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Grantwriting and public relations may seem an odd combination, but when you consider the centrality of copywriting in each, the connection becomes more obvious.

Our path followed a logical course. After creating a brochure about a historical site at a local college, our client importuned us to write a grant proposal for it as well.

Our academic credentials were more firmly established after a course at the Foundation Center, considered the nation's authoritative source on grantmakers, and a later class, "Advanced Grantwriting," offered by Westchester Community College.

Soon, the opportunities began to multiply. We wrote proposals for a food bank in Westchester, a neighborhood center for disadvantaged youth in the Bronx, to fight sex trafficking in India and to prevent violence in the nation of Jamaica. Our grantwriting department hit a new apex when we were invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiative.

In any grantwriting program, the first step involves creating a model proposal organized as follows:

Table of Contents (1 page)
Executive Summary (1 page)
Statement of Need (2 pages)
Project Description (3 pages)
Budget (1 page)
Oranizational Information (1 page)
Conclusion (2 paragraphs)
Appendix

You must always put yourself in the shoes of the readers evaluating your proposal. Remember, they will be reading hundreds of other ones, too. The writing should be factual and succinct with emotional appeals limited to the conclusion. You should definitely avoid exceeding the suggested lengths listed above.

Once a model proposal is created, you should examine the specific application requirements for each foundation. Avoid mass emails. They just make it easy for evaluaters to reject your proposal without even reading it.

The next step involves researching foundations suitable for your proposal, another topic too lengthy to discuss in this piece. To see our introductory grant program, please click here.