Crafting Effective Funding Applications

This article has been compiled from material written by Kate Smith (of Goosegrass Culture), for the Rebuilding Heritage training programme, ran by The Heritage Alliance.

Read the original article here.

Here are some top tips for ensuring your application is well-crafted and better your odds at securing funding.

Make them want to read it

Don’t bore your potential funder — especially if they are sifting a huge pile of proposals, and will need to be jettisoning some requests, regardless of whether they meet the technical requirements. You will need:

A good opener

Tell them what they need to know, not what you want to tell them. Above all, don’t cut and paste unedited text into application after application, giving the same pitch to everyone. Even if you are asking for a small amount of money, they want to know that you are asking them for money — not every funder that passes.

Part of that personalisation is reflecting the tone and language of your funder.

Cut the jargon, keep it consistent

Use your own jargon and technical language sparingly — remembering that for the uninitiated, these act as speed bumps, slowing down comprehension (or in some cases causing people to skim or give up).

Similarly, some applications can sound like they are designed by committee, with the language, tone and tense veering about from paragraph to paragraph (as different parts of the organisation have pasted in their bit.) It is your job to unify that raw material into a single voice.

Make them feel part of it

Again, make it about them and the ultimate beneficiaries, not primarily about you. “Please give us £20k and we’ll do something amazing…” is not as compelling as “your 20k grant means that young people like Ruth can achieve X”.

Find the right level of detail

As previously mentioned, good storytelling is memorable, expands upon evidence, simplifies the complex and helps people to feel as well as think. But remember there’s a difference between focusing on small details to make a point and a blizzard of facts. The funder won’t want all the minutiae of how you will deliver a project — instead, find a mix between what is really salient, and what will most excite people.

Make it visually interesting

If you are using pictures, think creatively about what you can use to express who you are in an arresting way.

Dotting ‘I’s and crossing ‘T’s

Finally, check your grammar and punctuation — give it to someone else, check that it flows, and get a critical eye on it. Much of this is simply good comms writing — which is as important on an application form as it is when writing for the public.