Smooth Words and Savvy Research Can Help Grant Proposals Succeed

When Raeline Nobles approached the Dallas Foundation last year about a grant to build an outpatient medical clinic for impoverished Texans with HIV, the executive director of AIDS Arms knew she was taking a chance. With charities still struggling amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, many foundations were focused on providing money to help hard-hit groups pay for basic operations.

“We had to convince them that this was exactly the right time for a capital project,” says Ms. Nobles.

To make her case, Ms. Nobles and her staff did their homework—and then some. They documented exactly how many more local residents the HIV/AIDS service organization in Dallas could reach by expanding and how much money local governments were likely to save once such patients stopped relying on emergency rooms for their medical care.

And to convince the Dallas Foundation that the time was right for AIDS Arms to expand, the charity provided some compelling numbers. A facility that would have cost more than $5-million to build in a good economy could be completed for half that amount given Texas’s struggling construction industry, notes Ms. Nobles: “The savings were really astounding.”

AIDS Arms leaders “explained in a very powerful way why they needed more space and why a capital project made sense now,” says Laura Smith, director of community philanthropy at the Dallas Foundation, which ultimately awarded AIDS Arms a grant of $50,000. “They’d really done their research and it showed. A typical proposal says, ‘Here’s what I’d do if I just had the funding.’ This was far more compelling.”

(See the organization’s completed application.)

Standout Proposals

Grant makers gave an estimated $45.7-billion to nonprofits last year, according to the Foundation Center, a New York research group. But despite this annual flow of foundation funds into charity coffers, many charity workers remain in the dark about what separates a standout grant proposal from one doomed to rejection. Following are some tips from foundation leaders on the components of a great grant application:

Research the target. When Foundation Source, a Fairfield, Conn., company that provides management assistance to more than 900 private and family foundations, surveyed its members this spring about their attitudes toward grant making, grant makers identified a common pet peeve. Ninety percent of the foundations surveyed reported that they had a negative view of grant proposals that failed to grasp their grant-making priorities or guidelines.

“You really need to obey the instructions of the funder—that’s what people were saying,” notes Page Snow, chief philanthropic officer at Foundation Source. “Grant writers often think that a fabulous proposal that’s outside of the guidelines will get funded, but it isn’t true.”

Most foundations list their guidelines and priorities on their Web sites, but a growing number have gone a step further and provide would-be applicants with access to searchable databases of previously awarded grants.

“This is a powerful way to understand what our interests are and whether a grant seeker is a good fit,” says Sam Passmore, a program director at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, in Flint, Mich. In addition to a database of all of its grants, Mott also highlights on its home page the 10 most recent projects supported by the foundation. “Seeing what we’ve funded before is the best way for a grant seeker to get a sense of whether it’s worth putting a proposal together,” says Mr. Passmore.

Ask for enough. Susan Bender Phelps spent more than 30 years raising money for family-service charities before last year taking the helm of the Deacon Charitable Foundation, in Portland, Ore., the five-year-old charitable arm of S.D. Deacon, a general construction contractor. The transition, says Ms. Phelps, has opened her eyes to the different perspectives of grant seekers and grant makers.

“In the grants that I see, too many organizations make the mistake of asking for what they think we’ll give them, not what they need,” she says. “I’m not sure they understand that as a funder, I want to make the biggest difference that I can.”

At the Daniels Fund, Linda Childears, president of the billion-dollar Denver foundation, says that she looks at a grant proposal the way a banker might approach a loan request. That includes scrutinizing applications that come with requests that strike her as too small. “A lot of nonprofits take pride in modest budgets and modest approaches,” says Ms. Childears. “But I don’t want to make an investment that doesn’t have a prayer of succeeding.”

Show the math. Foundations routinely require charities to submit financial documentation with any grant request, but grant seekers may not realize just how important such information is.

“The true story of an organization is in the numbers,” says Kristin Boyer, director of public benefits grants for TG, the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation, in Round Rock, Tex., which supports increased college access and completion by low-income students. TG’s 20 grant reviewers, all volunteers from among its 600 employees, look at budget data before they look at anything else, notes Ms. Boyer. “Those numbers tell us what the project is all about, who it serves, and what its potential is.”

Financial information can also indicate how well—or poorly—a charity has been managed. Among the warning signs that foundations look for are incomplete data and unexplained deficits. An organization’s budget often provides the clearest indication of how successful a group has been in the past—and is likely to be in the future, notes Amy Kleine, a program director at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, in Owings Mills, Md.

“When information is missing, you do wonder how professional the group is and how good the programs are,” says Ms. Kleine. “Ultimately we need to have confidence in a group in order to recommend a grant to our board.”

Polish the words. While accurate financial information may be key, don’t neglect the narrative portion of the proposal. In the survey conducted by Foundation Source, grant makers gave low marks to proposals that were hyperbolic, confusing, or vague—or, worst of all, that included grammatical errors or typos.

When it comes to defining good writing, however, foundations don’t have uniform rules. Toby Volkman, director of policy initiatives at the Henry Luce Foundation, in New York, admits that staff members at that organization look for a largely intangible quality in the written proposals they see. “We’re looking for language that’s creative and compelling but understandable at the same time,” says Ms. Volkman. “Does the grantee’s energy, intelligence, clarity, and vision shine through?”

Why so much emphasis on language? Not only does dull or clumsy writing indicate that something is lacking in the proposal, but it also hints at something more profound, argues Ms. Volkman. “Language is pretty important,” she says. “That’s how the grantee communicates, not only to us but to the wider world.”

Tell how results will be measured. A growing number of foundations are also looking for an indication that charities have a way to evaluate the success of the projects for which they are seeking support.

When Aileen Webb, deputy director of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., received a grant proposal from the BHK Child Development Board, a charity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that administers programs for young children, she knew immediately that she wanted to support it. The proposal was for a childhood nutrition program aimed at expectant mothers in rural Michigan and provides the women with home visits for the first three years of their child’s life.

What made the application so special? “They were so clear about how they were going to evaluate their success,” says Ms. Webb, who recommended the charity for a three-year grant totaling $318,000.

Terry Frankovich, medical director at the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department in Hancock, Mich., who helped write the grant proposal, even arranged for Northwestern University’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, in Chicago, to provide outside evaluation expertise. “We didn’t have that level of expertise locally,” notes Dr. Frankovich.

Dr. Frankovich and her co-writers also made a pitch in their proposal that Ms. Webb and her colleagues at Kellogg found irresistible: If the group’s approach is indeed effective in lowering obesity rates in young children (a Kellogg mission), it could be used in early-childhood programs across the country.

“We definitely thought about what Kellogg’s goals when we were writing the grant,” says Dr. Frankovich. “Foundations want a nice broad impact for their investment.”

Resources for Grant Seekers

Books:

How to Say It: Grantwriting: Write Proposals That Grantmakers Want to Fund, by Deborah Koch (Prentice Hall Press, $17.95)

Proposal Planning and Writing, by Jeremy T. Miner and Lynn Miner (Greenwood Press, $39.95)

Other resources:

The Association of Fundraising Professionals includes a resource center and bookstore on its Web site. Go to: http://www.afpnet.org.

Grant Craft explains tools grant makers use to evaluate proposals. Go to: http://www.grantcraft.org.

The Foundation Center offers in-depth information on individual foundations. Go to: http://www.foundationcenter.org.

The National Council of Nonprofits offers classes and resources on proposal writing through its 36 state associations. Go to: http://www.councilofnonprofits.org.

The Network for Good Learning Center offers resources on its Web site to charities seeking help writing proposals. Go to: http://www.fundraising123.org.

One Organization’s Proposal