Grant Writing Templates
What each document a grant writer produces actually needs to contain, and why. Take the structure, write it in your own words, and stop guessing at what a funder is looking for.
See the templatesGrant Proposal Template
Almost every funder asks for the same handful of things in a slightly different order. Once you can see the underlying structure, a new application stops being a blank page and becomes a set of questions you already know how to answer. This is that structure, section by section, with what a reviewer is actually looking for in each one.
View template & details →Letter of Inquiry Template
Many private funders will not accept a full proposal until they have seen a letter of inquiry, which is a two-page argument for why a longer conversation is worth their time. It is a different document from a proposal, not a shortened one, and the difference is what most first attempts get wrong.
View template & details →Grant Budget Template
A budget is read as a test of whether the plan is real. Reviewers check it against the narrative before they judge either, because a project that promises four staff and funds two has told them something about the whole application. This is how the standard categories work and where the arithmetic usually goes wrong.
View template & details →Logic Model Template
A logic model is a one-page argument that your activities will produce the change you are claiming. Funders ask for it because it exposes whether a plan holds together, and the place it usually falls apart is the arrow between outputs and outcomes, where a proposal quietly assumes the hard part.
View template & details →Statement of Need Template
The most common weakness in a first proposal is a need statement about the organization rather than about the problem. A funder is looking for the condition their money would change, described so it would still be true if you did not exist. This is how that section is built, and how to tell whether yours is one.
View template & details →Evaluation Plan Template
An evaluation plan answers one question: how will anyone know whether this worked. Weak plans promise to measure everything and end up measuring nothing, because the person named to do it also has a full-time job delivering the project. This is what a plan has to specify to be credible.
View template & details →Grant Cover Letter Template
A cover letter is often the first page a program officer reads and the last page an applicant writes, which is why so many of them simply restate the summary. It has four jobs to do in one page, and none of them is summarizing the proposal that is attached to it.
View template & details →Sustainability Plan Template
Funders ask what happens when the money runs out, and the standard answer, that you will apply for more grants, tells them nothing. A sustainability plan is a realistic account of which parts of the work continue, how they are paid for, and what genuinely ends. Saying that plainly is more persuasive than an optimistic plan nobody believes.
View template & details →Grant Tracker Template
Once you are running more than two applications, the thing that fails is not the writing but the calendar. A tracker exists so you always know what is due, what is pending and what has to be reported on, and so a decision made in March is still findable in November when the same funder opens again.
View template & details →Grant Report Template
Reporting is where the next grant is either earned or quietly lost. A report that arrives on time, answers the questions asked, and is honest about what did not work does more for a future application than most cover letters. This is what those reports contain.
View template & details →Knowing the structure is the easy half
The harder half is what goes in it: the evidence that establishes a need, the objective a reviewer can score, the budget line that survives being read beside the narrative. That is what the courses are for.
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