After nearly 20 years of writing, editing, reviewing, and
evaluating grant proposals, I’ve seen my share – the good, the bad, and the
ugly.
Some grant proposals leap off the page, painting a vivid
picture of the problem at hand and the proposed solution, while also providing an
elegant, accurate (and not overwhelming) description of how, when, and why the
solution will be carried out.
Some grant proposals get the job done, but don’t do much
more than that. They answer the who, what, where, when, and why, but they never
draw the reader in. They are the workhorses of the grant writing world:
efficient, but forgettable.
Some grant proposals are real clunkers. There’s just no
better way to say it. Not only do they not give the required information,
explain the problem or the solution, or draw you in, but they are just... limp.
If you don’t activate the reader’s interest with your grant
proposal, someone else will. Most individuals who are reviewing grant proposals
and deciding what to fund, or deciding what to pass along to their boards or
grant review committees, are reviewing myriad grant proposals. You must be
memorable in order to not be forgotten.
In the preceding paragraph, I’ve broken one of my own rules
about how to write a better, more effective, more engaging proposal. Read on:
1. Tell
a Story About One Person, One Program, One River, One Bird...
Storytelling is having a moment. Most grant writing books,
blogs, and articles advise telling a story in your proposals, in order to help
the reader envision your program. Research has shown that people remember
stories more than statistics. Fundraising letters and appeals that tell the
story of one person are more effective in raising funds than letters that
assault the reader with a barrage of statistics, even when those statistics are
compelling. Storytelling humanizes a proposal.
To make your proposal more interesting, creative, and
lively, tell the story of ONE. One child who will be fed by your soup kitchen.
One immigrant whose job training helped her transform her family’s life. One
block in one neighborhood. One bird species. One river in a watershed. Drill
down; get small in order to have the big impact.
2. Throw Away Your Thesaurus.
Enough with the S.A.T. words, OK? Please stop saying “myriad,”
as I did, above (and while you’re at it, if you MUST use that word, please
learn how to use it properly). Proposal writing is like poetry; every word
counts. But big words are not necessarily good words. In fact, throwing a big
word into a sentence in order to sound smart can be like a tranquilizer dart to
the head. Isn’t the preceding sentence more interesting than: “Use of advanced
vocabulary to create the impression of intellectual prowess can have deleterious
effects.”
Choose good words, not big words.
See more of my tips on what never to write in a grant
proposal HERE.
3. Make It Shorter. Yes, Even Shorter Than That.
Writing long is easy. Writing short is hard.
Every grant writer knows that staying within an RFP’s page
limit can be difficult, even maddening. When you do not have a formal page
limit, it can be like driving on the highway with a full tank of gas. Freedom!
You can keep going and going and going!
Except you can’t.
In my experience, at least quarter of most grant proposals
can be cut out. Often, the longer your proposal gets, the more you are
repeating yourself. Keep it short, focused, and powerful. Long can be boring.
Short can be intense and vivid.
This rule of thumb also applies to your paragraphs and sentences.
Watch out for run-on sentences, which seem to be the plague of the grant
writing world. Mix it up. Throw in a short, impactful sentence every once in a
while, just like I’m doing in this essay. When your reader has to read compound
sentence after compound sentence, with no breaks, their mind tends to drift. If
you mix it up with shorter sentences now and again, it’s a little burst of
energy that makes you take notice.
In the spirit of following my own advice, I’ll close here
and encourage you to give some of these tips a shot, even if it seems scary to
get out of your usual grant writing groove.
Find more of my tips, including my audiofile, Grant Writing for Creative Souls, and my e-book, Grant Writing Quick Tips, HERE.
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