Chapter 16
The Cover Letter and Executive Summary
In This Chapter
• Grabbing your reader’s attention
• Playing to your audience
• Cover letters for new versus renewal grants
• Differences between a cover letter and an executive summary
The cover letter is the most important part of your proposal. It is, after all, what funders see first. If you can capture their attention—or even better, their imagination—with the cover letter, you’ll immediately separate your proposal from all the others.
Many grant writers create the cover letter last, which makes sense, because it needs to include information from all the other parts of the proposal. Coming last in your writing, however, shouldn’t mean you write it in haste on the day before the proposal deadline. The cover letter is just too important to rush. I like to work on the cover letter while others at my charity review the proposal narrative.
A cover letter should …
• State the purpose of the proposal in one sentence, including the grant amount requested.
• Connect personally to the reader whenever possible.
• Relate the proposed program to the funder’s stated interests.
• Provide a context for the request, either in the form of background on your charity or a brief report on a previous grant.
• Present clearly the three key arguments why you should receive the grant.
• Include contact information for additional questions (not relying on the phone number on the letterhead but giving a direct line or extension and an e-mail address).
• Thank the funder for considering your request.
In this chapter, I show you how to create some of these parts, as well as address tone, personality, and style.
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