OPENING REMARKS
When I was a beginning grant writer, I focused only on the parts of a grant proposal that were worth a specified number of points—the items I viewed as questions that called for good answers to get the best possible score. Materials such as the cover letter, abstract, table of contents, and appendix received the shortest shrift—until the first time I actually looked back at a copy of a proposal that I had submitted to the federal government for many millions of dollars. The abstract—the very first impression the funder was getting of my organization (and me)—was a mess. There were grammatical errors. The whole abstract was one long, long, long paragraph. And the information in this endless paragraph was disorganized and unclear. No wonder we didn’t get this grant. Now I wouldn’t think of sending a proposal off without a perfect cover letter; a crisply written, well-organized abstract; a comprehensive table of contents; and an appendix full of relevant, well-chosen information (if an appendix is allowed, of course).—EK
THE COVER PAGE: MAKING IT OFFICIAL
When you are submitting a proposal to a government agency or a common application form published by a regional association of grantmakers, there is usually a page that takes the place of a cover letter (though cover letters often are included anyway, to be polite). The cover page contains the agency’s legal name, address, and contact information (including the executive director or agency head, and a program contact person if different); the employer identification number (the organizational equivalent of a social security number); the number or identifier of the grant you are applying for (e.g., the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance program number); the amount requested; the project start and end dates; and other items, depending on the agency issuing the application package. You would expect these forms to be standardized (and to the extent that every grantmaker needs similar information, they are). But each state and city will have certain elements that are important to that entity, so we thought it would be meaningless to try to give examples. Indeed, even within a single municipality, the cover forms can differ from agency to agency.
One cover page that is almost universally used at the federal level is Form SF-424, sometimes with a letter prefix representing the agency (e.g., ED 424 is the cover page for applications to the U.S. Department of Education). We’re including this form in Appendix 4 because, like the common application forms, it includes almost everything you will see on any government cover form.
THE COVER LETTER: GETTING OFF ON THE RIGHT FOOT
When Do I Need to Use a Cover Letter?
When you are applying for a government grant and there is a cover page, it isn’t really necessary to add a cover letter, which probably will be discarded anyway. But for all foundation proposals, even when there is a cover page, and for some government proposals that don’t include a cover form, we recommend a cover letter. It should be brief (not more than half a page)—one page if it substitutes for an abstract or program summary. It should give a one- or two-sentence statement of what you’re requesting in the enclosed proposal and one or two reasons—based on the foundation’s priorities and interests—you’re applying to this foundation. This is especially important if you are new to the foundation.
If you’re not including a formal program summary or abstract, use the cover letter for this purpose (see the next section and Appendix 4 for some pointers). In this case, include one or two sentences each about the need, the objectives, the program, the partners (if it’s a collaboration), how you plan to evaluate the program, the cost of the program, and the amount you are requesting.
If a program officer has been helpful to you in developing the proposal, you should mention this—and note that you’ve tried to include information that you discussed with him or her. If you’ve had a grant from this foundation before, mention how important that grant was to your community. (Remember that grants aren’t about you; they’re about the needs you are trying to address.)
Keep the letter short, to the point, and polite. And that’s it!
THE ABSTRACT: MAKING IT EASY FOR THE PROGRAM OFFICER
An abstract (sometimes called a summary, program summary, or executive summary) is the first thing a reader sees and may be your most important marketing tool. But because you can’t really prepare it until your proposal is nearly finished, there’s a tendency to rush through it, seeing it as less important than the rest of the proposal. And if a grantmaker doesn’t ask for an abstract, many writers assume it’s not necessary and breathe a sigh of relief about having one less thing to worry about. But if you can slip a summary like this into your proposal, you really will be a little bit ahead of the game.
Isn’t an Abstract Redundant? The Proposal Explains the Program in Great Detail, So Why Summarize?
