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Youth Tools II Proposal Writing: A Way with Words

Proposal writing can be a difficult and time-consuming process. It can definitely be a challenge to try writing them in your office when there are often competing priorities such as the day-to-day operation of your organization! Different funders may require different proposals, however once you have one proposal written you can use the main ideas in other proposals. Read up on their missions and goals. Where possible, try to reflect the language that they use in their documents.


What’s your idea?

Sometimes ideas for programs happen through the process of observing what’s missing in terms of services that your clients can access. At other times, ideas develop through a casual comment made by someone, or by something that you read in a newspaper or in a report which grow into a great programming idea. Or maybe you and your friends are sitting around and realize that there isn’t anything out there for you and you want to start something new.

Talk to people about your idea. It might be a good plan to get people together from your agency (co-workers, clients, board, and friends) and to present your program to them. You can talk about how it may work, and what potential problems might arise. Is this something that everyone is interested in doing? Do you have enough people in your organization to run the project? You may start with one idea, and finish with a different kind of program that meets your initial needs but goes beyond that to address more issues. Be flexible to change. Although some suggestions may feel like they are rejecting your idea, try to take a step back and look at how those changes may in fact build on your program.

Take a look at your agency’s mission and mandate. Does this work fit within that mission? If not, is there another agency who can do this work? If so, could you possibly suggest this project to the other agency? Could you work together with them on this project?

If there isn’t another agency around, and if it doesn’t fit directly within your mandate, is there a way to talk to your Board about agreeing to take on this project? It might be easier to approach your board if you first have support from your volunteers, co-workers and partner organizations. (If this last situation is the case, you will have to explain in detail how your idea might possibly fit into your agency when you go forward to funders with our application.) In all cases, you will need to answer the question “why should you be doing this work?” All of this background information will be useful in preparing your proposal.



Explaining the concept

Many funders will need evidence that your idea is necessary in your community before they are willing to put their money into the project. You can find support for your project in several ways. First, ask around and see if there are similar projects in other towns or provinces. Look for programs that have undergone some kind of evaluation. This might include process evaluation (i.e., tells you how the program is operating) and outcome evaluation (i.e., some measure of the impact of the program, like how many accessed the program and how it helped them). CAS has that may help with you search for other agencies that is available by contacting us. You can use the success of these projects to describe how well your program will run, or to back up the need for your program.

There might not be similar programs running in other communities. Or there could be and you may want to show how the program also is needed in your community. In either case, you might consider collecting some preliminary data to support the need for your program. You could conduct phone interviews or focus groups with potential clients who might access your new service. The group could provide comment on the need for such a service and how it should be set up. This type of data is called qualitative data. The words and phrases from the participants are actually analyzed and the results can be used to support your cause.

Another way to show a need is to actually conduct a survey or questionnaire to see if your program is viewed as a need in the community. Some surveys have open-ended questions that require written responses. Again this is qualitative data. Responses to survey questions can also be gathered using closed questions. These types of questions use scales or yes-no response choices. This numerical data is called quantitative data. Remember that this sort of data does not qualify for actual valid research that would be presented at a conference. However, it would satisfy the needs of a funder. If you are interested in doing research based on your results, you can contact CAS to find out about community based researchers who may be able to help you out.


What are you aiming for?

By now you have a pretty clear idea of what you want to do, and you have the background information to support the need for your project. Try to identify your goal and objectives for the project. This can often be tricky, as most people tend to confuse the two concepts.

Goals are abstract, conceptual; in other words, they are general intentions. Think big when you are writing your goals! It may be useful to do a brainstorm and then narrow down your goals for the project from the ideas.

Objectives are the concrete, measurable outcomes from your project. When writing an objective, there typically should be a verb that describes an observable activity. Here are a couple of examples to help you:

Goal: Our support program will help lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer youth feel less isolated in our community.

Objective: Our program will operate one support group meeting a week over the next year for lgbtq youth in our community.

Once you have identified your objectives, you can start laying out a workplan. A workplan is a list of things that you need to do in order to achieve your objective. For instance, in the example above, you would have to advertise your support group. This means that someone has to create a poster or some sort of advertisement, decide where they will go, actually put them up or submit them to your local paper, decide how often to do this etc.


How will the project be run?

