Chapter 6
Writing the Letter of Intent or Preproposal
After you identify potential funding sources and get more detailed information about them, you will want to determine how the sponsors want to be contacted. In many cases, the large foundations and government agencies do not want you to write proposals immediately. Writing proposals takes considerable time and effort and may not be the most efficient way to proceed. Instead, many foundations want you to write two- to three-page letters of intent. Likewise, some government funding sources ask for five-page preproposals rather than a complete proposal. The function of the letter of intent and the preproposal is to give the sponsors a quick overview of a particular project and the organization proposing it, so that they can conduct an initial screening and determine whether or not they want to consider a proposal from that organization. In this chapter, you will learn the rhetorical principles governing the letter of intent and preproposal. You will also learn how to draft either a letter of intent or a preproposal, depending on what your sponsor requires.
Learner Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you will be able to- Identify the rhetorical principles governing the letter of intent and preproposal
- Write an effective letter of intent or preproposal to a sponsor
Key Terms
Algorithms—Algorithms are procedures that guarantee you success, like the process for long division. If you do it correctly you will always be successful.Heuristics—Heuristics are procedures or strategies to make you a better guesser. They provide you with guidelines designed to make your documents logical and suited to answer the typical questions posed by sponsors when they read these documents. Most of the document guidelines we provide in this text are heuristics—procedures designed to make sure you do not forget important elements in your documents and to ensure that you consider the needs of audience and purpose. Rhetorical strategies deal with probabilities, so they are always heuristics—never algorithms.
Letter of intent—A letter of intent, sometimes called a letter of solicitation or letter of inquiry, is designed to give the sponsor a quick description of your project and the qualifications of your organization. Consisting of a need statement and the credentials of your organization, the letter of intent is usually between two and three pages long and sometimes is accompanied by attachments (such as a brochure on your organization, newspaper clippings, or other testimonials about your most successful projects). Foundations, rather than government sponsors, ask for letters of intent.
Preproposal—A preproposal is a mini-version of your proposal, usually no more than five pages long, which gives a sponsor a quick description of the problem, what you plan to do to solve it, how you plan to do it, who will be working on the project, and a description of their credentials. Preproposals are a screening tool, just like the letter of intent, which help sponsors decide from whom they want to request full proposals. Government sponsors usually request preproposals to pre-qualify applicants.
Private funding sources—Private funding sources are independent foundations and corporate foundations. Reporting requirements are not usually as strict with private funding sources, but they generally do not make awards as large as those from public sources. Private funding sources generally issue program announcements rather than RFPs or RFAs.
Program announcement—A program announcement is a pamphlet or brochure describing a sponsor's current funding priorities. Usually there is a program announcement for each of the sponsor's priorities. Program announcements provide descriptions of the problems the sponsor wants to fund and identify what restrictions sponsors place on their funds. Sometimes the program announcements also provide guidelines for writing proposals and the dates when they are due.
Public funding sources—Public funding sources are government sources‹national, state, or local. Since they use taxpayer money and need to demonstrate accountability, the accounting and reporting requirements for grants from public sources are more stringent. However, they often provide larger grants. They generally issue RFPs or RFAs.
RFP/RFA—Request for Proposals/Request for Applications are the documents issued by public funding sources to announce their priorities and to describe the kinds of problems for which they are soliciting proposals. The RFP/RFA generally consists of a technical application and a financial application.
Activities
The letter of intent builds upon the previous chapters of this text. It requires you to revisit both the need statement that you generated in Chapters 2 and 3 and the strategic planning exercise from Chapter 1 in light of what you learned in Chapters 4 and 5 about potential sponsors. In other words the assignments in this chapter are cumulative. They build on the work you have done in previous chapters.Based on what the sponsors' priorities are, as found in their program announcements, annual reports, or RFPs/RFAs, you are now expected to rethink and revise your need statement to incorporate in a letter of intent or preproposal. You will want to situate your need statement in the letter of intent within the context of the sponsor's priorities.
You can send out more than one letter of intent at a time. We found that when we were on "fishing expeditions" looking for unsolicited funds, we had only about a 10% positive response rate to our letters of intent. So to get two positive responses, we had to send out as many as 20 letters of intent. However, when we were responding to a program announcement or RFP/RFA, we often received a positive response with three or four out of seven letters of intent. Unsolicited proposals—those which are not a direct response to a program announcement or RFP—are much more difficult to get funded. Solicited proposals—those which are a direct response to a program announcement or RFP—are much more in the mainstream of what the sponsor is looking for and are easier to find funding for.
In the writing assignment section below, you will find peer review evaluation sheets for the letter of intent and preproposal. Use them as guides to writing your own letters and preproposals and as checklists in evaluating your peers' letters and preproposals.
Additional Excercise on Letter of Intent
The following letter is a second version of the MINCAVA letter by Ann Kroner. Ann told us that when she wrote the first version strictly following the format in the text, her peers in the class loved it, but her co-workers at MINCAVA hated it! Her professional peers preferred the second version (below). Why do you suppose that this was the case?Second version of the MINCAVA letter
Summary
In Chapter 6, you reviewed the material that you gathered on your potential sponsors to determine the sponsors' priorities, target audience, goals, and objectives. This information will be used to demonstrate how your project and your organization could help the sponsor achieve its goals. You learned how to make initial contact with the sponsoring organization to see if it was interested in funding your project. You also learned about letters of intent and preproposals, the pre-qualifying tools that many sponsors use to decide whether or not they want a proposal from you. If your letter of intent or preproposal is successful, then the sponsor will request a complete proposal from you. The next chapter will help you strategize on how to get buy-in from individuals and groups both inside and outside of your organization so that you can do the advance planning necessary to design, write and implement your proposal.Writing Assignment
- If you are seeking foundation funding, contact the foundation and ask for recent program announcements, annual reports, and guidelines for proposals. Sometimes the guidelines are in the program announcements or annual reports. If you are seeking government funding, start monitoring the government portals described in Chapter 5 to find a relevant RFP or RFA and download that information. You should use this data to help you learn more about the sponsor and to help you determine if you should write a letter of intent, preproposal, or proposal to this source. File the information on funding sources in your electronic proposal development notebook or in your print notebook.
- Write a letter of intent or preproposal following either the guidelines from the sponsor or the guidelines presented in this chapter. If you follow the sponsor's guidelines, make sure to include a copy of the guidelines for peer reviewers to read your letter or preproposal against. Use the evaluation form below to identify the rhetorical principles in these documents while peer reviewing the letters of intent or preproposals.
Peer Review Evaluation Sheet for Letters of Intent
Peer Review Evaluation Sheet for Preproposal
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