Writing grant proposals, one of the most common fundraising activities, has become increasingly complex. Grant writers have to navigate an ever-shifting archipelago of funders and funding philosophies.
Philanthropists who have made their wealth from selling technology have brought a metrics mindset to grant making. Many funders have turned to logic models that link inputs, activities, and outcomes. Foundations increasingly look for nonprofits doing work that has what they call “intersectionality,” simultaneously addressing several aspects of social identity, such as race, gender, disability, and class.
Meanwhile, trust-based philanthropy has increased funding to grassroots organizations, but staff members at those organizations can feel like they have to pass “ZIP code tests” to prove they are part of the communities they serve. In grant proposals, that can mean making sure they show strong ties to other community organizations and local leaders.
For grant seekers, the process can seem formidable, even nonsensical. As one fundraiser quips: Projects are expected to be innovative and evidence-based at the same time.
One common theme surfaced in interviews with consultants, nonprofit executives, and those who teach fundraising: “Now it’s all about impact. Measurable impact,” says Mary E. Chown, a fundraising consultant based in Berks County, Pa., who expanded her career to include grant management in part to collect the impact data needed for the next round of grant writing.
“People are looking for systemic change,” she adds. Helping your neighbor or a city block isn’t enough. Funders will ask, “Have you changed the social and economic system swirling around them?”
Here is some more advice from veteran fundraisers to help you write outstanding proposals and win grants:
Before writing proposals, make sure your organization is “grant ready.”
When consultants are called in to write proposals, they will often do an assessment to look at some basics: the organization’s 990 forms, its website, and its strategic plan. Those should all be in top shape.
Foundations consistently look for well-defined, well-thought-out, well-articulated strategic plans, says Bill Stanczykiewicz, senior assistant dean for external relations at the Lilly School of Philanthropy and director of its professional-development arm, the Fundraising School. They seek a meaningful connection between that plan and your grant proposal.
You should be prepared to show a variety of revenue streams. Foundations don’t want to be perceived, Stanczykiewicz says, “as the one big, easy magic wand for nonprofits to solve all of their financial needs.”
Foundations don’t want to be perceived “as the one big, easy magic wand for nonprofits to solve all of their financial needs.”
He remembers in one of his classes a foundation staff member said, “If you come to us with a grant proposal, one of our first questions is going to be ‘Do you have 100 percent board giving?’ And if your answer is no, we’re going to stop reading the rest of your proposal.”
Mackenzie Parker, director of foundation partnerships for GRID, a nonprofit headquartered in Oakland, Calif., that helps underserved homeowners get access to renewable energy, advises keeping a library of impact data and having answers to common questions you can refer to when writing proposals.
Jennifer Tepper, executive director of Soccer Without Borders, which won a 2023 grant-writing competition sponsored by GrantStation, a company that supports grant seekers, keeps a catalog of impact data. Her nonprofit uses soccer, Tepper says, as a way to “elevate the potential of newcomer youth and marginalized girls in the United States and around the world.”
The group knows that 49 percent of all participants identify as girls, that coaches work with the program for an average of three years, and that high-school graduation rates for participants at its local “hubs” range from 89 percent to 100 percent. All those numbers are helpful in writing proposals, Tepper says.
Thoroughly research your audience.
Tepper reports spending a “ridiculous amount of time” trying to understand funders and funder history. “I want to understand what makes them tick,” she says. “What do they think will be really compelling to win their investment? How do they want to change the world?”
That research, she says, enables the organization to “tell our story in a way that resonates to those funders very specifically.”
Susan Davies, a consultant who teaches a variety of continuing education and master’s degree-level courses, including fundraising, at New York University, advises small nonprofits in the early stages of fundraising not to expect grants from their first proposals.
“What we need to do,” she says to them, “is to learn the right language to describe what we’re doing in a way foundations will understand.”
Make your proposal stand out from the pack.
Experts offer concise advice for boosting a proposal’s chances of success: Write a compelling executive summary. Don’t get lost in the weeds; zoom out to the big picture. Blend statistics and data with anecdotes and human stories. Tell program officers something they don’t already know. Be mindful of the language you use: Does it align in an appealing way with the funder’s language?
Tepper often seeks funding for her “collective impact team.” That includes operations, accounting, fundraising, communication, evaluation, and other central office tasks. The team, she says, “creates a healthy vessel for all of our great work to get deployed out of.”
“Collective impact” is a lot more appealing, she believes, than phrases like “administrative overhead” or “indirect costs.”
Parker focuses on executive summaries, knowing they may determine if the full proposal even gets read by program officers, and may be all that top foundation executives read.
Likewise, Parker advises not getting lost in background right after the executive summary; create a compelling opening that will keep program officers’ attention. Throughout the proposal, she says, keep language “brief and relevant.” If a funder is focused on environmental justice, don’t wander off into tangential issues of economic justice.
Don’t get lost in background right after the executive summary; create a compelling opening that will keep program officers’ attention.
While a proposal needs to demonstrate impact with numbers, it should also have some emotional appeal, she advises: “You uplift voices, you center communities, you tell stories in a way that feels accessible and relatable to the reader.”
