Point of View Grant Writing
When you get to your narrative, primed to explain what the grant will mean to your outfit: STOP. Click away from the application files. Go back to the page where the grant was originally posted. Read their objectives carefully. See if you can track down past awards for the same grant.
Occasionally, one is able to find the names of the grant reading panel. If you find them, do your research: are they corporate? Academic? Philanthropy administrators? Civil servants? Military? Your narrative pitch must be tailored to take into account what the panel ‘likes’ to award for what kind of money. You must position your funding request so that it most fulfills the stated objectives of the actual grant.
Always write not from the recipient’s point of view, but from that of your donor. If your granting body wants to grow small, independent farmstead enterprises as measured by public exposure, don’t pitch a new well as a means of more, and more successful, farrowing. In your narrative, your new well will allow you to produce more value added product for a farmstand down at the end of the lane. And you will create surveys to effect market research on agritourism– made possible by the increased water access of your new well. Which may also assist in watering the sows and their litters.
Ensure that you follow through with your budget narrative as well. You may have to turn to ad hoc financial support on crowd-funding platforms to get the pipes and insulated troughs for your farrowing beds. However, you’ll be able likewise to have spigots placed where you like, if the sites are appropriate for developing on-site public awareness and interaction.
After re-reading the grant’s purpose, the mission and vision statements of the awarding organization, anything you can find about the reading panel, and a list of past awardees, you are ready to get writing. Good luck!