The abstract gives the program officer something to take to the foundation board, or gives the government agency something to take to its congressional oversight committee to show how the money is being spent (and saves them the work of doing it themselves). The abstract summarizes the proposal in a page or two. It can be read quickly, yet it gives the reader—the reviewer—a good sense of the need, the program, the applicant, the goals and objectives, and the budget. The abstract is a work of art! (Stop laughing. To a proposal writer, this is art.)
If you were a funder, you’d want the applicant’s abstract to include a little more than just a summary of what the organization (or individual) plans to do with the money, although you might not say so in the application guidelines. As noted, foundation program officers often use abstracts to summarize the proposals they plan to recommend to their boards. Government agencies may use them to demonstrate to elected officials that the grants went to projects that were intended under the legislation that authorized them.
When a funding agency asks for an abstract or an executive summary, it often specifies how long this item should be (e.g., two double-spaced pages; half a page; 250 words), because this, or something similar that the program officer prepares, is the document that is going into his or her report or recommendations. So within that limited space you must be sure to cover most of the following information briefly. (The key word is briefly; you may need to cram each item into a single sentence.) As you’ll see, it closely tracks the components of a proposal. (Another example is given in Appendix 4.)
• A description of your organization, agency, school district, or school. What are you? Where are you and what area do you serve? What services do you provide? To how many people? How long have you been in existence?
• The compelling problem you are addressing in your proposal. If you have room, you should give a taste—a taste—of the research and statistical information that are included in your needs section.
• Description of your program, explaining that it will address the problem you’ve identified by targeting a specific population and achieving the objectives that you briefly summarize. What activities will you conduct? Who are your partners? If all a funder wants is a two- or three-sentence summary of the program alone, you should be sure that this summary is finely honed and includes all of this information.
• Description of your evaluation.
• Overall cost of the project; the amount of the request; and, as appropriate, your organization’s contribution to the project cost, and other funders who are supporting the project through either cash or services.
Sure it’s a lot of information, but you must keep the abstract to the page or word limit the funder indicates. That’s why you can’t just dash it off at the last minute.
What’s the difference between an abstract and a summary? There is none, except possibly length. We tend to think of an abstract as a little more complete and formal in style, and it’s the term you may see more often in a government request for proposals. We think of a summary as shorter (often just one paragraph), perhaps less formal, and the term that may be used more often by foundations. But the information contained in each is basically the same.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: THE READER’S TRAIL OF BREAD CRUMBS
If your proposal is only a few pages long (say, up to the five or six pages that many foundations ask for), and if you’ve done a snappy abstract or summary paragraph, you won’t need a table of contents. But for longer proposals, such as those for national foundations and government agencies, this road map can be very helpful. It tells the funder that you’ve covered all the items in its application guidelines or in a request for proposals. It helps a reader or reviewer flip back to something he or she read earlier to check a fact or answer a question. It’s useful to the reader, and anything that makes the reader happier is good for you. We suggest that you take the time to create a table of contents, even if the guidelines don’t require one.
Think back a minute to Lesson 3, on application packages. Remember that we said you should answer all the questions and instructions, in the same order in which the grantmaker lists them? We suggested that you use an outline. Subheads would include the keywords mentioned in the instructions, to demonstrate that you are responding to the required topics. So it should be pretty easy now to create the table of contents: Just go back and list the titles of the major sections. (Don’t get carried away and make the table of contents three pages long; you can stop with the major subheads.) Include the titles of appendices or attachments too, so the reader can see instantly that they’re all there and where to find them.
And the reason we’re mentioning this at all—you may be thinking, “a table of contents, oh, come on!”—is because it’s another intangible: something that makes your proposal better but is not necessarily mentioned in the guidelines or application. A table of contents will allow you to check that you’ve answered all the questions and that your subheads show continuity and are relevant. And as you prepare your table of contents, you’ll notice if any of the sections of the proposal seem a little skimpy and need more work.
