Grant Proposal (8 Submissions) GRANT PROPOSAL INSTRUCTIONS Grant Proposal: Item 1 “ Identify a 501 (c) (3) organization For Grant Project: Item 1, you need to identify a 501 (c) (3) organization to serve as a non-profit entity for which you have been employed, hypothetically, to design and write a Grant Proposal. This assignment should be no less than 2 pages double-spaced, using APA format. Format with underlined subheadings, and provide your name in the upper right hand corner of the 1st page. Create a fictitious organization for which you answer all the questions and tasks in the weekly assignments. This involves creative writing on your part, but eliminates the possibility of miscommunication and/or delays between you and the contact person of a real organization. To complete this assignment, you need the following Non-Profit Organizational data: 1. Name and address 2. Mission Statement 3. Copy of its By-Laws (if you’ve chosen Option 1) 4. A listing of the Board of Directors (last name only) 5. Board of Directors annual meeting date 6. Organizational Chart (on a separate page) 7. Name and contact data of its Executive Director Grant Proposal: Item 2 “ Statement of Need Submit a 1-page œStatement of Need as the first part of your actual Grant Proposal. Remember this item is critical. It should be a comprehensive, coherent, and concise description of œthe problem your organization faces and written in a way that is persuasive and encourages a Grant Maker to want to partnership with your organization to solve it. you have some creative writing to do. Pick a logical œneed for your fictitious organization based on its Mission Statement. Don’t create a monstrous, multifaceted œneed with a large, involved budget. If you do, it makes the other assignments of the Grant Proposal more time consuming to complete. Finally, be sure to read the sample œNeed Statements in the textbooks and consider modeling your submission after one of them. There are some exceptional examples, and consider modeling your submission after one of theirs. ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” Grant Proposal: Item 3 “ Project Description This section is often the bulk of a Grant Proposal and requires a great deal of thought, planning, and purposeful writing. The first step is to write a series of objectives to solve œthe problem you identified in the œStatement of Need. The objectives need to be chronologically ordered and specific. A combination of behavioral, performance, process, and product objectives are recommended. Then from the project objectives, you need to identify and explain the œday-to-day activities to implement your organization’s œsolution. Be sure your activity list is comprehensive. For example, if you plan to hire new staff, think through all the issues to get this process done (e.g., advertisement, interviews, background checks, references check, etc.) and the time it will take to complete the hiring process. You also need to keep in mind two other issues. First, that your objectives are the items to be assessed in the evaluation component of the Grant. Secondly, when you create your budget summary, the individual line items will reflect the costs associated with the activities that are fulfilling the objectives. Don’t forget to use a timeline table in your Project Description. Whether it’s a Gantt chart or a similar table illustrated in the one of the textbooks, it serves a valuable function to the Grant Maker’s readers. . ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” Grant Proposal: Item 4 “ Project Assessment Project Assessment is the evaluation. The best evaluations contain both subjective (i.e., qualitative) and objective data (i.e., quantitative), and serve as evidence of Project success. A page or less is sufficient if you’ve created well-written objectives and have a logical descriptive plan outlining the principle success indicators. Follow the textbook models in selecting and constructing the Project Assessment approach for your organization’s Grant Proposal. ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” Grant Proposal: Item 5 “ Project Budget This part of a Grant Proposal has 2 sections: (1) the Budget Narrative, and (2) an itemized Budget Summary. The 2 sections often comprise 2 double-spaced pages in the Grant Proposal. The Narrative is written first by reviewing the activities associated with the Project Objectives. In essence, you are reporting to the Grant Maker the anticipated costs for the steps of every activity fulfilling each objective. You are expected to provide œreal cost estimates”not guesses”as well as how you gathered the information. For example, was it by past experience, formal estimates by local contractors, or mathematical formulas? Whatever your source, identify how you arrived at the cost of each line item in the Budget Summary. When you start the itemized Budget Summary, you need to plan for multiple conversations about budget. The need for a Grant to solve the organization’s œNeed may have been discussed multiple times for many years with the board of directors and staff, but no one really sat down to consider the individual line items necessary to complete the Project that would solve œthe problem. If you selected Option 2, there is a greater likelihood this assignment will be easier. You and you alone will conceptualize the Budget line items and the only œreal research work is to provide data supporting your line items. Whichever Option you selected, don’t be surprised that you have to revise either or both the Narrative or Summary from time to time. Before you submit this assignment for the class, my advice is to have someone look at both of them to identify items you may have overlooked. Grant Proposal: Item 6 “ Identifying Potential Foundations for Funding By now, much of your Grant Proposal is written except for some final touches which we will discuss. You are now ready for the work of identifying potential Grant Maker suitors. At the beginning of this course, you subscribed to the basic service of the Foundation Center which gives you data access to 10,000 possible Grant Makers (see the Foundation Profile Help attachment for detailed information regarding how to set up your subscription). If you have been œsurfing their website to acquaint yourself with the different tools and reviewed their tutorials, you should be ready for this assignment. Obviously, if you are having difficulty, contact them. As a subscriber, they will answer questions to assist your efforts. The assignment is to find 5 potential Grant Makers for your Grant Proposal. When you’ve found the 5, you then rank them based on your belief of successful funding probability. Provide your reasoning for choosing them and why you ranked them 1“5. As an attachment to your narrative, you should include copies of their œProfiles, printed from the Foundation Center’s website. These œProfiles need to show the 7 critical items. ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” Grant Proposal: Item 7 “ Revisions & Adjustments There are 3 parts of this final assignment, and they are related to the rank order list of your 5 Foundations. For this class, you will adjust these items in accordance with any information you’ve gleaned about the Foundation you’ve ranked as #1 on your list. If and when you might actually submit your Grant Proposal, these items might be adjusted to address the specifics of the other foundations respectively. The 3 items are as follows: 1. You will write a 1-page summary of the Grant Proposal. This is usually called an Executive Summary or an Abstract. It informs the Grant Maker as to who, what, and why of your request. Its primary purpose is to capture their interest so they will read the complete Grant Proposal; 2. You will append any organizational data you believe is relevant for the Grant Maker; and, 3. You will write a œcover letter to the Foundation, and the specifics are dictated by their protocol for submission. ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””“ Grant Proposal: Item 8 “ œSelling your Organization’s Capability Grants, both private and public, are usually awarded on a competitive basis. Other non-profit entities are pursuing the same dollars. The other competitive organizations may also have great ideas and proposals to the point foundation staff members have difficulty deciding which organizations are most deserving of receiving an award given their limited funds. When this happens, they often contact the various applicants with questions. These questions maybe asked by phone, in a personal interview or by mail. Their agenda is to further determine the viability and worthiness of the organization, in terms of: leadership competence, financial fitness, grant history (if any), and the academic/work background of every individual who will be working on the grant if it is awarded to them. For this assignment, in the form of a letter provide answers to these questions in 300“400 words regarding your organization. This assignment is a œsales event, you need to convince the foundation staff of your organization’s history in the community (unless its new then you restate the need for its existence), its ability to do what your grant application says it can do, and the experience of your key staff members. The tenor of the letter needs to be conversational and persuasive without pompousness.