For my section of the grant, I paid close attention to the five C’s of grant writing as outlined by Dr. Matthew Hindson.
It was important to me to outline NICE’s successes in a manner that would contextualize their efforts. In other words, saying that they employed 244 refugees is unimpressive out of context. But, to say 244 out of 277 gives the necessary parameter for someone from the outside to appreciate the achievement.
The list of NICE’s accomplishments is extensive. So, considering the importance of keeping the grant concise, I poured through all the data and picked only the most significant achievements. My metric was percentage based. NICE had a plethora of listed accomplishments in the 70% range, so I chose to focus on those that had a rate of 85% success in whatever the category was. I felt that focusing on just a select few things that NICE does exceptionally, instead of discussing all the things that NICE does well would keep my section concise, while simultaneously portraying NICE as an exemplary organization.
As Dr. Hindson writes, “As an assessor, it’s pretty easy to tell if a project is of an excellent (i.e. fundable) standard. It will typically be achievable rather than speculative.” Thus, I felt that my portion was essential for adding credibility to NICE’s “achievability”. If I can show that NICE has a track record of completing the tasks that they set out to do, the assessor will be further convinced that NICE can achieve this goal, too.
As obvious as it seems, it is apparently quite easy to overlook certain criteria in your grant application. My section asked specifically to talk about current activities of the organization. So, I made sure to include only programs that were still being offered at NICE.
This section is self-explanatory - you have to convince the assessor to give you money. The purpose of my section is talk about current activities. I chose to highlight these programs by elucidating the successes they have had, thus creating a convincing context for future success.