Last week on Blog Talk Radio (January 5th episode) I discussed the bare minimum to include in a grant proposal. Wait let me back up. You never know where you’ll pick up a kernel of grantwriting wisdom. For me, I attended a philanthropy award luncheon and (I love acceptance speeches) one of the awardees, board president Robert Borawski of the Robert Brownlee Foundation gave a marvelous acceptance speech that had the crowd roaring in applause. He said that he looked for three things in a grant proposal that came across his desk and he urged everyone in the room to start writing proposals that included those three things in two pages!
I remember hearing gasps, and whispers, and ultimately applause for this unusual request. The room was filled with about 600 fundraisers, professional grantwriters, and development executives. Many had never heard a funder suggest a two-page grant proposal before. But when I heard him name the three things, it made sense, and I realized that these were the bare minimum that should be included in a grant proposal. Listen to the Gant Whisperer BlogTalkRadio show episode: Grant Writing 101.
