Abbreviations in proposals are a great way to keep the proposal short and to the point. Especially when you have many partners or talk about experiences of other organizations, it makes a lot of sense to use them. There are a couple of things though that you have to consider when using abbreviations in your proposal.
An abbreviation is a short form of a word that uses just a couple of letter to represent this word. There are some very widely known and accepted abbreviations like Dr. for doctor or USA for the United States of America. Others are short forms for institutions, approaches or NGOs (NGO being an abbreviation itself, standing for Non-Governmental Organization). An example of such an abbreviation is UN for United Nations or PRA for Participatory Rural Appraisal.
How to use abbreviations in proposals
So what do you have to keep in mind when you want to use abbreviations in your proposal? There are two kinds of abbreviations: those that are widely known and used and do not need an explanation, and those that need one.
We all use abbreviations like Dr. for Doctor, kg for kilogram or m for the meter in our daily communications. Of course, you can use these abbreviations as well and they don’t need an explanation. This is different from abbreviations that not everyone may know. Short forms for organizations, approaches or institutions should be explained at least once in your proposal.
How to explain your abbreviations
Again, there are two forms. In a short proposal, you can just use the full name the first time it occurs and put the abbreviations behind it in brackets. From then on, you can use the abbreviation without an explanation. Here is an example:
In a first meeting, the secretary of the Village Development Committee (VDC) was consulted. The VDC committed to supporting the project financially.
If your application is longer and you will include a table of contents, you can have your list of abbreviations on a single paper. Be sure to include all abbreviations that you used throughout your proposal on this list. Do one round of proofreading particularly to find all the abbreviations and to not miss anything. As a reader, it is extremely disrupting and annoying if you come across a word in a document that you cannot understand and that you need to look up externally. Even if you use a list of abbreviations, you should still write out the name the first time you use it like in the above example.
