Getting Organized, Volume II: Telling Your Story

As you and your team strategize on a grant writing campaign, it is important to work efficiently and with focus, especially with the narrative materials of grant applications which will tell your story.  These need to be consistent, professionally stated, full of important information about your organization, and easy to manipulate per the requirements of the many grantors you will be addressing. Just as you would store key organizational documents in shareable, easy to access files for your core team, the story you tell should also be organized in easily accessible and ready to use documents to make sure the message is consistent and can be efficiently used in the long term work of submitting multiple grants over the course of a year or to raise funds over the course of a project or campaign.

Set goals to create and collect the following documents:

1. Ready to manipulate cover letters for operational requests.
2. Ready to manipulate cover letters for program requests.
3. An Essential Information document that includes up-to-date information about your mission, vision, work of your organization, key data about the nature of the problem you are addressing in your area, and about your goals and accomplishments in the last two years, summary budget information, clientele, staff, and board demographics.
4. An Essential Information document reviewing all vital details for the project or program for which funds are being requested. Include what you expect to accomplish, the details of the overall project, and your specific intentions for the funds requested.
5. Your organization’s most current Strategic Plan. This should mention the same goals reflected in your grant request.
6. Your organization’s most current Annual Report.
7. Key partnership letters for, and endorsements of, the programming for which funds are being requested.
8. Photos and/or videos that may help to visualize the program or capital project requests.
9. Copies of press releases, and articles about your organization.
10. Client testimonials about the difference you’ve made to them personally.

Keep Up To Date

Whether you work with an outside firm to do your grant writing, or write grants with your internal team, do this work early in the process and review it as a team.  Make sure it has accurate data about your work, includes the information grantors require, and sends the message you want to send. Then remember to keep these up to date. The data about your organization and the program needs for which you are requesting funds can change quickly, so it is important to set regular quarterly meetings just to make sure that what you have in this collection of documents is still current and is sending the right message.

Time Well Spent

While this phase of the grant-preparation process will be time consuming at first, once these narrative documents are in place, you will save a great deal of time in the writing and submitting phases of your work.  On top of this, you will have confidence that the message you are sending is consistent for all writers on the team and meets with your executive director’s intentions.