I had the opportunity to work with a team to write a grant application for the Caterpillar Foundation. I was surprised at the structure of the grant writing process; I expected there to be more writing involved. Instead, there is a lot of financial information that must be provided, such as revenue and expenses, budgets and the grant amount requested. Piecing all of this information from N.I.C.E’s previous annual reports and other online resources proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of this project. Apart from providing the needed financial information, we had to use persuasive writing to show how the Caterpillar Foundation’s mission and values align with N.I.C.E’s. First, we summarized N.I.C.E’s programs in a very succinct manner in order to ensure that the Caterpillar Foundation has a clear understanding of what we wish to accomplish with their partnership.
After providing a program overview, we wrote a paragraph that delves specifically into our alignment to the Caterpillar Foundation’s mission. In certain areas, we picked specific quotes from the Caterpillar Foundation’s mission statement (“path to prosperity” and “academic foundation to thrive in society”) to incorporate into our own mission, in order to make the unity of the overarching mission strong. The Caterpillar Foundation’s key areas of focus align very well with N.I.C.E’s programs; for example, Caterpillar emphasizes the importance of education in order to “alleviate poverty and place people on the path to prosperity.” They also believe that the basic needs of humans must be met in order to be able to effectively pursue economic and educational opportunities. Both education and the basic needs of human beings are key components of N.I.C.E’s mission. After creating a rough draft, our grant application was sent to Kathy Edson for a final review. She requested a more formal tone in certain areas, as well as making our program more focused by eliminating unnecessary information. After making these necessary changes, we now have a very strong grant that clearly represents N.I.C.E’s mission, and makes a strong appeal that I believe could be difficult for the Caterpillar Foundation to refuse.
To view our grant, click here.