For my portion of the Grant Writing Project, I wrote the “Briefly Describe Your Proposed Program” and the “Brief Summary of How Funds are to be Used” sections.
When writing the “Proposed Program” section, I tried to be as concise as possible. This was rather difficult for me, as I like things to be as detailed as can be for fear of someone (or myself) misunderstanding something. Yet, being limited to only two thousand characters, which is only about three hundred words, I really had to be as clear as possible without taking up too much space, and just trust that whomever was reading the grant will understand everything (after all, they do do this for a living). My first attempt didn’t go so well, as it needed a lot of editing, and mainly just refining the general “listyness” of the section. However, I really took Cindy’s advice to heart, and after getting the feedback on my section, I came back to the grant with a sense of confidence that I did not before. Before, I understood that I needed to be concise and straightforward when writing the grant, but hearing Cindy reaffirm what I thought, and then telling us that it doesn’t have to reach the maximum word or character count, really gave me the extra encouragement to be sure of myself when reworking my portion of the grant.
Instead of introducing the program, then going on to list what each level of the program entails, I changed the “Proposed Program” section to include the reason behind the program, what it hopes to accomplish, a brief overview of the curriculum, with a few specific call-outs, and then what the actual class will be like. I wanted this section to cover each of these points, since I felt that it would provide the reader with a deeper understanding of our intended outcome, instead of literally just describing what the program would be like and leaving them to fill in the rest (like the motivation behind the program).
If I thought being limited to 2000 characters was tough for the “Proposed Program” section, then being limited to 250 characters for the “Funds Used” section was nigh on impossible. The feedback I got on this section was to be as detailed as possible, yet with only 250 characters, this was very, very hard. I was able to fit the specific cost for the curriculum and a game of Apples to Apples into this section, but if I had tried to include anything else in the financial breakdown, the 250 character limit would have been exceeded. Luckily, the curriculum is what we would need to grant for most, so it was good that I was able to include the cost, calculated down to the penny.
WALMART GRANT