When writing, she uses the “11-11-11 rule.” She imagines a reviewer reading her proposal at 11 o’clock at night. The proposal is the 11th one they have read, and the reviewer is on page 11. The imaginary challenge she tries to meet, she says, is to keep the reviewer engaged.
Parker regularly uses a structure of “Need. Impact. Ask.” She describes the need for funder investment, demonstrates the potential impact, shows why a proposed partnership is positioned to make the impact, and then makes the ask. It’s a helpful way to keep the reader engaged, she says, and to organize information in a coherent way.
Veteran grant writers also say they seek to tell foundations something they haven’t heard before. A lot of information about social problems and solutions gets recycled, and foundations look to grant recipients for new information and ideas for change. Scholarships are a common way of supporting education, for instance, but many foundations are looking for new ways to broaden education’s economic reach.
Use A.I. to Save Time
When Tepper at NYU asks her students, many of them already working as fundraisers, where they find A.I. useful, they say they use it to brainstorm ideas for proposals and to get first drafts. Messages and audiences can then be refined by adding additional prompts.
You can tailor generative A.I. drafts to your organization by having the relevant tool draw only on your nonprofit’s branding, strategic plan, previous proposals, and other internal documents. But be cautious about sharing internal proprietary data with an A.I. platform that doesn’t belong to your organization, because on a public platform, private data becomes public property, even if anonymized.
Perhaps one of the best uses for A.I., Tepper and others say, is to write executive summaries of specified lengths. “Good executive summaries are the hardest section to write,” she says, “because they have to say everything without being redundant and tell a compelling story.”
A.I. can also help you cut longer narratives down to the lengths necessary to fit into proposal templates.
But experts stress that human editors need to rework A.I. drafts. These tools have a propensity to make facts up, so you should fact-check all text. And while generative A.I. can fake empathy, it does not have emotions, nor does it understand them. Putting passion and emotional appeal into grant proposals is best left to humans.
Putting passion and emotional appeal into grant proposals is best left to humans.
Make writing grant proposals a team effort.
The job title “grant proposal writer” may bring to mind one person working alone in a quiet room. But veteran fundraisers say that stereotype is wrong. “Grant writing is not a solo act someone does on a computer by themselves,” says Davies. “You are writing for a team.”
Grant proposal writers should show drafts to colleagues, she says. “Don’t just show it when you think you have a brilliant, polished piece,” she adds. “Show it when you’re having a hard time.”
Tepper, of Soccer Without Borders, uses a verb borrowed from creative writing — workshopping — to describe her way of seeking feedback from others. “I’ll use my advancement committee; I’ll use my executive committee. I’ll use my board chair,” she says. Over time, the proposals become more effective and concise.
Fundraisers also often seek the input of program staff, who can review grant proposals to make sure staff will have the capacity to run proposed activities. Program officers can also help proposal writers capture the success of existing programs. The accounting side of an organization should create or review budgets. “Engagement across the entire agency,” says Stanczykiewicz, “can ensure that strong management happens after the dollars arrive.”
Don’t make these common mistakes.
Proposals are often too long, veteran grant writers say. Even if a section in a proposal template has a limit of 500 words, the foundation’s program officer will be grateful to the applicant who makes their case in 350.
“You don’t get funded by the pound,” says Stanczykiewicz. Cut jargon, long explanations, and footnotes, he advises.
Parker, of GRID, warns grant writers not to get bogged down in describing need. A few quick statistics or a brief explanation of need, whether the issue is food insecurity, conflict resolution, or early childhood education, will do. The foundation probably gets similar paragraphs on hundreds of proposals, she says. Save statistical and descriptive ammunition to describe potential impact.
Avoid giving in to the temptation to overpromise, says Stanczykiewicz. Under promise, over deliver. You’ll be glad you did when you have to report on results. Including some targets on your proposal that you can easily overshoot may help you at grant renewal time, veteran grant writers say.
Under promise, over deliver. Including some targets on your proposal that you can easily overshoot may help you at grant renewal time.
Find the best way to fit your story into a foundation’s template.
Increasingly, foundations want proposals to be submitted in online templates, with sections that have a set word limit. Those templates can be frustrating to work with, grant writers say. There are two approaches. One is to ignore the template at first and write a longer narrative that is later sliced up into sections. Advocates of this way of working say it creates a connecting narrative that will later weave its way through the template. Others say that approach wastes time and advise going straight to work on the template sections.
Chown is a proponent of the first approach and says she might write three pages even if a section only demands 250 words. “I have to understand it, be able to massage it, and get it all down,” she says. “Then I rework, consolidate, and push to be concise and poignant.” Seven drafts later, she says, she usually has her final wording.
Davies has two practical tips for templates. One is to work offline, using word-counting features in software. Offline, writers don’t have to fear that the “save” button won’t work or that they might accidentally hit “submit” before they are done. Davies says she always submits online proposals at least 24 hours before the deadline, to avoid discovering that the foundation’s grant-management software is frozen from a flood of applications.
Don’t be dejected if you get rejected.
Even if a grant proposal is not approved, there is no reason not to submit more to the same funder. Always solicit feedback on rejected proposals to learn how to improve: Even a five-minute phone call can be valuable. Then try, try again. “My rule of thumb,” Chown says, “is to knock three times.”
