GilbertMakore's Blog

In the previous post, I basically laid out an outline of the sections that should be found in every grant proposal or concept note for non profit projects. But there is need to elaborate on that as the sections are not necessarily self explanatory. Taking the same outline i gave in the last post i will go on to expand, in brief, what should be under each section.

Background

The background in a grant proposal, is not a background to your organisation or you as an individual. It is a background to the situation. A more apt way of describing this is that it should provide context as no project occurs in a vacuum. In fact, the section on “Background” is also more often interchangeably known as “Context” The writing should be such that it builds up the situation that you are going to address. Thus, if you are going to launch an entreprenuerial development programme for the youth in your country, the context should be about the declining economic conditions, unemployment, maybe lack of political will, inaction of private companies. The context should, however, do this in a nuanced manner and should be balanced. So, in shot, focus on the political and soci-economic environment within which your problem occurs and within which you propose to implement the project.

Problem Statement

The Problem Statement in a project proposal is self explanatory. It should be a statement of the problem. What is often advised is to actually begin the first sentence under this section by saying ” The Problem is……..” Taking the example of a proposed project to establish an entreprenuerial development programme for youths, the problem statement could read- The problem that the proposed project seeks to address is an increasingly high level of unemployment amongst the youths in country XYZ. But a problem has cause and effect factors and these should also appear under this section. Staying with our example, you could say….The problem of unemployment is exarcebated by the fact that the youth are not equipped with the necessary business skills to start of business ventures (this would be an example of a cause factor). There are no entrepreneurial programmes in country XYZ resulting in a situation whereby the country has more jobseekers than jobcreators (another example of a cause factor). The net effect of this is, the youths of the country, which represent the future leaders of our nation, become despondent, despaired and engage in nefarous activities including drugs and crime(this would be an effect factor).

Proposed Idea

Now that you have identified the Problem, the next step in the grant proposal is to lay out the action or project you want to implement to successfully tackle the problem. This should be in brief as the proposed idea will be further expanded under the section on ‘Goal, Objectives and Activities’. An exapmple would be ….To tackle the problem of unemployment, ABC (you/your organisation) proposes to launch an entrepreneurial development programme for the youth. This programme will include creating a dedicating work-sapce for aspiring enterpreneurs, setting up a revolving seed fund to support entreprenuerial projects and incubating start-ups. The idea would be to provide entreprenurship training and providing much needed seed capital for promising projects/entreprises….. You may go on to explain, in brief, how you would structure this, for example, setting up an advisory team of leading business-people in the country that would provide training services. Establishing a board/judging panel comprised of leading business thinkers and doers who will recommend projects for funding etc etc

Justification

This section should focus on why you think there is need for your project and why you believe that your proposed project is the right solution to the problem.  Why do you think that your project deserves a grant or funding. So its slightly different from the problem statement as here what you are supposed to do is make a case for your project. Assume that we arenow agreed that there is a problem. What you want to do is to justify the need to address the problem at this moment in time and justify why the solution you propose is the right one. You could show, for example, that traditionally, small business has always contributed a significantly to country XYZ’s GDP, that it is the biggest employer, that other similar solutions in other countries have worked etc

Project Goals, Objectives and Activities

The Goal should be the long term purpose of the project. It should answer the question-What do you want to see 3-4 years after the project has been completed. Using our example, it could read. The goal of the project is a thriving entreprenuerial community, sustainable incomes and continued rise in employment levels by 2015. The goal of the project should be time-bound but the time-frame should be beyond the lifespan of the project as the results/impact is usually realised much later after project completion.

The Objectives are essentially your aims in a proposal. These should be expected to be realised by the time the project is completed. Key words when developing objectives for a project proposal-To, Improve, Enhance, Increase. You should always try to begin your objective by the word “To”. This forces you to focus on a purpose/aim. Enhance, Improve and Increase are good as they ensure that you are forced into developing a positive outcome. Back to our example, an objective could read- To enhance the capacity of youths in XYZ to develop profitable businesses by 2011 or To increase employment opportunities for the youth in XYZ by 2011 or To improve improve business management skills among the youth by 2011 etc. Again, the objective should be time-bound. people often use the acronym SMART to say your goals and objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.

