In every proposal, concept note or expression of interest, you have to give contact information for a contact person in your organization. Of course, the potential donor or partner needs your contact information to be able to get in contact with you and give you feedback, an answer or just keep in touch. But as simple as it sounds, you need to choose the right person for your organization to be the contact if you do not want your first interaction with a potential donor to be the last.
So, what should you keep in mind when choosing a contact person?
A contact person should be available. When a potential donor or partner calls or contacts during normal office hours, someone should pick up the phone or answer to emails in a timely manner. Do not choose a person who is frequently traveling or not on full-time staff. The contact person needs to be in a position to answer inquiries directly, or at least reasonably quick.
The other important thing to consider is that the contact person should know the project or organization very well. Particularly small NGOs often put the chairman or chairwomen of the organization as contact person, but they do not necessarily know the project that is proposed best. If a potential donor feels the necessity to contact you, they will probably have questions about details that the project manager or the person who was mostly responsible for writing the proposal can answer much better. It will not look very professional when the contact person at your organization cannot answer questions about the project and has to check back for everything.
In some situations, the two requirements from above seem to be mutually exclusive. The field officers who are most familiar with the project and have worked on the proposal might be off the grid a lot or go on vacation. In this case, you can always choose a person at your office or someone from the board that is more available. Make sure though that they know that there might be a call from a potential donor and that they know the proposal in question very well.
Eva is based in Germany and has worked for nearly a decade with NGOs on the grassroots level in Nepal in the field of capacity development and promotion of sustainable agricultural practices. Before that, she worked in South America and Europe with different organizations. She holds a Ph.D. in geography and her field of research was sustainability and inclusion in development projects.
