Parts of a Grant Purposal

Requirements for each part will be listed in the “Request for Proposals,” sometimes called the solicitation.

Title

Just like a newspaper headline, it has to catch your attention. Use alliteration, acronyms, and other devices to gain attention. Example, new book, Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire.

Summary or Abstract
This is the reader’s first introduction to your project. Titles and first sentences are VERY important. Short and sweet, please.

Examples:

"Annunciation Shelter requests $5,000 for a two-year, $50,000 job training program for homeless women in southwestern Minnesota. Training will be offered at four rural shelters and will include basic clerical skills, interview techniques and job seeker support groups."

“High-tech industry needs skilled workers.”

 Introduction (Put in front of project description or in section for introducing qualified project managers. Place wherever the RFP indicates.)
This is a good place to acquaint the grant reviewer with your organization. Whatever is unique about your place, make it stand out. For instance, Oklahoma is the only state in the union that settled lands with land rushes. UCO is the only public four-year university in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Statistical Area (OKCMSA).

Briefly summarize your organization’s history. State your mission, whom you serve and your track record of achievement. Clearly describe your target customer base.

Even if you have received funds from this grantmaker before, your introduction should be complete. Agencies hire outside reviewers who may not be familiar with your organization. Acronyms can kill you if you don’t define them. So can exaggeration.

Project Description or Problem/Need/Situation Description or Need Statement
This is where you convince the funding agency that the issue you want to tackle is important and show that your organization is an expert on the issue. Here are some tips:

• Why is this situation important?  

• Describe the situation in both factual and human interest terms, if possible. Providing good data demonstrates that your organization is expert in the field. If there are no good data on your issue, consider doing your own research study, even if it is simple.
       

• Describe your issue in as local a context as possible. If you want to educate people in your county about HIV/AIDS, tell the funding agency about the epidemic in your county — not in the United States as a whole.
      

·                     Describe a problem that is about the same size as your solution. Don’t draw a dark picture of nuclear war, teen suicide and lethal air pollution if you are planning a modest neighborhood arts program for children.
     

·                     Don’t describe the problem as the absence of your project. "We don’t have enough beds in our battered women’s shelter" is not the problem. The problem is increased levels of domestic violence. More shelter beds is a solution.

Work Plan/Specific Activities
Explain what your organization plans to do about the problem. What are your overall goals? You might say: "The goals of this project are to increase the understanding among Minneapolis middle school students about the impact of smoking on their health, and to reduce the number of students who smoke."

Then go on to give details, including:

• Who is the target audience, and how will you involve them in the activity? How many people do you intend to serve? Some projects have two audiences: the direct participants (the musicians in the community band, the kids doing summer clean-up in the parks) and the indirect beneficiaries (the music lovers in the audience, the people who use the parks). If so, describe both. How will you ensure that people actually participate in the program?
      
• What are you going to do? Describe the activities. Tell the funding agency about the project’s "output," or how many "units of service" you intend to deliver over a specific time period: how many hours of nutrition counseling to how many pregnant women; how many HIV/AIDS hot-line calls answered by how many volunteers. Be sure you don’t promise an unrealistic level of service.
        
• What project planning has already taken place? If you have already done research, secured the commitment of participants or done other initial work, describe it so the funding agency can see that you are well-prepared.
       
• Who is going to do the work and what are their credentials? (Attach resumes of key people.) Some agencies ask for the name of a project director, the person most responsible for the project, whether volunteer or paid. Demonstrate that the staff or volunteers have the expertise to do a good job.
      
• When will the project take place? Some agencies ask for the project start date and project end date. In general, a project can be said to start when you start spending money on it. Include a timeline to help you lay out your procedures as well as give reviewers a visual key to your project.

• Where will the project take place? Are the facilities adequate? Is the equipment adequate? Is there a support group to function for the benefit of the project, either paid through the grant or not?

Next: Apply the "mind's eye test" to your description. After reading it, could the reader close his eyes and imagine what he would see if he came into the room where your project is happening? Many project descriptions are too vague.

Outcomes/Impact of Activities
Tell the funding agency what impact your project will have — what will change as a result of your project. For example, your pregnancy nutrition counseling program intends to increase the birth weights of your clients' babies.

The impact of a project is sometimes hard to define. What is the intended impact of a performance of Beethoven’s "Ninth Symphony," for example? 

Other Funding, or Current and Pending Support
Here the funding agency wants to know if other organizations have committed funds to the project or been asked to do so.  The agency also wants to know if you have had grant administration experience before, to gauge whether you will be a good steward of the funds.

