What is the Project Justification?

In most proposals the donor will ask you to give the project justification.

But what does that actually mean?

In the following paragraphs we will explain what you should include in your project justification and why it is important.

The project justification basically explains following question:

  • Why your project is necessary and what it will do?
  • Which benefit will the project have?
  • Which positive effects will it have?
  • Which new chances could open up because of the project?
  • Which problems will be solved by your project?
  • How do these problems affect your community at the moment?

If you want to convince a donor of a project, this might be the most important part of the proposal. Here you can show that you exactly know the situation and the current needs of your beneficiaries. You can show that you are able to develop a plan that exactly caters to these needs. If you can explain that there is a good reason to carry out your project and that there is an imminent need that it will address, your proposal has a much better chance of being considered. Project justification is about trying to explain why we need to implement a particular solution to the problem we have narrated above. It tells the donors why this is the best solution to address the problem.

Once the Problem Description and Justification part of the proposal is complete, a good part of our work is done!

How to Write a Project Justification

You should research the project justification carefully to be able to support your arguments with facts and data. Some of this can be generic and you can find this data online, some should be very specific to your project and be collected in the community. E.g. if you want to propose a project which supports a school, your proposal will be much stronger if you know exactly how many students graduate from that school in relation the overall graduation rate in the country and similar facts.

As the justification is normally one of the first paragraphs of your proposal, make sure it is well written and easily understandable. If you make spelling mistakes here or use too long sentences, you might discourage people from reading on.

Sometimes the project justification is very similar to the project rationale or the project background.

They all basically answer the same question: Why this project in this location?


About the author

Eva Wieners

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.

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Akol Michael
Akol Michael
4 years ago

I have some proposals I have written but I do not know how to access project grants. One is about hands-on-skills and the other is a school project. Being a teacher who has taught for 21 years in famous Uganda schools, I real need to establish an educational projects that helps to fill in the gaps left by UPE and private sector as well.

frank
4 years ago

thanks good ideas

Joshua Sampson
Joshua Sampson
3 years ago

Do you know where I can find the project justification for the Vietnam large scale solar project?

kandondi kandondi
kandondi kandondi
3 years ago

I wrote a funding proposal to purchase land cruiser vehicle, boat , camping equipment GPS , as a community located a controlled Hunting Area in the okavango delta, therefore in the content of proposal , there is section that describes the justification of these resources
Briefly ,my community member are under the threat of elephants , difficult to patrol the area due to water , had for the people who settle in the delta to receives health services, school kids miss school due to no model of transportation.
then with the provided information how the justification should look like

OZOR Immaculata
OZOR Immaculata
2 years ago

I got the answer to my search

Proposals forNGOs
Proposals forNGOs
2 years ago

Dear Ozar:
I am glad that the article is helpful to you.

Kamaldeen Anass
Kamaldeen Anass
1 year ago

thanks, this helps.

Solange
Solange
4 months ago

THank you Eva for this. I do hope you come visit Papua New Guinea and help us learn skills to develop and write up great community project proposal and more.

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