A proposal is a document that individuals and businesses submit to government agencies, other individuals and other organizations to receive funding for a specific purpose. In this context, seeking for a grant requires you to do some diligent background work and research to ensure you put together a winning proposal that can attract grants. A grant proposal is usually targeted to a course or project.

When writing a grant proposal, there are certain things to consider.

1. A grant proposal must have a title. This gives an insight into what the document will be talking about.
2. There must be an introduction which could be in the form of a cover letter or a paragraph depending on the requirements or template provided by the donor. It is therefore important to read instructions about the grant and do a diligent research about the donor organization. It is also important to check other projects that have been funded in the past by the donor to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
3. A winning grant must have an executive summary that describes your organization in brief. Here you don’t need to provide too much information. However, your mission statement must be clearly spelt out here and you must be able to convincingly describe how your proposed project aligns with your mission.
4. You must have a statement of need which clearly describes the problem you want to address with the project. It is also called a problem statement. In this section, you want to provide statistics and in-depth details about the problem and its impact.
5. Here you want to provide insight into the proposed solution, the outcomes and goals. This part of your grant proposal is very crucial and you must pay attention to it because you must be able to convince the donor on why this solution or your project is the best fit to address the problem and make the desired impact.
6. You must also be able to describe how you intend to achieve the solution. You must be able to show the methods and strategies you will adopt to implement your solution in addressing the identified problem.
7. You must have a continuity plan in place. Most donors are interested in seeing your sustainability plan. They want to know how you intend to continue when the donor funding stops.
8. You must have a concise, clear and implementable budget.

Writing a winning grant requires detailed research and as such you must ensure that you have adequate time devoted to the proposal. DO NOT WRITE IN HURRY.