Why You Are Doing This Project
One of the critical points you have to make concerns the need for your program. The funder wants to know you have a thorough knowledge of the issue you seek to address and how what you propose to do fits in with what others are doing or have done. Is your approach different or complementary? Why is it needed? In what way will the program aid the program’s clients? What would they do if your program didn’t exist?
DEFINITION
Need is one of those nonprofit words that gets bandied about in many guises. Every project must fulfill some need, but every grant award is not “need based.” Need-based grants use the need of the applicant as the primary or sole criteria in deciding on the award. Disaster relief grants are an example. Your proposals will mostly be for merit-based awards. You’ll not only have to demonstrate your clients’ needs, but also why your charity merits the award.
The need for the program should resonate with your charity’s mission. Just because you’re a good organization and the community has a need doesn’t mean your charity is the best one to address that need. Explain how this program fits in with everything else you do.
Proposals that are too inward looking—that is, concentrated too much on what your charity needs—are doomed to failure in most cases. Proposals that focus on clients’ needs—the people you will help—stand a much better chance of success. Remember: funders make grants to solve a problem other than helping you make your budget goal.
Never trash the competition in your proposal. Today’s competitor is tomorrow’s panelist deciding the fate of your grant proposal. It’s also not polite or necessary. That’s not to say you shouldn’t contrast your approach to that of other organizations, but you should do so in a way that offends no one. For example, you’ll say …
The Community Food Bank will provide meals to 100 people daily who are now being missed by other social service providers.
Or:
The Community Food Bank will provide meals to 100 people daily who are unable to get transportation to food services offered by other social service providers.
Either version is much more positive than “The Community Food Bank will provide meals to 100 people daily who Food for People does not reach because of its unwillingness to look outside its immediate neighborhood.”
You can make your need statement stronger by including in your proposal statements from neutral third parties that express or reinforce the need you seek to address. These could be stories in the press or studies groups other than your charity have done, including studies commissioned by funders. This not only gives greater credence to your cause, it also shows that your charity sees itself as part of the larger issue and that it keeps abreast of the latest thought on a subject. Here are a couple of examples:
The Daily Times reported that Mayor Thomas stated in his speech to the Rotary Club last week that “hunger remains one of the city’s most pressing problems, especially among the transient population that lives on the fringes of the industrial area.” Community Food Bank agrees, which is why we approach the distribution of meals through a mobile facility rather than depending on our main office to handle all clients.
Social Think Tank, Inc., in its report issued last month, drew attention to the difficulty that traditional place-based food banks have in reaching the most needy populations, which tend to exist outside central urban areas where most of these agencies are located. Community Food Bank agrees, which is why ….
Testimonials to your charity’s ability to carry out a project will also strengthen your case for support. We look at how to do that in detail in Chapter 17.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.