At this point, it is important to look at the capacity of your agency to run your project. Are there enough staff right now to be able to run the project, or do you need to hire another person? If you’re not sure, sit down and figure out how much time a person would need to spend each week in order for the project to work. You can do this by looking at your workplan, and then assign the amount of time each item would take to be accomplished per week or month. Add this up, and you’ll have a sense of how much time the project will take in total. Look at other projects that are similar and see who is running them. Do they have someone dedicated to run the project full-time? If so, that means that you probably would need to hire someone, or start smaller. If you anticipate hiring someone, that needs to be put down in the budget.

If you are just starting out, you may have to figure out where this project will be housed. Do you need to approach an agency to see if they can give you some room? What would it cost to rent a space of your own? What are the costs associated with having a space?

Once you know what you are doing, how you are doing it, who is doing it, and where they will be operating, you need to think about how long you plan on running this project. Looking at your workplan, is this something that will be running for a few years? Or is this something that is very time-limited? It may be difficult to get funding for several years, but you might consider running this as a pilot project at first. This gives you the time to be able to make any changes to the program, and to get a good grounding before asking for the big bucks!



Speaking of money… how much will this cost?

Once you have written the narrative section of the proposal you will be able to pinpoint all of your costs. When reading the proposal, make a note of all of the personnel, and other expenses related to providing this project. Take into consideration things like: rent, utilities, photocopies, paper, computers (buying or renting), printing, etc. If you are doing a drop-in, you may want to include things like meals or snacks for clients. There may be costs such as day care, transportation, and phone calls that need to be integrated into your proposal. If you are part of an agency, don’t forget to include the cost that is associated with supervision of this project.

If you are just starting out, there are some legalities around being able to access money. First, you need to be a registered charity in order for funders to be able to provide money to social service projects. Information is available on becoming a registered charity online at the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency site <http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/menu-eng.html>. However, you may be able to negotiate with a local community group who is already a registered charity. They may be willing to “host” your project under their agency.


Want more information?

If you are looking for more information on proposal writing, there is quite a bit of it available on the Internet. Of course, the Charity Village site <www.charityvillage.com> is quite good, and is one of the few that is based in Canada. They offer training on several topics. While their site indicates that they provide training at your agency, it is not clear if this means that they would travel to your area or if there are costs for that type of training.

The Foundation Center’s site http://www.fdncenter.org is quite useful. Although it is based on the non-profit sector of the United States and is only available in English, it does have a proposal writing short course on-line that many people may find useful. Look under their 'Learning Lab' for this course, or you can go to www.fdncenter.org/learn/shortcourse/prop1.html .


How do you know if it’s working?

Funders will require that you have some method of evaluating your work and that there are measurable outcomes (in your objectives). Depending on the type of evaluation process you are using, your outcomes may need to be clearly stated under each activity in your workplan.

The area of evaluation is large, we will give you an overview in the next edition of Youth Tools




Collective Creation

The responsibility of writing a funding proposal, or creating a project outline does not necessarily have to sit with just one person. You can be creative about involving your staff, board, volunteers and clients in the process. For instance, have a huge brainstorming session about the project. Put everything down on flipcharts. Talk about what the project idea is right now. Try to think of ideas about what it could be. Have people brainstorm words that describe what the project ideally would be about. Ask questions like, 'What is the situation now?', 'What difference would this project make in the community?', 'How would it feel to be a part of this project?' and 'What difference would this project have on your life?'. Take all of this information down.

When it comes to writing this information up, you can do it alone or in teams with these flipcharts. There could be a team that creates the section on the statement of need (why you need this project) which you would place before the goals and objectives. In this section you could talk about the situation now and what the need is in the community. The broader picture could be worded to become your goals.

Another team could take this information and create objectives with a workplan and timelines attached to it. Finally, you would need a team to work on the budget. It would be a good idea to get an accountant (if there’s not already one helping you with this) to have a look at your final budget. Of course, the process of involving many people in writing the proposal would take some time to do, and a commitment on the part of everyone there to work together.

If working on teams in these various areas don’t work for you, perhaps you could still have the brainstorming session and then take the material away and create your proposal. You may want to bring it back to the group to let them know how fabulously you’ve crafted their ideas into a new project!