Monday, January 25, 2010

End on the Last Page


This is my one of my favorite grant writing secrets - not because it's brilliant, but because it always brings a quizzical look to peoples' faces.

Here's the deal. If you are allowed 25 pages of narrative for a grant proposal, you need to end your proposal on the 25th page. Everyone else will.  If yours is shorter, the readers will notice that you didn't use all of the space allocated to you and that everyone else did.  Then the readers will start flipping through your proposal trying to find what you left out.  Once they start looking for something missing, you're done - because they will find something missing, some detail that isn't clear enough.

So, if you find that you are finished with a grant narrative and you haven't ended on the last page, go back and add more detail to your proposal. Where could data make your case stronger?  What element of your program design could be described more fully?

Add enough detail so your proposal ends on the last page.
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About Creative Resources & Research

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Woodland, CA, United States
Creative Resources and Research is a consulting firm specializing in grant writing, grant seeking, program evaluation and professional development training. We have worked with hundreds of clients including public and private schools, school districts, universities, non-profit organizations, and social service agencies throughout California, securing over $155 million from federal, state and private foundation funding sources over the past decade. Our primary grant writers and program evaluators have over 50 years of combined experience in the education and social services fields. At CRR we prefer a personal approach to the clients we work with; by developing long term relationships, we are better suited to match client’s needs with available funding sources. We provide a variety of services to help assist you, including grant writing, evaluation consulting, professional development opportunities, and workshops.