By Lisa Cirincione, Joining Vision and Action 

Organizing the application

If you are going to invest hundreds of hours seeking grant funding, you need to make sure that your application gets noticed favorably by its reviewers. In my 14 years of writing government grants, I am still surprised at how disjointed and repetitive the questions are. However, at JVA, our golden rule is that “she/he who has the gold makes the rules,” so I cannot change the order of the questions or skip answering any questions that I do not think are necessary. What I can do, though, is add a short introduction section that briefly summarizes the request and why my client is the right organization to do the work. This introduction will provide the reviewer context before beginning to read the details about the proposal.

What information do you put in the introduction?

1. Begin the introduction with information that will convince the reviewer that your organization has the experience and capability to do the proposed work well. This could include awards that your organization or staff has recently received, your organization’s track record of successfully implementing similar work or your organization’s track record with the government agency.
2. Next, explain who the project will serve and what need the project will meet. You will want to give reviewers a sense of who your target population is (age, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, etc.). But more importantly, what needs does this population have that your project will impact? You will give a lot more detail about the target population’s needs in the body of the proposal, but use the introduction to share their most significant needs.
3. Finally, explain why the work that you are proposing is likely to solve those needs. Are you proposing activities that have a lot of research behind them? If so, share who evaluated your work, where it was published and which credible agencies have recognized the value of your program.

Next, read through what you’ve written. Does it show of your organization’s strengths? Does it reflect a tone of enthusiasm? Will it make the reviewer excited to learn more about your proposal? If you can answer yes to each of those questions, you are well on your way to putting together a compelling government grant application.

Need help putting together an award-winning grant application? Click here or call 303.477.4896 to get someone from JVA’s rock star grantwriting team working to bring funding in for your cause. JVA’s grantwriting clients have been awarded more than $100 million in the last three years.