Monday 7 May 2012

How to Write a Proposals to get Funds for NGO Prt1


There are many types of donors out there; most of them tend to be unique when it comes to the kind of proposals they will accept or reject.

A proposal is an essential marketing and document that helps cultivate an initial professional relationship between an organization and a donor over a project to be implemented. The proposal outlines the plan of the implementing organization about the project, giving extensive information about the intention, for implementing it, the ways to manage it and the results to be delivered from it.

Some of the things you should consider while writing funding Proposals
·         Donors want their money to count and the work they fund to be successful. More importantly, donors want to be seen to be / as successful.

·         To acquire knowledge, understanding and information. This has some ethical problems, if interventions are directly geared toward the generation of knowledge without clear and tangible outcomes to be attained by those receiving the development assistance.

·         To share knowledge, understanding, information, and, in so doing, add value to their chosen interventions.

·         To increase their influence in addressing what they consider to be the problems of the world, the region, the country, or a particular area.

A proposal is a very important document. In some cases, a concept note precedes a proposal, briefing the basic facts of the project idea. However, the project idea faces a considerable challenge when it has to be presented in a framework. The proposal has a framework that establishes ideas formally for a clear understanding of the project for the donor. Besides, unless the ideas are not documented in writing, they do not exist.

Hence, a proposal facilitates appropriate words for the conception of an idea. Proposals have recently become more sophisticated. This reflects the increased competitiveness and larger resources existing in the NGO sector. The trend of inviting proposals for contracting development programmes began with the allotment of substantial resources for development that triggered off the mushrooming of NGOs around the world.

Enormous opportunities existing in the sector has led to the trend of making proposal writing a profession. Proposal writing poses many challenges, especially for small and unskilled NGOs. Here, we discuss some basic and necessary information required for developing a proposal. Before we start learning about proposal writing, it will serve our purpose if we outline the exact difficulties we face working on the proposal.

The following are the common problems we face while trying to write a proposal:

What is the best Proposal Format?
 There are as many proposal formats as they are number of donors and each donor has a different format. Although the basic information requested by the donor through the format is generally same, yet we often encounter snags that make the entire process confusing.

Planning during proposal writing
 Although a good idea exists, yet when we try to plan it out extensively, we face many unexpected challenges.

Fear of proposal rejections?
No matter how much of an expert we are in writing proposals, the underlying fear of proposal rejection hovers over us while writing it.

Tight deadlines of the Proposal Submission
This is perhaps the most universal problem for all proposal writers. For some reason or the other, we are expected to complete the proposals under a very tight deadline.

Solicited and unsolicited proposal
Solicited and unsolicited proposals are quite confusing. Many NGOs work hard and submit proposals to donors, who have never solicited proposals

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