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?