Future Funding
If you continue this project in the future, how will it be supported? Most agencies don’t want to support the same set of projects forever. Many agencies see their niche as funding innovation: supporting new approaches to old problems or finding solutions to new problems.

What the funding agency really wants to see is that you have a long-term vision and funding plan for the project, that the project is "sustainable, institutionalize-able," especially if it is a new activity. If you don’t have such a plan, start thinking about it. Will your project halt abruptly when the grant funding is over?

Evaluation
How will you know whether it worked? Explain who will gather the evaluation information and how you will use it. Be sure your evaluation plan is achievable given your resources. If the evaluation will cost money, be sure to put that cost in the project budget.

Budget
How much will the project cost?

Expenses
Divide the expense side into three sections:

• Personnel Expenses
• Direct Project Expenses
• Administrative or Overhead Expenses

Personnel Expenses include the expenses for all the people who will work on the project. They may be employees of your organization or independent contractors. If they are employees, list the title, the annual pay rate and, if the person will be working less than full-time or less than 12 months on the project, the portion of time to be dedicated to the project. For example, if an employee will work half-time on the project from October through May:

Counseling director ($35,000 x 50% x 8 months) = $11,667

Also consider the time that may be contributed by other staff who are not directly involved. For instance, the executive director must supervise the counseling director:

Executive director ($40,000 x 5% x 8 months) = $1,333

If you are using employees for the project, don’t forget to add payroll taxes (FICA, Medicare, unemployment and workers’ compensation) and fringe benefits such as health insurance. You can include a portion of these costs equal to the portion of the person’s time dedicated to the project.

For independent contractors, list either the flat fee you will pay ($1,500 to design costumes for a play) or the hourly rate ($40/hour x 40 hours).

Direct Project Expenses are non-personnel expenses you would not incur if you did not do the project. They can be: travel costs, printing, space or equipment rental, supplies, insurance, or meeting expenses such as binders and handouts. The cost of doing business is F&A cost, more later.

Remember that you will have to live with this budget; you can’t go back to the funding agency and ask for more money because you forgot something. Think carefully about all the expenses you will have. If you will be hiring new people, for example, don’t forget that you may have to pay for classified ads. Also take the time to get accurate estimates. If you will be printing a brochure, don’t guess at the cost. Call your printer and ask for an estimate.

Administrative or Overhead Expenses are non-personnel expenses you will incur whether or not you do the project. But if you do the project, these resources can’t be used for anything else. For example, if you pay $500 a month for an office with space for four employees, you will continue to rent the office even if the project doesn’t happen. But if the project does happen, one-quarter of the office space will be occupied by the project director. So you can charge for one-quarter of your office rent, utilities and administrative costs, such as phone, copying, postage and office supplies.

Be sure to read the funding agency’s fine print on administrative or overhead expenses (sometimes called indirect costs, F&A (financial and administrative). Some agencies don't cover administrative expenses. Some instruct you to charge a flat percentage of your direct expenses. Others will allow you to itemize. If the funding agency has rules about overhead, remember that some of your personnel costs may in fact be "overhead" and should be moved to this section. An example is an executive director supervising a project director. You will pay the executive director whether or not you do the project, so she could be considered an administrative expense.

Note: Be sure to add up all your expenses carefully. Incorrect addition on budgets is one of the most common errors in a grant proposal.

Parts of the Proposal to Cover

Goals—Where you want to be when the project is finished. (We will graduate and place 16 more science education professionals each year)

Objectives—How you’re going to get to the goal. (By hiring two more education professors, we will shorten the time to graduation each year and permit up to eight more students to enter the program per semester.)

Measurable Outcomes—Baseline data provides the “before” picture. Where are we now? Where will we be at the end of the first year? Second year? End of Project?

Performance Indicators—Are the students finishing the program? Are they equipped?

Evaluation—How do we know it worked? (Tracking, interviewing, pre-and-post testing, in-class assessment, formative and summative evaluation.

Assessment—Formative: assessment taken during the project to see if the direction needs to change or if participants are benefiting from the program (ex: an interim evaluation). Summative: A final assessment of the worth of the program (ex: final grade).

Dissemination—How do you broaden the scope of the project to include others who might benefit from your project? Typical ways include: web site, seminars, peer-reviewed publications. Other ways: target the intended audience, visits, workshops to teach others, etc.

Institutionalization—What will happen to the project when the grant is finished? If it will stop suddenly, it probably wasn’t a very good project anyway. Create a way to continue, to institutionalize, your project, through internal funding, external fund-raising and donations, etc.

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