Tips to Validate Your Need for Funding

Serious grant seekers need not ask money from anyone they know or do not know. You need not hold out your hand to beg. If you do this, you’ll be wasting time because it will not work.

If you think you caught the attention of a prospective funding source, the next step is to sustain its interest on your project by explaining the problem, as well as the solution you intend to carry out. This is done by developing and presenting persuasive and succinct arguments in your statement of need.

Some tips to remember are the following:

- Carefully choose the appropriate facts or statistics that support the project. Gather as much accurate facts or statistics as possible. By all means, avoid using out-of-date or incorrect information.

- Statements based on generic or generalized information will more likely earn you failing marks from potential funders. Strike a balance between facts and analysis, and make sure that everything you include is related to the project or your organization.

- Inspire hope and solution to the reviewer. Do not use excessive emotionally-appealing statements that create a grim and hopeless scenario. This will give the funding source the impression that your project is not worth investing at all.

- Reviewers are supposed to inspire a solution rather than have reservations with any reason to hope. Possible sources of information include authorities in the field, or the actual experience of your organization.

For grant seekers who do not have any knowledge whatsoever in applying for a grant, they need a simplified way of developing a proposal. They also need to familiarize themselves with the basic processes and aspects, from planning to the submission phase, which include the following:

1. Creating a timetable of tasks and deadlines based on the guidelines of funding sources and your organization’s need;

2. Conducting your research on the information you need in order to develop your proposal, such as identifying the need or problem, interpreting your findings, presenting your solution, and listing potential funding sources that are matched to your project;

3. Selecting the funding source that best matches your type of project, determining the correct approach of your proposal, and compiling all the information about the application guidelines;

4. Finding out the appropriate means to contact the funding sources, setting the best time to get in touch with them, revising the proposal if necessary to comply with specific requirements, structuring and developing each section of your proposal, and writing the draft of your proposal;

5. Reviewing carefully the proposal after completing the draft, and referring to the funding source’s application guidelines in order to make sure that all essential information is included;

6. Adding any missing information and proofreading the entire draft to look for misspelling, as well as grammatical and syntax errors; an

7. Submitting the proposal and adhering to further instructions.