, and don’t use statistics that are more than five years old. Copying and pasting information you find on the Internet is okay as long as you include a reference citation (footnote by copying the website address where you found the information). Just make sure your online sources are reliable. Never cite anything you find on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source#:~:text=Wikipedia%20is%20not%20a%20reliable%20source%20for%20citations%20elsewhere%20on,progress%2C%20or%20just%20plain%20wrong.&text=Wikipedia%20generally%20uses%20reliable%20secondary,vet%20data%20from%20primary%20source).
Description of work with partnership agencies: Write about the grant applicant organization’s demonstrated partnership experiences with community, regional, state, and national partners. Create a table with header rows for partners and their roles with the grant applicant organization. You can even add a third column to the table for years of affiliation. You can’t copy and paste tables or other graphics into online e-grant templates. You can only include them if the funder allows you to upload word-processing files or PDFs. Chapter 23 includes more tips on e-grants.Add shading to the table’s header row and to each column. Just be sure to keep it legible and not distracting.
Proposed initiative: Write with certainty about what the grant applicant organization plans to do with the grant or cooperative agreement award. State the intentions simply and directly in one or two sentences.Write something like “The purpose of this request is to secure the necessary financial infusion to conduct extensive research to fulfill the mission of Project R2.A.I.S.E.”
Statement of need: Write with compassion about the problem the grant applicant organization will combat with the awarded funds.Use gripping words to relay the gloom, doom, drama, and trauma of your situation and why your organization needs the requested funds. Be honest, cite hard data that demonstrates your need, and don’t just use anecdotal observations.
Program design/plan of action: Write with the knowledge of demonstrated best practices about the process you’ll implement to solve the problem or need. Incorporate evidence-based practices (proven intervention/prevention best practices models, which you can find on the Internet); by doing so, you demonstrate to the funder that you’re relying on proven research to design your program. You let the funder know that you’ve taken steps to avoid reinventing the wheel. (No funder wants to pay for a clueless process of discovery when the intervention process has been perfected
