April 6, 2024

Courses on proposal writing typically focus on the importance of writing clearly and avoiding jargon. While important, these tips alone will not lead to a winning proposal. Writing a high-quality proposal also involves remembering that proposals are scored, not read. If you write a well-written proposal but fail to consider how the reviewers will read and evaluate it, your proposal may not score well.

🎯For greater success in grant writing, remember that proposals are scored, not read. 

Writing for the Target Audience

Grant writing is challenging because of several factors. One of the most significant is the typically short window between the day a solicitation is posted and the day the proposal is due. A recurring reason why proposals are unsuccessful is that because of the short turnaround, proposal teams feel intense pressure to start writing before they are clear about what they intend to propose. Sometimes the proposal team puts this pressure on itself. Other times, the organization’s leadership puts pressure on the proposal team under the belief that the proposal writing must begin immediately to meet the submission deadline. The problem with this thinking is that if the writing starts too early, the team has not had adequate time to do background research or project design, which means whatever has been written early in the process will often need to be rewritten once that design work eventually happens. 

Successful proposals must check all the boxes. They must meet the core requirements related to page limits and font size while also addressing the funder’s expressed and implied needs. Information about the proposal’s more procedural requirements is usually not difficult to find in the solicitation. However, it can be harder to discover which elements of a proposal the funder regards as most important. This is where the evaluation criteria offer clues.

Allocating Proposal Resources Based on the Evaluation Criteria

When a funder’s review panel evaluates a proposal, the members score it against a set of criteria. Many solicitations, such as those published by the U.S. government, list the evaluation criteria so applicants understand the evaluation process. The criteria often include weights. Other funders, such as private foundations, may not provide detailed or weighted criteria but often highlight features a proposal should include to be considered competitive.

If they are included in the solicitation, the evaluation criteria should influence the proposal’s development from the earliest stages, beginning with the proposal outline. For example, the writer will want to reserve adequate space in the proposal for those sections weighted most heavily in the evaluation criteria. 

Second, the evaluation criteria should also influence how much time and resources a proposal team dedicates to each section, meaning that a section representing 30% of the score should be prioritized over a section representing only 10%. The evaluation criteria also play a role in the project design phase because they often indicate what the reviewers will look for when evaluating the project’s activities and anticipated outcomes. Having the criteria prominently posted in the proposal draft can help keep the proposal on track by reminding the writer and the technical contributors of those sections deserving extra attention; a simple way to highlight the sections is to insert the evaluation criteria or scoring weights as comments next to the relevant headings.

Writing for Reviewers 

The funder’s review panel may consist of several individuals. Unless the proposals are relatively short, it’s safe to assume that not all reviewers will read every proposal they receive in-depth from beginning to end. Some reviewers may read the executive summary in full and skim the rest of the proposal. Others may skim the entire proposal, stopping occasionally to study information in graphics and tables. Others may skim most sections but will read more carefully those parts of the proposal that relate to their specific areas of expertise. Writing a high-scoring proposal involves anticipating how reviewers may interact with your proposal so that your proposal scores highly regardless of whether they read every word, skim sections, or focus on or skip every table.

Regardless of whether a reviewer is skimming a proposal or giving it a thorough read, all reviewers rank proposals against the same evaluation criteria. As noted above, proposals are scored and not read. This is why letting the evaluation criteria guide the proposal’s development is essential. In practical terms, it means potentially spending more time on some sections than you might otherwise. For example, if the evaluation criteria indicate that management and staffing are worth 25% of the score, you may need to start this section earlier and spend more time refining it than you otherwise would.

Accommodating Reviewers with Different Reading Styles

You can employ a few techniques to ensure that in-depth readers, skimmers, table avoiders, and table lovers all rank your proposal highly.

• Readers. To meet the needs of those reading the proposal in-depth, it will serve you well to write in clear, grammatically correct sentences that logically progress. Those who read a proposal carefully and sequentially, beginning on page one and progressing page-by-page until the end, are more likely to pick up on internal inconsistencies than those who skim a proposal. Internal consistencies include conflicting descriptions of project activities or misspellings of key terminology. For readers who may closely read every page of your proposal, it’s particularly valuable to have your proposal copy edited.

• Skimmers. Skimmers peruse headings and subheadings. Writing informative and descriptive headings makes it easier for skimmers to identify the sections they want to read in full. Descriptive headings also can be used to underscore important points. To illustrate, if you wish to emphasize the number of local staff on your proposed project, under the heading “Management and Staffing,” you could introduce a subheading like “Local Staff in Key Positions” instead of listing all local and non-local staff under the general heading “Staffing.” The solicitation often dictates major headings (e.g., Introduction or Project Description), but descriptive headings should be an option for subheadings and run-in headings.

☞ This is a run-in heading. A run-in heading is often used for level 4 headings.

Additionally, because skimmers may do a light review of the majority of the proposal and could skip some sections entirely, you’ll want to sprinkle your organization’s key strengths (i.e., your win themes) throughout the proposal to maximize the chance that all reviewers will come across them regardless of their review style.

• Table avoiders. Judiciously using tables in a proposal can be a great way to save space, consolidate information, and make information easier to understand. However, not everyone likes to pour over tables. One solution to help those inclined to skip tables is to add descriptive captions. Descriptive captions describe what a table or graphic depicts. The captions should be a complete sentence rather than a word or two. You might write, “AMAZING project chose target districts X, Y, and Z based on preliminary data indicating that these areas are the most vulnerable to climate-change related disasters” instead of a cursory caption like “Table 3. Target Districts.” Second, in the body of the proposal, you should reference every table before it appears in the text. For example, if your table lists and describes the regions where your project will take place, you should introduce this table in the text by saying something like, “The AMAZING project will work in three districts (see Table 3).” Doing these two things—the descriptive caption and the reference—will alert the reader to the table and may lead more readers to spend time looking at the table. These same strategies also work to call attention to graphics.

• Table lovers. A subset of skimmers and readers will review your tables thoroughly. To help these types of readers, your tables should be easy to read and interpret and contain useful data not found elsewhere in the proposal. You don’t want to frustrate reviewers by densely packing the table with unclear information in a too-small font. The tables should be in a logical, visually appealing format, using things like color and bold font to increase readability. The table should also be able to stand on its own. What we mean by this is that if the table were cut and pasted into a blank document, it should still make sense. Strategies to do this include avoiding abbreviations in your tables or, if you use them, defining the terms directly beneath the table and not in a traditional footnote at the bottom of the page. The table’s caption and column headings should also be understood at a glance. Table lovers may refer back to your tables multiple times during their review, so another critical step is making the tables easy to find by listing them in the table of contents (ditto with any graphics).

Summary: Plan Before Writing by Leveraging Evaluation Criteria

Planning is essential to ensure that your proposal will score well. Unless a grant proposal is a short, fill-in-the-blank application, it’s a best practice to sketch out what you will say and where you will say it before you begin writing. One of the most helpful things you can do as you work on your proposal outline is to look for clues in the evaluation criteria about what the reviewers will expect to see in each section and how important the funder regards each section. For a better success rate, your proposal should address all the points spelled out in the evaluation criteria, with extra attention on those areas most heavily weighted.