Adapt These Eight Resources for Your Next Foundation Grant Proposal

August 2011

Things are easier and quicker when you don't reinvent everything from scratch. This fact is especially true when faced with the daunting task of completing foundation grant proposals. The following how-to articles and related examples were shared by nonprofit colleagues on IdeaEncore Network, the online nonprofit information resource exchange. With free registration, except for one item for sale from the author, all of the items below are free for you to download.

Practical, Easy-to-Use How-to Resources

• Grant Professionals Association's free presentation "Social Media and Grantwriting: How to Find and Mine Gems of Information" discusses how you can use the information foundations share on social media to tailor your proposals to their particular interests.
• JVA Consulting's popular "Grant Proposal Checklist" ($5) provides a very helpful checklist for organizing grant proposals.
• Internaut & Associate, Inc.'s "20 Tips Every Strategic Grantseeker Should Know" offers advice to help you navigate though the often complicated proposal process.
• Many foundations place a strong emphasis on evaluation and outcomes measurement by their grantees. The following resources provide great advice on setting up evaluation processes for your grant proposal: The Bruner Foundation's Evaluation: Participatory Evaluation Essentials" and the Ontario Trillium Foundation's "Evaluation Planning Tip Sheet."

Examples of Successfully Funded Foundation Grant Proposals

• Grant proposal from InkPeople to the James Irvine Foundation
• Grant proposal to the Ford Foundation for the New Voices in Human Rights and International Cooperation
• Grant proposal to Annenberg Foundation from Shoes that Fit

Flo Green, IdeaEncore Network
imageIdeaEncore Network
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Florence (Flo) Green is co-founder and vice president of IdeaEncore Network (www.ideaencore.com) which envisions a future in which every nonprofit shares what they know. Nonprofits can use our online information resource exchange to save time/money by reusing shared knowledge; by uploading files/links for others to use (for free or to sell); by making their expertise visible by "liking," rating, and commenting; and by embedding their branded online libraries—that display IdeaEncore resources—within their Web sites.

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