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PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Where will the
project take place? What activities will you do
(and who will be responsible for what)? What can
realistically be completed within the proposed time
period? If the project won’t be completed within
the proposal’s timeframe, then how does this grant
fit in with your organization’s larger plan? Who
will benefit from your project and how? How will
you decide who gets to participate? Who are your
collaborators on this project and how will you
work together?
CONTEXT: What is the background/environment
in which the project will take place? What resources
are available to help you implement the project?
Challenges or obstacles you expect to encounter and
how you plan to overcome them.
In the example above, the clinic identified that
women’s inability to read the instructions on medicine
bottles was an important obstacle to achieving reduced
infant deaths. In order to overcome this challenge,
they decided to work with a local NGO to teach more
women in the community to read and to develop a
class unit on reading medical labels.
IMPACT: How does your program or project make
a difference? Tell the potential funder what is going
to change as a result of your program. What will
you accomplish within the proposal grant period?
Be sure this is both achievable (something you can
accomplish), and measurable, so you can provide
targets and evaluation outcomes.
For the clinic project, the impact is a 25 percent
reduction in the village’s infant mortality rate. But
the project has other positive outcomes beyond
the main goal, including greater use of the clinic’s
services by village residents, especially the poor, and
increased literacy among village women who did not
have formal schooling.
EVALUATION: How will you show that you
succeeded? These measures should be specific and
relevant to the project.
Many foundations, corporations, aid agencies and
other donors are concerned about the effectiveness
and impact of their grants. More and more, we
find that funders request their grantees to provide
evidence of the impact of their work, not just a
description of their activities. In proposals, this takes
the form of explaining what outcomes the group
intends to achieve with their project and how they
will measure their success toward these goals. It is
important to explain in your proposal how your
work will result in real change in the lives of the
people you serve.
The clinic project might write in their proposal that
they will determine the success of the project by
measuring the increase in the number of patients
coming to the clinic as a result of its community
outreach, how many free exams it gave to infants,
how many free drugs it distributed over the course
of the year, how many patients were cured, and how
many died. The clinic might also track how many
nurses they trained, how many community health
workers they will employ, and how many patients
they will visit. The proposal may also state that in
order to figure out the most effective intervention
leading to fewer infant deaths, they will measure
the relative effectiveness of each activity. Finally,
the clinic could track how many village women
receive literacy education and how many of them
successfully treat their sick children.
CONCLUSION: How will this funding make a
difference in achieving your goals/forwarding this
project? Always conclude by showing the funder
why their money will make a difference.
COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN
WRITING PROPOSALS
Using acronyms without explaining them – Write
out proper names in full the first time you use it
and include the acronym in parentheses after them.
For example, Millennium Challenge Corporation
(MCC) and United Nations’ Millennium
Development Goal 3 on gender equality and
empowering women (MDG3).
Using jargon and technical language – Try to
avoid them. If you must use them, define your
terms first.
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