Designing Successful Grant Proposals by Donald C. Orlich Table of Contents Chapter 1. Organizing Your Ideas You can be a successful grant proposal writer if you follow three rather simple steps: (1) start with a good idea; (2) locate a source that has already funded similar ideas; and (3) design, craft, and develop your idea into a well-written statement. Notice the emphasis on well written. Successful grant-getters are those who carefully prepare their proposals, not those who just crank them out. And now that we have the basics established, how do you go about this process in an organized and business-like manner? One assumption underlying this book is that you will write proposals for some time into the future. That is, you will become one of the thousands who continuously writes grant proposals as a regular part of your job. The process becomes a journey rather than a singular event. Since getting there is half the fun, you need to develop a systematic process of knowing what is being funded, who is willing to fund your proposals, and how to find this information. Some Basic Elements Virtually all agencies, foundations, or businesses require the same generic elements. The exact details may vary, but the basic elements tend to be similar whether it is a multimillion dollar proposal to the National Science Foundation or a $500 proposal to the local utility company. Let us briefly explore those elements and then spend the remaining chapters expanding each section.The Introduction Every proposal begins with a grabber, an introduction that sets the stage for the remainder of the proposal. Remember, you are communicating your ideas through a one-way medium—writing. The best proposals— make that the best written proposals—get funded in nearly every competition. Therefore, you need to spend a great deal of time and effort carefully selecting the exact wording. Every word or sentence must carry an explicit connotation and explicit denotation. Sloppiness in writing yields only rejection letters. You will spend a good deal of time preparing your proposal, so do it right. A Need or Problem The second basic element for all proposals is to identify the need being addressed or the problem being solved. If you address a need, you will have to provide data to support it. Chapter 3 provides a tested approach to identifying needs and conducting a needs assessment. The need statement of a proposal is best concluded with a statement of significance. Just how significant is this proposal to the group on which you are focusing the proposed efforts? Don't be modest. If it is intergalactic in nature, point that out. Keep in mind you will probably be writing your proposal to an unknown evaluation panel. Most likely, none of the panel members will know you or your institution, so you must provide instant rapport in the first two sections. Page 1 of 11Chapter10/29/2006http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.chapter/menuitem.b71d101a2f7c208cdeb3f...Goals and Objectives List your goal statement next. It is current vogue to incorporate a vision statement that tends to be stated in broad, global terms. Vision statements differ as you will see later in Chapter 4. These are followed by a listing of the exact objectives that you intend to accomplish as a consequence of being funded. Procedures The body of the proposal or the narrative section follows your goals and objectives. This section may be called procedures, methodology, activities, or the work plan. Whatever it is called in the guidelines you'll be following, it really means providing details, details, and more details. In this section you elaborate how each objective will be attained. You answer the five W's—who, what, when, where, and why. Typically, in the procedures section, you will list how the project is organized as well as the instructional or research team members. Evaluation The fifth basic element of a proposal is usually the evaluation model that you will employ. The basic idea of evaluating a project is to determine how well and to what extent you successfully met the project's objectives. Chapter 5 discusses evaluation and management plans in detail. Budget Next is the budget. This section provides a general expenditure (investment) plan and is followed by specific details on how the general costs were determined. The latter are known as “budget justifications” and are not equivalent to the budget figures or numbers. Basically, that is all that there is to it. In nearly all cases, the funder provides a general set of guidelines that specifies the order that these basic elements will be written. Always follow the guidelines! No matter how redundant or even silly you may think a set of guidelines may be, you must follow them—reviewers of your proposal will. If you deviate from the guidelines, you'll be penalized and, more than likely, not funded. It is their money, so follow their directions with the utmost care. Communicating Your Intentions When writing, crafting, developing, and preparing a grant proposal, communicate your intentions in such a manner that they cannot be misinterpreted by the proposal reviewers. For the most part, review panels are comprised of people just like yourself. They are typically selected to provide a wide spectrum of experiences and backgrounds. Write explicitly so that they do not have to interpret your intentions. Using the Problem as a Guide The careful crafting of the problem statement is most essential, for it will be one of the first sections read by a reviewer. If the problem is to eliminate illiteracy in North America, then you'll need billions. If the problem relates to inadequate reading skills for children in a specific elementary school, then $20,000 might be adequate to fund a pilot project. The key point is not stating the problem, per se, but stating a problem that is manageable and solvable. A problem is a condition that requires some extra effort to fix. It can be a brief statement of an observation. For example, a common problem that is frequently observed is that young, pre-adolescent girls do not achieve as well as expected in science. The problem is not that all girls do not achieve as well as expected. It is a condition focused on a specific group, under a specific context, so we might write a statement such as the following: Teachers in our middle school are often unaware that they may be biased against Page 2 of