PROPOSAL FOR OBTAINING FUNDS

By Phil Bartle, PhD

Translation by Ma Lourdes Sada
Reference Document

How to obtain money from donor organizations

1. Introduction
A proposal is a petition of financial assistance to implement a project. In a community
project, it should be used to obtain approval from the members of the community (the
community itself being the most important donor). You can use these guidelines to solicit
funds from any donor. We recommend that you seek multiple funding sources. If you
only have one source, you can end up depending on it.

A proposal is not just a “shopping list” of things you want. A proposal should justify each
item on the list that you want, in such a way so the agency can decide if they are willing
provide some or all of the items. You have to know (and be able to communicate) exactly
what you will do with each item; for this reason, you should design a project to carry out
what you hope to achieve. It is important to design and formulate your project carefully.
It is equally important to write a proposal that attracts the necessary funds. Drafting
proposals is a skill that requires certain knowledge and practice.

Your project proposal should be an honest document of a “sales pitch.” Its function is to
inform and persuade. It is not the appropriate setting to preach, boast, or falsify. If you
are convinced that it is a good idea that merits help, your project proposal should honestly
inform those who make the decision so that they can compare it to other donation
proposals. Your proposal should clearly indicate when and how the project will end and
when it is expected that it will operate independently. The proposals should be clean and
carefully done, preferably typed, and without superfluous or unnecessary information.

The elaboration of your proposal will depend on the amount of resources it merits and on
the total size of the project. Change these guidelines to fit the project and the hypothetical
donor.

The project proposal should reflect the amount of work that has already been done and
logically should be set out. It is not enough to write a letter explaining your petition. You
must demonstrate the necessity and prove that the project merits funds. Remember that
there will be many other organizations and people competing for them.

Use clear, simple, concise language that expresses exactly what is intended. If necessary,
use diagrams or graphs to illustrate key points. Use appendices to avoid the core proposal
from being too extensive or the narrative confusing. Adapt your presentation to the
agency. Express the desire to be personally interviewed by the funding agency once they
have received and read your proposal.

And above all else…

 Don’t be discouraged if your proposal is not accepted. Look into the reasons why and try
again with another organization.

2. Plan your project (practical vision):

Perhaps you and your associates have many ideas that you want to carry out; you see the
need to reduce illiteracy and poverty, providing drinking water, improving sanitary
levels, supplying training for people with disabilities and many more things. Still, it is
necessary to choose a project that is specific and limit your goal to one with a simple
solution to the problem of highest importance.

Involve the entire community. When selecting your project, convene a meeting and do
not forget to include people that have often be forgotten in the past — women, those with
disabilities, the extremely poor — those who do not have a voice in the community to
make decisions. Verify that the people who will supposedly benefit from the project feel
that it is their project, for their benefit, and that they can contribute to it because the
project belongs to them.

In any case, it is not enough to choose your goal. It is necessary to have good planning,
identify your available or potential resources, generate various strategies and choose the
most viable, decide how the project will be monitored to guarantee that it stays on the
right track (that is, so that it continues being consistent with the original goals), verify
that the accounting is transparent and accurate, and decide what is going to be done at all
times (an agenda). Some research about the location, the characteristics of the residents,
the situation and the existing performance is necessary to describe the project’s setting.
The best way to guarantee that the results of the research are authentic is to involve the
community and the beneficiaries.

With the target group or community, use “Brainstorming Principles and Procedures” to
sketch out a plan or Project Design. Without giving into criticisms, ask the members of
the group to contribute to every step of the brainstorming process: what is the pressing
problem (note all of them, including the silly ones, then order them by priority), make it
easier for the group to understand that the goal is the solution to the identified problem.
Help them generate objectives (finite, provable, specific) based on that general goal.
Identify resources and obstacles, and later generate various alternative solutions,
choosing the most viable. Other available documents on this website explain the
brainstorming process in greater detail. This is simply a brief outline.

With your groundwork research as your base, you will want to begin sketching out your
proposal. We strongly recommend that you obtain funds (resources) from various
sources. Do not let your organization or group end up depending on one single donor.

Before you begin writing your proposal, keep these points in mind:
 It is necessary to discover in advance what sources of funds are available,
governments, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
or private foundations.
 Many donors judge according to the degree of local initiative in the proposal of
the project, the utilization of available resources within the zone and the project’s
plans to become independent once the initial funds have been exhausted.
 Your project should be practical, not too expensive, and should have potential to
be repeated in other situations.