Now look at each piece from the perspective of your proposed project.
- Mission Statement: Summarize the mission of the agency or your individual career goals in two or three sentences. Reduce that to one sentence or one phrase. Keep all of your notes because eventually you will mix and match words to fit your mission to the mission of the funding agency.
For example, a music academy’s mission statement in its entirety could be:
• To enrich the lives of individuals and the community through music
• To provide outstanding instruction for amateur and aspiring professional musicians of all ages
• To reach out to the community through diverse programs and public performances
• To promote and nurture a lifelong passion for music
• Most importantly, to make music education available to all . . . one note at a time
Each of these phrases might be used alone for a different funding source. The first phrase could accompany a request for a series of community concerts. The second would fit either training for instructors or scholarship funds. I might combine elements of the first and third phrases into something like “to enrich the lives of individuals and the community through diverse musical programs and public performances” in proposals for a jazz summer camp, concerts at elementary schools, student recitals at retirement communities, or the creation of a mariachi band or African drumming group. The final phrase might even find its way into an appeal for a customized software and data entry staff person to computerize student, alumni, and donor records.
- History: Condense 50 years or expand 3 years into a single paragraph that explains how you started and how far you’ve come. Our music academy could write: Four music teachers responded to budget cuts in public school music education by creating a community school of music in a church basement in 1970. During the first year, they struggled to keep music alive for 43 young people from 31 families with volunteers providing individual and group lessons with a poorly tuned piano. Today, approximately 600 students between the ages of 6 months and 83 years choose from a wide variety of instruction and performance opportunities facilitated by a staff of 30 professional voice, percussion, woodwind, and brass musicians operating from two classrooms, 18 teaching studios, a keyboard lab, and an 80-seat recital hall.
- Specific Research or Program Activities in the Past Five Years: What concrete success stories can you tell? Collect both quantitative and qualitative examples that show your work is important and makes an impact. Gather information that demonstrates the ripple effect of your work. To continue with our example, the music academy could outline the introduction and growth of two or three major activities and list the accomplishments of several alumni.
- Current Research or Program Activities: This variation of the previous section allows you to provide more details about one program, describe the progress of a “typical” student, and show how the proposed project will strengthen your current work. Use concrete specific examples to show how what you are doing now relates to both the past and the new direction you want to take. Will the grant help you extend current work to a new population? Add new elements? Explore a new direction?
- Major Sources of Funds: Know where you get your money now. Find a copy of this year’s total agency operating budget. In addition, create a list of all grants and large donations from the past five years. Finally, you will need copies of the latest audited financial report for the agency to enclose as an attachment. If you don’t have an audited report, you can ask if a review by an outside source will suffice. Often, if the grant request is small and the agency is new, reviews will be accepted.
- Professional and Community Organizations and Awards: List them all in one place so you have everything spelled correctly and don’t forget any. You can choose which to use for which proposal just like you do with listing community organizations on your personal résumé. The music academy will want to mention membership in the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts and the National Federation of Music Clubs in all of its applications. If the funder places a high value on local community involvement, they might want to add their participation in three Chambers of Commerce and the award they received from a mayor for contributions to city life.
At this point collect everything. Make notes. Play with the words. Add things as you think of them. You will be condensing this material to one or two paragraphs in the proposal, but you want to be sure you remember the important details.
Read More : Idea To Writing Grant Proposal - Gathering Basic Agency Individual Information
