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The material on this page is for beginners. If you have three or more years’ experience of trust fundraising, you may find more useful the pages in the menus associated with t he following page: https://goodgrantfundraising.org.uk/emotional-power-in-trust-fundraising/.
These are typical headings in a proposal (depending a little on the length):
Summary – you might have a one paragraph summary, to quickly orientate the reader to what’s coming up and show the work is eligible.
Background (setting you up for the project – usually covering the organisation)
Need
Some people include a section on the organisation here, instead of as a Background section.
Project
Timings
(maybe) Monitoring
Benefits
Budget, income secured, fundraising to meet the target
(Maybe) Exist strategy (=how the work will be sustained after the end of the grant)
It’s also a good idea to have a summary in the cover note that goes with the proposal.
In descending order of importance, the most important things are:
1. It’s a safe fit for the what Trust will actually fund. If you’re rejected out of hand for eligibility, you’ve wasted your time
2. The content includes everything the Trust requests. A minority of trusts will chase you for the missing information, but others will just reject you out of hand.
3. Great value proposal / impressive organisation
4. Right length for the funder (unless the funder actually specifies length, in which case overrunning might again get you rejected)
5. Inspirational writing with a sense of organisational passion and urgency (but expressed in formal language).
Great applications have their place (once you’re got through the eligibility and completeness tests, a few projects may go through without a lot of scrutiny because they are obviously outstanding, for example.) However, safety is more important. Also, the strongest project will usually trump the best written application.
As a beginner, it’s ill advised to start with a blank sheet of paper and keep writing until you get to the end. There are so many things to think about, unless the application is short, the chances are that what you write will have a lot wrong with it. If the easiest way to “brain dump everything” is just to write it all in one go, then fine – but don’t be precious or concerned about time as regards having to completely rewrite it.
When I started out, I personally found it very helpful to write a lot of notes, that I structured into a plan and to write the application from those:
I could get everything to interrelate (which raises a lot less questions than when points are left hanging. Also it makes the project seem more coherent and through through – and if your planning has prompted questions to the Services team, their project may actually be better)
I could fit things together structurally, meaning it was clearer but also the powerful points were in places that they really stood out. Good structures aren’t always easy and I could deal with that without having to also think about how to put things
I could look and see that I was going on far too much about one topic but hadn’t thought about another which really needed to occupy space