The Development Source

Show your Benefits Front and Center in Your Grant Proposals!

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:28:26 +0000

Competitive grant proposals have a balance of features and benefits. Features are the details of your program or services. They answer the big question: what?

Benefits are oriented around your customer and explain the value of your program, or services. They answer the big question: so what?

Too many grant proposals are strong on features and weak on benefits. You must put your benefits front and center in your narrative or else reviewers will not understand the value of what you propose to do. As Gregory W. Pease, a Managing Partner of Tenzing

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Put Your Benefits Front and Center in Your Proposals!

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:28:25 +0000

Competitive proposals have a balance of features and benefits. Features are the details of your program, services, or solution. They answer the big question: what?

Benefits are oriented around your customer and explain the value of your program, services, or solution. They answer the big question: so what?

Too many proposals are strong on features and weak on benefits. You must put your benefits front and center in your narrative or else reviewers will not understand the value of what you propose to do. As Gregory W. Pease, a Managing Partner of Tenzing

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Use Four Simple Strategies to Improve your Grant Proposals

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:23:52 +0000

Developing grant proposals can be complicated, messy, and full of anguish. There are four simple strategies that will help you meet the predictable problems and crises that seemingly beset every proposal effort.

Organize and Orient at the Beginning

To get the proposal effort off to a good start, Proposal Managers should do this first:

Establish a schedule.
Develop an official template.
Develop a compliance matrix.
Develop a detailed outline or storyboard for your grant proposal.
Distribute a writing and collaboration guide that sets standards and ground rules.
Orient team members to these documents.

Providing a solid framework for team members

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Use Four Simple Strategies to Improve your Proposals

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:23:51 +0000

Developing proposals can be complicated, messy, and full of anguish. There are four simple strategies that will help you meet the predictable problems and crises that seemingly beset every proposal effort.

Organize and Orient at the Beginning

To get the proposal effort off to a good start, Proposal Managers should do this first:

Establish a schedule.
Develop an official template.
Develop a compliance matrix.
Develop a detailed outline or storyboard for your proposal.
Distribute a writing and collaboration guide that sets standards and ground rules.
Orient team members to these documents.

Providing a solid framework for team members will promote

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Make Your Grant Proposals More Visually Appealing

admin — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:03:49 +0000

For better or worse, I have looked at thousands of grant proposals in my lifetime, both inside and outside the government. Many of them have been visual unappealing. They repel rather than attract readers and are difficult to read. They are uninviting and hence a chore to analysis and evaluate.

This is odd because the people who put grant proposals together are often highly intelligent. Perhaps because they are so focused on the content, they ignore the obvious need to make their proposals readable.

We know a great deal about what makes proposals

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Make Your Proposals More Visually Appealing

admin — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:03:49 +0000

For better or worse, I have looked at thousands of proposals in my lifetime, both inside and outside the government. Many of them have been visual unappealing. They repel rather than attract readers and are difficult to read. They are uninviting and hence a chore to analysis and evaluate.

This is odd because the people who put proposals together are often highly intelligent. Perhaps because they are so focused on the content, they ignore the obvious need to make their proposals readable.

We know a great deal about what makes proposals visually appealing.

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Ditch those Grant Proposal Cliches!

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:38:42 +0000

Because words are so important in proposals, grant proposal professionals should avoid clichés that detract from their prose. On a recent discussion blog among members of APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals), members listed some their most irritating proposal clichés. Although they were applied to business proposals, they commonly appear in grant proposals too.

I will list some favorites along with summaries of the author’s frequently humorous reasons for avoiding them. There are good reasons not to use clichés if you want to convince evaluators that your organization is best qualified to

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

Ditch those Proposal Cliches

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:38:41 +0000

Because words are so important in proposals, proposal professionals should avoid clichés that detract from their prose. On a recent discussion blog among members of APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals), members listed some their most irritating proposal clichés.

Best of breed

If you are not selling puppies, why claim that you solution is

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

The 5 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Grant Proposal Managers

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:25:38 +0000

Almost a decade ago, Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of business at Dartmouth College, published a well-known piece about why smart executives fail. He identified the seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful executives.

We always are listing the positive steps that grant Proposal Managers should take to succeed. Now let us turn these kinds of lists inside out and discuss what five bad habits lead to failure, with a nod to Dr. Finkelstein and my own observations and experience in the field.

Bad Habit #1: They identify so completely with their work that there is

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru

The 5 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Proposal Managers

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:25:38 +0000

We always are listing the positive steps that Proposal Managers should take to succeed. Now let us turn these kinds of lists inside out and discuss what five bad habits lead to failure, with a nod to Dr. Finkelstein and my own observations and experience in the field.

Bad Habit #1: They identify so completely with their work that there is no

... Read more at: The Proposal Guru