Speaker 1: Welcome to Pandadoc's step-by-step guide to writing a grant proposal. Let's walk you through how to prepare requests for funding or investment with a Pandadoc template that you can use for free. This video is broken up into multiple chapters, so if you'd like to skip ahead to a specific part, go right on ahead. Let's get started. A grant proposal is a formal request for an investment in a non-profit or for-profit project, and we think every grant proposal should include eight key sections. A cover letter, an executive summary, your organization's information, a problem statement or statement of need, your goals and objectives, your methods and strategies, an evaluation plan, and a project budget. Let's start with the cover letter. Your cover letter is the perfect opportunity to capture the funder's attention and get your foot in the door. The goal of your cover letter is to compel the reader to continue reading the proposal. Keep it short, be direct, and avoid repeating yourself. As you can see in this sample, we get two main points across. Number one, how much money we need. And number two, the summary of what exactly the grantee will be funding. Our Panda tip here is to keep it high level. If you're too wordy from the start, you'll scare your reader away, and they won't even make it to the rest of your grant proposal. Okay, let's move on to the executive summary. Every winning grant proposal needs to start with a brief executive summary. This section should introduce your business, market segment proposal, and project goals. Aim to answer the following questions in your summary. What is your project name, and who is it supposed to help? What problem are you solving, and why should it matter? What is your end goal, and how will you measure whether you achieved it? How much money do you need, and how do you plan to finance the project in the future? Why should you get these funds? Our Panda tip here is not to go too crazy with the details. Keep your executive summary to less than a page in length. Now it's time to introduce your organization. This section is your opportunity to tell your company's backstory and highlight your expertise. Some grant writers will place this section at the very end, like our template here. Either way is fine, just make sure to comprehensively cover all the necessary information, such as your legal status, founding year, mission statement, programs, and key team members. Our Panda tip here is to also incorporate client recommendations, letters of thanks, and any valid certifications, licenses, and praise from the community to show your company can execute all the moving parts of the proposed project. Okay, it's the moment we've been waiting for. Time to write your problem statement or statement of need. This is the meat of your proposal, which answers these two important questions. Number one, what is the need that you're trying to address? And number two, why is your organization the right candidate to fulfill that need? Here's how a brief problem statement could look. Mind you, this is just some inspiration for you. Don't just copy and paste this. Our Panda tip here is to use some quantitative data to highlight the urgency and comparable data on the results of the communities that have already implemented your solution and got satisfactory results. And just like that, we're ready at Section 5 and ready to state our goals and objectives. This section provides information on the benefits that the grantee, community, or government will see from their investment. Clearly describe the desired outcomes and how your team will measure success. You might be thinking, aren't goals and objectives basically the same thing? The answer is no. Our Panda tip here is to think of goals as broad statements and objectives as more specific statements of intention with measurable outcomes and timeframes, kind of like we've done here in this template. Now it's time to tell your grantee how you plan on achieving your goals with some methods and strategies. The purpose of this section is to outline each requirement and their expected timelines. You need to make sure that your methods are firmly and obviously tied to three things. The needs statement, project objectives, and project budget. Our Panda tip here is to label your objectives, and then the methods can be bulleted underneath like this. Alright, we're nearing the end of this grant proposal, and it's time for your evaluation plan. This is where you specify the measurement methods that will tell both you and your funders how the program is doing. It's not just about measuring success. It's about measuring success across time. Include the timeframe needed for evaluations and who will do the evaluation. Going with our same example, here's what an evaluation plan can look like. Our Panda tip here is to remove any vagueness from your evaluation. It's got to include specific timeframes, processes, and measurements. It's finally time to talk money. Welcome to the project budget section, the final portion of your grant proposal. In this section, you'll detail exactly how you plan to use the resources from an operational standpoint. Provide full justification for all expenses that should also include a table of products and services that you plan to offer, which will be used to clearly and accurately specify your services. Pay close attention to details. Everything, and we mean everything, needs to be covered in this section. Travel costs, supplies, advertising personnel, don't leave anything out. Here's what a project budget would look like for a fictional grant for a cross-country research study. Now, if the funding requirements of your project go beyond the total cost of the grant, you will either need to create an Other Funding Resources subsection. This subsection will outline the total cost of ownership, including ongoing maintenance, daily business, and operational support. If you plan to get more government funding, this is the place to mention it. Don't leave room for speculation. Everything needs to be outlined. And you need to show without a doubt that your program can run even after the initial resources are exhausted. Our Panda Tip here is to include other people from your organization and assemble a team to tackle this section together to avoid any budgeting mistakes. Well, there you have it. You should now have a grant proposal that's ready for review. The average nonprofit organization spends up to 200 hours writing a single federal grant proposal, but a PandaDOT grant proposal template could save you tons of time. Check out the links in our description to get started for free. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to PandaDOT's YouTube channel for more helpful business document tips and tricks.