THE APPENDIX: IT’S NOT JUST A USELESS ORGAN
You say you have only five pages to make the case for a large foundation grant, and there’s important information about awards and honors your agency has received that you have to stuff into those five pages to prove you are the stellar organization the foundation is looking for? You say you’ve developed an extraordinary partnership with four other organizations in the community to solve a problem you’ve all been wrestling with on your own, but you don’t have space in the proposal to do more than describe the partners in a few words? The appendix is not a useless organ. Here’s where you get to show off without occupying vital space in the proposal narrative.
I’ve Seen Those Huge Stacks of Paper That People Call Appendices. Aren’t They a Waste of Paper That Nobody Ever Reads?
We think this is the wrong way to look at it. The appendices let you demonstrate a lot of things that don’t fit into the body of the proposal. For example, the narrative may mention that you have a diverse board of directors, but the list of the names of your 15 or 20 board members, with their business titles, other nonprofit affiliations, and so on, paints the picture more concretely. The list also allows funders to determine whether there is any connection with board members that may enhance the prospects for a grant, or whether there is a potential conflict of interest. For example, some corporate foundations prefer to give grants to organizations with which their employees or employees’ families are connected; others—and some government funders—avoid this type of connection. Or you may talk in the capacity section about how financially stable and enduring your organization is; the audit report in the appendix documents this. As we said in the last section, if you include a list of appendices in the proposal’s table of contents, readers will know where to look for whichever pieces of information they consider most important. And there are lots of things they consider important. The appendices for foundations and those for government agencies overlap to a very large extent, but foundations sometimes ask for a bit less information. We’ll start with the foundations.
Attachments for Foundation Proposals
What should be attached to a foundation proposal? Whatever they ask for! You will notice that as you read foundation guidelines—especially the common application formats published by some regional associations of grantmakers—the foundations usually refer to attachments, not appendices. At the risk of being boring, we have to repeat: Start with the guidelines and make a phone call if anything isn’t clear. If you did the homework we suggested in Lesson 4, all you’ll have to do now is reach into a folder and pull out the specific documents that most foundations ask for.
The common application formats have a section in which they list attachments. Even if you’re not using one of these formats, it makes sense to have a section at the end of your proposal—however short—in which you list the attachments in the order in which they appear. Following are the attachments that are most often requested:
• Documentation of not-for-profit status: Almost all foundations ask that you attach the 501(c)(3) and IRS determination letter.
• Agency budget for the current and often for the previous fiscal year: Some foundations also ask for the projected agency budget for the next fiscal year.
• Project budget
• List of other funders for the project
• Most recent audit report
• Tax return Form 990
• Most recent annual report: Foundations understand that many nonprofit organizations don’t publish an annual report. But you should note this when you describe the attachments, so the reader doesn’t think you just forgot it.
• Brief biographies and/or résumés of key staff: Normally what’s expected is a page with one-paragraph summaries of the experience and qualifications of the executive director and/or senior manager responsible for the project; the project director, supervisor, or coordinator; and any professional staff members who are critical to its implementation. Some grantmakers want to see the résumés too.
• A list of partners if the proposal is for a collaboration: Foundations don’t usually ask for commitment letters or contract letters, but it may be worthwhile to include them if you’ve developed them. Nor do foundations usually require attendance lists or minutes from partnership meetings, but if this is an important element of your proposal you may be able to strengthen your chance of winning a grant by documenting the development and current operations of the partnership.
• Other attachments: Foundations often like to see a few (a few!) news articles about the organization, or the executive summary of an evaluation that’s been done on the program to be funded. Most foundations do not want to see Power Point presentations or videotapes. If you happen to have a video that you think effectively documents the program you want funded, and if the guidelines don’t prohibit it or request it, call first to see if there’s any interest in seeing it.
Attachments for Government Agencies
As we have said so many times that we’re sure you’re sick of hearing it by now—but we’ll keep saying it—the single most important activity in preparing an application is to check and recheck what the guidelines say the funder wants. Most government application forms or announcements tell you exactly what you must attach. Some recent applications have stipulated how many pages long the appendix can be, without even hinting at what information should be included. The types of attachments that you might include are exactly what you would submit for foundations, with a few additions.
