The Power of the Draft
CharityChannel.com  Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Sarah S. Brophy

I’ve grown bolder of late. Now when I call to talk to the foundation officer about a potential proposal, I often ask if he or she would be willing to read a draft proposal or a summary. I’m pleasantly surprised by the ‘yeses.’ I would certainly understand a ‘no’ given the time constraints of reading final proposals, let alone reading and commenting on drafts. Officers at state and federal organizations and a private foundation have all said ‘yes.’ Each has given me excellent feedback. It is no magic bullet, but it helped me, and can help you, understand the donor’s interests better and craft a more responsive proposal.

Private Foundation

A staff member at a private foundation agreed to read a summary of an application to fund a staff person at a botanical garden. In response he wrote: It sounds like [your organization] has a very capable interpretive horticulturist who manages or assists with many important activities. I would think that to make a strong case, theproposal might want to discuss how this position has been funded previously, why funds are necessary now, and how [you expect] to fund it in the future.

This is always an important point in a proposal, but I clearly hadn’t made my allusions strong enough in my opening elevator speech. This was my cue to strengthen that portion of the full application, too. Since the proposal had clearly made its case for the staff position and its incumbent, I could increase the emphasis on the permanence of her future with us. We were awarded that grant.

State Program

For a state application to rehabilitate an historic structure, I asked the staff if they would read a draft of the complicated proposal. They had not been asked this before but, after some internal discussion, agreed that a few of them would look at it for us. They commented that two of them saw portions of the proposal very differently and that the same might occur among the reviewers, so I should be very clear in one section to describe both how that portion of the building would and would not be used.

After emphasizing the future there, they want less discussion about the future of the organization …they wanted more about current activities without the building. These issues, emphasis in one area but not in another, are not often articulated in guidelines, and couldn’t be, really.

During the reading, the staff discovered that some issues of cost eligibility for the matched and unmatched portions of the budget were not yet clear in their minds, but became clear when they saw an applicant budget. They suggested ways to make our budget more responsive to their interests. A more detailed breakdown in a particular area was important. The definition of eligible costs would depend upon future use of portions of the rehabilitated building (public access or not; contributing feature, or not) that I must defend adequately in the narrative. We were awarded that grant.

Whoops – It Didn’t Quite Work

Our organization applied for a visitor center historic project without submitting a draft application. It was turned down because the historian’s c.v. was not strong enough. For a later application, the organization submitted a draft. The agency reviewed the draft, endorsed the new scholar and liked the clearer definition of themes. In the application, however, with the scholarship distractions removed, and the visitor center format articulated more clearly, the agency’s reviewers realized they didn’t want to fund a visitor’s center. The staff member told us that if he’d seen a second draft (I was not so bold as to ask for one) he would have caught it and helped us make a shift (if we wished to). We were not awarded that grant, obviously.

Here’s a lesson on two levels: 1) a draft is a draft, not a final, and the changes you make because of their recommendations are the changes they’ll read and respond to, either as a second draft if you’re lucky, or in the final application, and 2) the staff reads the draft, but reviewers read the applications. This is always the case, and for this reason (and many others) the staff will tell you they cannot be responsible for the final outcome.

We now know we could have submitted a second draft and perhaps addressed the problem, but we could not have compensated for any differences between the staff and the reviewers. “Don’t apply for visitor’s centers” is not in the guidelines; but it is a preference. Now we know and can re-use this stronger proposal for more local funding agencies. The federal agency certainly knows us well should we apply for a different project.

Conclusion

Review help doesn’t solve all the problems or compensate for the range of competing organizations and proposals for that round of grants. Still it is marvelous for improving your current proposal and all the others in your future, for understanding the donor better, and for building a relationship reaching far beyond this single application.  

Copyright © 2010 bMuse, Sarah S. Brophy