Planning and Writing a Grant Proposal: The Basics UW Madison

This section is written best by separating different issues and ideas into separate sections. This will make it easier for you to write the section by focusing on one idea at a time and make it easier on the reader as well since the section won’t jump all over the place.

Add and edit information as you customize your document, using the outline provided in the template, to cover everything your client needs to know. A grant proposal is different from a business or marketing proposal, as you’re not directly selling a product, solution, or project. Instead, you’re trying to secure funding for your business—often for research or to support education initiatives. It is a grant program offering aid to women in business that are beyond the start-up phase and ready to expand their business, their potential for positive social and environmental impact.

The Best Grant Writing Exercises to Improve Your Grants

Many grants, especially those offered by the government, have strict rules on how you can spend the award. You won’t just get a check you can spend on anything; you must meet the grant’s requirements. Wait to hear back – if you are successful, congratulations! Your first step is to identify the grant you want to apply for and read the guidelines carefully. Add to that all the research and argumentation needed to write a good proposal, and you’ll be looking at hours, days, or even weeks if you’re really a perfectionist.

Since then, he has written several books on software documentation, personal branding, and computer hacking. A brief discussion about the design layout, color coding, and use of social media icons can turn this business proposal into a great sales pitch. To sell and generate revenues for your business, you must create awareness about your offerings. To convert your proposal writing into sales and deal closures, give them a reason to trust you, convince them you are better than your competitors and can resolve their issues.

What Gives You a Good Chance of Getting a Small Business Grant

When writing effective grant proposals, remember your audience and purpose. First, identify the decision-makers – those who have the power to approve or reject your request. Then think about what they care about and what their priorities are. Because grant funding is so competitive, you will likely be applying for several different grants from multiple funding agencies. But if you do this, make sure that you carefully design each proposal to respond to the different interests, expectations, and guidelines of each source.

Frequently the RFP or grant description will include directions for dividing and organizing your proposal. If, however, it does not, it is still best practice to break your proposal into clear sections with concise headings.

Budget Proposal Example

Catering ProposalCreate a catering proposal for your client’s next event. Video Production ProposalCreate a professional video production proposal. Construction ProposalCreate a construction proposal for all your needs.

Regardless of the level of technicality of the grant, we make sure that your message is sharp and clear. Yoco is an African technology company that builds tools and services to help small businesses get paid, run their business better, and grow. We believe that by opening up more possibilities for entrepreneurs to be successful, we can help create more jobs, enable people to thrive and help to drive our economy forward. Central to this section is what your business has achieved to date, in hard numbers, and how you project will grow going forward. Detailing your company’s profitability is a good place to start – and don’t forget to include information on aspects like income, cash flow, and your balance sheets. A funding proposal can live or die on the nitty-gritty details of your current financial situation. This is one section where you shouldn’t hold back on providing details that will show potential investors why yours is a worthy project to back.

What Information Do You Need to Write a Grant?

With the Jotform Project Proposal template, you can be sure that your proposal is presented in a professional way. The Free Project Proposal template we have available has all the information that clients would normally look for a proposal presentation. Information such as an overview of the project, description, goals, expected outcomes, and many more. You can edit this information, change layouts and add more details to meet the requirements of your project. These sections how to write a grant proposal for a small business have different titles depending on the guidelines specified by the granting organization, but they frequently serve the same purposes. In what follows, we identify some of the main elements of grant proposals, consider the work that section needs to do, and provide tips for successfully composing these sections. However, remember, as you write your proposal, follow that grant’s guidelines and use the exact section headings provided by the call for proposals.

Keep these characteristics of successful grant proposals in mind when you write a grant proposal. You may also be able to ask other members of the Instrumentl community for their past successful grant proposals by attending our next live workshop. Sites like the Community Tool Box or Non-Profit Guides offer free online resources for organizations working to support healthier communities and support social change. They provide helpful advice for new nonprofits and provide a whole suite of sample grants to help you start winning grants step by step. Depending on the type of business you’re in, your business proposal elements will vary based on the prospect’s needs.

A way you can accomplish this is by stating your short and long-term goals for their business. While they will have to wait for the long-term goals, make the short-term goals so enticing that they are instantly ready to begin a collaboration.

• A funding proposal forms the basis of your relationship with the donor and, therefore, should be developed with utmost care and diligence.
• You can include a table of contents with page numbers as well.
• Think of the executive summary similar to the cover letter, but more in-depth.
• Give a short history of your organization, state yourmission, the population you serve and provide an overview of your track record.
• Even though your cover letter will be the first part of your grant application, it helps to write it last.

All of the included data should directly support the main point of your proposal. There may be some statistics where the numbers are enough to grab the reader’s attention; other times, it may be helpful to have illustrations, graphs, or maps. Propose your business as the ideal solution using this free template.