• Certifications and assurances: Most government agencies require that you agree to a number of conditions that become part of the contract once you win a grant. Examples include agreements that you are or will be in compliance with all relevant laws, such as fair labor standards and equal opportunity laws; environmental standards; that you disclose all lobbying activities; maintain a drug-free workplace; and so on. Most of these forms have to be signed by a board member and/or the executive director, the agency head, or the school superintendent, so get them completed well in advance of the day the proposal has to go out. More than once we’ve chased around getting the right signatures at the last minute, when, of course, all the people we needed were at important business meetings, at funerals, or out of town.
• Documentation of partnerships: If the proposal represents a collaborative project or a partnership, documentation for a government proposal is usually much more stringent than for foundations. Here you must include memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between and among the partners. These, as we have said earlier, are minicontracts, specifying what each partner will have as its responsibility and will receive from the other partners. MOUs that are required for certain government grant proposals are almost always studied by the applicants’ lawyers to make sure the promises included are reasonable . . . and legal. If a city police department or mental health department signs an MOU saying that it will “provide services in a community in the manner described below,” you can bet that the legal departments have looked it over once, twice, and even three times. Don’t put an MOU into a proposal unless you fully understand all the ramifications. In addition to MOUs, minutes of partners’ meetings often are required as proof that the partnership is real and ongoing, and not just an on-paper collaboration.
• Letters from elected officials: Foundations don’t care at all about political support for your project, and a letter from an elected official may actually offend some. But it’s sometimes a little different for government agencies. Although a support letter from your city council member, state senator, or member of Congress is not enough to get a proposal funded, it won’t be seen as inappropriate pressure, and it could give you just the tiniest push if other applicants with equal scores don’t have such letters. And staff of elected officials may, when it’s appropriate, follow up with a phone call on your behalf if they have sent such a letter. At least a week before the proposal is due (longer if possible), send an abstract/executive summary of the proposal to the official’s office, with some indication of the comments that would be most useful (some staff like to see a draft or a sample letter). The office may write directly to the commissioner or secretary of the agency receiving the proposal, or may send the letter to you for inclusion in the proposal package.
• Resources in the community and what services these resources are providing (resource mapping): Government grantmakers are interested in knowing exactly what is going on in a target community so they can see precisely where the proposed project will fit in. As they see what is going on, they look for gaps in services that the grant, if funded, will fill.
• Résumés for “typical” staff for proposed project: Understanding that job announcements for important grant-funded positions may have to be widely posted in a fair and impartial manner once funding is approved, government grantmakers often are willing to look at a typical résumé of a well-qualified project director, for instance, rather than the résumé of the person who will be hired. Showing that you’ve given a lot of thought to the qualifications of project staff is reassuring to funders!
• Job descriptions of all full- and part-time grant-funded staff: Include the duties and responsibilities of each staff member, how much time he or she will put into the project, and, if possible, to whom each will report in the organization’s structure. Also, describe the duties of staff members who will work on the project as an in-kind contribution of the applicant—people who will participate in project activities but whose salaries are not paid for by the grant.
Pop Quiz
True or False?
1. The project cost should never appear in the abstract of a grant proposal.
2. A table of contents should only be included in a grant proposal if it is mentioned in the application.
3. The average length of a comprehensive abstract is five pages.
4. If you get letters of support from elected officials, you should make sure they are presented at the very front of your proposal.
5. Foundations never expect to see information about a not-for-profit organization’s board of directors in the attachments.
6. A good rule of thumb for your abstract: Use as many words as you need as long as you’re completely clear.
7. Government grant applications usually don’t specify how many pages the appendix should be.
8. All grantmakers expect at least some attachments or appendix material included in the grant proposal.
9. Another word for “appendix” is “attachment.”
Essay Question
Write a sample cover letter to a foundation to accompany a proposal.