In continuation of our “Proposals FAIL” series, here are some seemingly small proposal mistakes with big consequences from Alta Alonzi.
Most of my proposal fails come from editing/ drafting client applications. These mistakes may seem small, but they can make a huge difference. Fortunately, all of these examples were caught before the final submission.
Note: some details may have been omitted or changed to preserve anonymity.
Early on in my career, I had a client fundraising for a project taking place Colombia. However the draft research document I sent them consistently misspelled the country as “Columbia.” This happened 23 times in the same document. My spell-checker did not catch the mistake because “Columbia” is well-known sporting goods company, university, and city in the United States. Fortunately, the client caught the error in the draft stage, but it was embarrassing for me and shed some doubt on my research abilities. After all, if I couldn’t be trusted to even check the spelling of Colombia, why should I be trusted to properly check the many detailed and complicated current state of development aid in Colombia? I also had to re-do much of the research to ensure that everything I had so far compiled was indeed relevant to Colombia and not, say, Columbia, Missouri.
Spelling can seem like a minor issue, and usually one or two small mistakes are not a problem. But repeated errors be costly. Lots of mistakes drop your credibility, make communication difficult, and also potentially lead to incorrect assumptions and results.
Pro-Tip: the hotkey Ctrl-h opens up the dialogue box in MS Office to quickly access the find or replace options. I was able to easily fix my mistake using the “replace all” command.
I once reviewed a proposal written by a group of lawyers working on women’s issues in the law. One of the listed program objectives was to “end the anti-domestic violence law.” I assumed this was a mistake. The writer either meant to say “enforce the anti-domestic violence law” or “end practices going against the anti-domestic violence law.” Fortunately, I waited to ask for the writer’s input before changing the line because it turned out I was wrong. The group wanted to end the anti-domestic violence law because it narrowly defined domestic violence and perpetuated the myth that both sides were always partially responsible for domestic violence.
This was a lesson for me on making assumptions, but also for NGOs to include proper context in their proposals. If a consultant misconstrues the meaning, donors may as well. Also, try to avoid double-negatives!
Once I was asked to review a proposal from a client with little proposal-writing experience. Right away, I noticed the proposal title “Komo” needed to be changed. Even after reading the entire proposal, I had no idea how “Komo” was at all related to the project. Was it an acronym? A name? A word in the local language? Similarly, I also noticed the objectives were too vague, and so sent some suggestions on how to write a good project title as well as SMART objectives. The client wrote back to me a couple weeks later, thanking me for my input and attaching the updated proposal. To my surprise, the client had taken my advice too far! The title was now 39 words (way too long), read like a goal statement, and even defined acronyms within the title itself. Similarly, the objectives became overly complicated.
After this experience, I learned to take care in giving advice and being more specific with my recommendations.
Alta Alonzi is a writer and researcher focusing on international development funding and grassroots NGOs. She works with the fundraising consulting company Philantropia conducting research for clients ranging from small NGOs to UN organizations. She also works closely with FundsforNGOs running training webinars, contributing resource guides, and updating the Premium donor database.
Very true. Small mistake cause more trouble