Get The Money: Part 2: Ditch the Blue Smoke and Mirrors
I probably say it a dozen times in my workshops: Writing funding proposals is a competitive sport.
And just like in sports, there’s no charity. There’s no forgiveness of mistakes. There’s no dismissing poor performance as a fluke. There’s no fooling. Blue smoke and mirrors just don’t work. Sorry.
It’s serious competition and the result is winner take all.
Most proposals, especially high dollar federal proposals, are scored by independent panels of peer reviewers. What this means is that experts in the field who have been trained to score proposals are in charge of your fate. This refers to high level national competitions but much less so to state and local funding. Foundations run the gamut. Depending on their size, interests, and investment plan, foundations may use a formal point process or put more store in relationships, reputation, and their program officers’ gut about certain projects.
For those of you who write proposals that will be formally scored, here are three tips gleaned from many years in the federal grantwriting business:
1. Read the proposal guidelines very carefully. You’re looking for two things here. First, how the points are distributed, e.g. how many for the problem statement, how many for the program design and so on, will tell you what’s important to the funding source. You need to score high in all sections. But the point distributions tells you where to focus your planning and preparation efforts.
Second, what are the specific criteria on which the point allocation will be made? Proposal guidelines can be tricky, providing information about the required elements in one place and the evaluation criteria in another. And they don’t always match. Your job as the proposal writer is to create an integrated list of criteria. In other words, you are going to respond well to everything.
2. Understand that each proposal section is scored separately. This means that the problem statement, program design, organizational description are scored independently of each other. Sure, it’s possible to cross-reference information from one section to another (a good strategy to save space in a document), but you must make sure that each section pretty much stands alone and fully addresses the point criteria.
3. Look under the rock. Proposal reviewers, especially federal reviewers, hide their detailed review under a big rock. What is the big rock? It’s applicants’ fear of criticism. Review comments are available upon request. So, if a panel of three peer reviewers scored your proposal, you can receive all of their scores and comments. This is the road map for the next proposal. It will tell you where you were weak and why. Your competition is combing through those review comments looking for ways to improve next time. The fools – the ones with their programs’ pockets turned inside out, complaining about the unfairness of funding sources – will write the same failing proposal next time or, if they’re really special, find new ways to fail.
Think about proposal writing like a football team prepares for a game and then reviews a loss. They watch film. They play as hard as they possibly can. They watch more film. They analyze their strengths and weaknesses. They win. (Yes, sports fans, I know I’m oversimplifying here but you get my point.)
That’s what winning proposal writers do. I learned this the hard way so I know it’s true. Good luck!


This morning, my local baseball expert explained to me the logic of Brewers manager Ron Roenicke sticking with the rotation in the 6th game of the National League Championship Series despite Shaun Marcum’s grim performance in Game 2. “If he (Roenicke) picks somebody else to pitch, Marcum might never recover,” said my expert. He went on to explain how the Brewers had sacrificed a lot to get Marcum and that passing him over in favor of someone else could essentially damage the goods long term, which in baseball parlance, means next year. 

Growing up, my family owned a dime store – just like this one – and we all worked in it. I started working when I was 12. Before that I would go to the store, get a bag of dimes from my Dad and ride the mechanical horse parked near the front window. So I guess that was kind of a job — being the object of envy for all the little kids begging their moms to let them ride the horse. I’d also do other key jobs – like feeding the little 29 cent turtles or cleaning the parakeet cages. Never mind that the turtles were probably loaded with salmonella – nobody cared about that. It was important to keep little Janice busy.