The Activities in any grant proposal should be related to the Objectives. In fact, you should take each objective and under that objective list the activities that will enable you to achieve that objective. Thats the proper way of doing things. The improper way that sometimes works for some people is to get down the activities first and then try to  develop the objectives and the goal. But the best way when colouring is to begin at the edges. You need to have the bigger picture firs (goals, objectives-the aim) before filling in the details (activities), so I prefer developing the objectives and goal first before the activities. Thats the more logical and easy route. What is also important to note is that an activity should always start with a doing word or a verb. Thus instead of saying Activity 1 is Entrepreneurial training, it should read Activity 1 is Conduct entrepreneurial training for the youths. Try as much as possible to quanitfy. The number of meetings, the number of expected participants etc. It is also important to note that for the objectives and activities it is not just a matter of listing or bulleting. You may need to briefly explain the activity or objective. Show how the activity links to a specific objective

The Activity Plan and Timeline is essentially taking all the activities and putting a time-frame to them. The best way to do this is to put them in a table or in tabular form. Then you can put the time-frames in terms of months not dates. As you are most likely unsure of when the project will start, you could just use numerical notations for the months and years, for example, Year1 or Month1.

Project Area/Targeted Beneficiaries

The next section in the grant proposal is to state the targeted beneficiaries. Here, you need to disaggregate you targeted project beneficiaries.  You need to show the primary beneficiaries and the secondary beneficiaries. A beneficiary is simply, any person that will benefit from your project. A primary beneficiary represents those people that will directly benefit from the training while a secondary beneficiary represents those that will benefit from multiplier effects, if you will.  Thus in our case, the primary beneficiaries are the youths expected to participate from the programme. The secondary beneficiaries may be their families or the community or city in which the project will be held.You can should try to give specific numbers, particularly for the primary beneficiaries as the project success will be measured partly against this number.  Of critical importance is also to disaggregate by gender and age, how many females, how many males, age groups etcYou should also state the community or city in which the project will be held. Highlight any characteristics specific to that area.

Expected Results

This section of the grant proposal should have what you expect to have achieved when the project has been completed. In other words, what are the metrics that would show that the project has been a success. It is quite easy to come up with expected results as the first step is to take your objectives and then put them in past tense. For example, where the objective was-To improve business knowledge among the youths by 2011, the result would be Improved business knowledge among the youth by 2011 🙂 Thats the easy part. When you do that, you now need to state how you will know that there is increased improved business knoledge. What indicates that the result has been achieved. Key should be qualitative and quantitative both for results and indicators. Thus for the result-Improved business knowledge among the youth- this is a qualitative result, in other words, it is difficult to measure improvement in knowledge. A quantitative result would be- 50 Community Youths trained in business management. A quantitative indicator could be-50% of the trained youths start enterprises by 2011. So what is important when developing expected results is to focus on your objectives and activities. Try as much as possible to look at an objective, develop both quantitaive and qualitative results and finally, develop quantitative indicators. This is not a hard and fast rule as in some cases you may find that you cannot come up with either a quantitative or qualitative result and or indicator.  It is important to note that you should set realistic expected results as you will be measured against these after project completion.

Monitoring and Evaluation

After the expected results you can have a stand-alone section of Risks and Assumptions where you state the potential risks that may inhibit the successful completion of the project. These could be socio-economic or political. If you live in a hyperinflationary country with no stable macro-economic environment, that is a potential risk and needs to be stated. In our case, a risk could also be disinterest from the youth. After stating the risks you then should state how you will manage the risks.

Monitoring and Evaluation is essentially checking to see if the project is progressing well towards its intended objectives within budget and within the specificed time-frame. It is measuring whether or not the project is achieveing or has achieved what it intended to achieve. This allows for learning or taking corrective measures before it is too late. Under the section on monitoring and evaluation, you need to state how you will monitor and when you will monitor. On the how part, state the methods that will be used to gather data. These could be interviews, focus group discussions or document review. On when, this denotes frequency. Monitoring happens everyday of the project, while evaluation is usually done say quarterly or bi-annually/annually depending on how long your project is. Monitoring and Evaluation is a broad topic on its own and will look at it indepth in another post.

Budget

The budget lays out the total costs of doing a project. This will include implementing the activities and the administration costs related to that. Most foundation donors will have a format in which they want the proposal and indeed proposal budget to be in. The key point here is-do not under-budget. Most often, the project will cost twice as much as you budgeted.

Capacity of the Implementing Organisation or Individual

Here you need to show that you can manage the project and the budget successfully. You can give a brief background of yourself or your organisation but the crux should be showing capacity. This could entail outlining similar projects you have handled successfully or showing that you have worked with the targeted community before. There is also need to show that the organisation is well run, has a functioning board and is audited.

Hope this helps.  You can also find other resources on grant proposal writing  here and here. Will touch on many of these aspects in following posts.

/gilbert makore/