Speed Up Your Grant Writing By Being Aware of What to Avoid as You Write a Grant

I ran across a great article by Charlie Hullihen which provides his take on the classic seven reasons why your grant proposal might be rejected by the funder. I am not entirely sure that anyone knows exactly why a grant is rejected by a funder. At times, it may simply be due to the fact that no one at the funding agency has heard about your charity. Nevertheless, I find these exercises to be helpful in reviewing what standards grant writers should adhere to when they write a grant proposal. Here is my take on the top reasons why your grant proposal might be rejected by the funder:

  

1. You do not write for your audience.

I try to avoid this by paying attention to the "buzz words" used by the funder in their own website and other marketing and promotional materials. I also pay attention to the colors they use and try to infer from those colors their underlying value system.

2. You are not proofreading enough.

I think it is virtually impossible to proofread your own written work. I hire people to do this for me and try to mobilize all the well meaning volunteers I can find to help me identify errors, misreadings of the application requirements or matters of inconsistency. Even so, I have found a professional proofreader does a better job than a team of three folks with Ph.D.s.

3. You are not thorough enough.

In general, I find the biggest weakness in most grant copy is that the grant writers have not spent adequate time thinking through their budgets. Too often, the grant will be well-written, but the budget will look like it was hastily thrown together at the last minute.

4. Your proposal contains too much fluff.

To a certain extent, I find this error to be fairly easy to identify any time I see a lot of copy lacking in numbers or footnotes. Many times, this sort of copy can be quickly improved by asking yourself whether or not there is any evidence to support the statements that you are making in your copy. Where possible, I try to add numbers and footnotes to demonstrate that whatever I am writing is material that is credible and convincing to a well-meaning reader.

5. You have a goal but no plan.   

On this issue, you can save yourself a lot of pain and suffering simply by following the standard format for a full grant proposal. This format should include a standardized section of the narrative where you indicate your goals and objectives for the proposed grant project.

6. You are not providing enough data.

In general, I think most non-scholars underestimate the degree to which it is fairly easy to quantify virtually anything that you mention in a grant proposal. I would recommend that you not give up too easily when you are challenged to provide data. If you cannot find it quickly or easily, then I would not assume that it is impossible. A well-trained graduate student should be able to help you figure out how to quantify or measure anything. As Charlie Hullihen points out, your proposal should include "...some background information on similar plans that have been successful. Be sure to cite sources, provide graphs and figures, and show that you can analyze these statistics."

7. Using unreasonable budgets.

I find it particularly annoying when people attempt to do too much with almost no money. This is just unrealistic. Also, in my view, it takes away the honor of being a funder in the first place - if so much can be accomplished with virtually no money at all. I like to build in salaries for the staff and benefits too. In my perspective, a full budget demonstrates that you are a real organization that can be counted on to get the job done and on time.