Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. Please follow the guidelines issued by the WHO and your respective countries agencies and help in the effort to contain the spread of the Corona virus.
If you decided that you have a role to play during this crisis, at some point, you have to submit a proposal to get additional funding. After talking to your old and current donors, you will have to contact new ones as well. Remember, there will be a lot of money dedicated to this in the next weeks, so make sure you get included in the planning if you want to implement projects in this area.
We have many resources about how to write a great proposal – make sure to check them all out. The general rules of proposal writing have not changed, so just stick to them as well as you can. There are a couple of things though that are different now.
The first step you have to take when you want to write proposals is to gain clarity about the activities you want to implement. Will you support hospitals, work directly with a community, run an awareness campaign, support the elderly? You need to have clarity on what you want to achieve to be able to ask for support to do so.
Right now, it is important to act quickly. Don’t wait too long, but rather submit a short proposal quickly. You don’t have to include too many details, right not it is only important to get the word out about your work. If you can catch a donor’s attention, they will contact you for further details if necessary. They also have to move quickly, so they don’t want to read through 30-page proposals.
Try to send out a couple of one-pager and keep to the KISS mantra – Keep It Short and Simple.
When you write a proposal, try to keep a certain amount of flexibility for your activities. You don’t know what will happen in the next weeks, and you don’t want to have to check back for every little change in your activities. Be precise in your goals and objectives, but don’t put yourself into a corner by specifying too much about the activities you want to implement. You simply don’t know if you will be able to carry out the program in exactly the same way you picture it right now in a couple of weeks.
Talk about the assumptions you make for your work and be realistic with them. How many people to your project will get sick in your country? Where do you take your numbers from? Do you have access to reliable data? All of this is important and your donor should know on which assumptions you base your planning. You don’t have to spend days and days on research, but you should be confident in the data to use to plan your project.
Of course, you will need to include a budget for your proposal. Again, don’t make it too specific though. You don’t know how prices will change in this situation and how your program might change. You might have to cover different kinds of costs while you move along with your work, so don’t put yourself into a corner. If the donor has questions, they will always get back to you and will be understanding in this particular situation.
Also read: How to Develop a Project Budget: A Complete Guide 2020
Normally, we always recommend doing a very thorough research and only send elaborated proposals to the perfect donor match. Right now, this does not really apply anymore. First of all, you don’t have time to do all this research right now. You don’t want to spend days and days to find the perfect match and miss your chance this way. You need to act quickly.
Furthermore, donors probably open up their programs as well. They will not be as strict in their policy anymore, as they also want to move quickly to have an impact. They might not have time to update their homepage or guidelines to properly reflect that.
In this emergency situation, we recommend you send a short proposal to all donors you see any overlap with. It will not cost you a lot of work, and the rules of engagement change in these insecure times.
This is one of the most important things – if you propose something, you also need to be ready to implement it. Make sure that your organization has the capacity and ability to implement the projects you propose and that you can live up to what you promise. Donors want to move quickly, so if they chose you, you should be able to start working immediately. In a global emergency like this one, everything is happening at a faster pace, as it is necessary to act quickly, and you have to adjust to that.
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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.
Thanks Eva this is great to put into action