Chapter 8
Drafting the Proposal Narrative

Learner Outcomes

1. Identify the principal parts of the proposal

2. Understand and explain the logic of the proposal

3. Complete a draft of the first part of the proposal: the problem statement followed by expanded objectives, methods, and tasks sections

Key Terms

Appendices—The appendices provide additional information to support your proposal. The types of information usually included in the appendices are: organizational information, such as the mission, goals, and objectives of your organization and lists of the members of the board of directors; short vitae of the principal investigators or key project personnel; proof of nonprofit status: a copy of your 501(c)(3) determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service; audited or unaudited financial statements from one to three previous years; and letters of support from key stakeholders in your project.

Benefits—The benefits of your proposed project to the target population are described in your goal(s) and in the primary and secondary project outcomes in the evaluation section of the proposal.

Budget—The budget is your financial plan for the project. Most sponsors provide you with specific budget sheets to use in preparing your budget.

Budget narrative—The budget narrative follows the project budget and provides budget details, such as how the large numbers were calculated and explanations of any potentially questionable items.

Capabilities—The capabilities section of the proposal builds your credibility with the sponsor by describing the success you or your organization have had in the past dealing with similar projects or problems. The capabilities section identifies the knowledge, skills, and experience your key personnel have had with similar projects.

Contract—Sponsors sometimes award a contract which specifies the work to be done, a time frame for completion, and specific deliverables. There are four basic types of contracts: fixed cost, cost plus fixed fee, cost reimbursement, and cooperative agreements.

Cooperative agreements—Cooperative agreements are a special kind of cost reimbursement contract. They operate like a typical cost reimbursement contract, but the sponsor may decide to change the scope of work or the kinds of deliverables and renegotiate that part of the contract with the awardee during the time frame of the contract. Ideally, both parties cooperatively agree to these changes.

Cost plus fixed fee contracts—Cost plus fixed fee contracts offer built-in incentives to the awardee that the fixed cost contract does not. In cost plus fixed fee contracts, the sponsor pays the actual costs of the work as long as it does not exceed the budget by a significant percentage, and allows the awardee to add a reasonable profit to the costs. This profit is usually a percentage of the total price or a fixed fee. To get this bonus or profit, the awardee not only must perform the work specified in the contract satisfactorily, but must also get reports and deliverables in on time. Late reports or deliverables mean awardees lose all or a portion of the fixed fee.

Cost reimbursement contracts—Cost reimbursement contracts require awardees to generate a budget that both you and the sponsor agree upon. As you spend that budget down on allowable items and activities, the sponsor reimburses the costs.

Cover letter—A cover letter is a short one-page letter that introduces your proposal to the sponsor and indicates how many copies you have sent. The cover letter accompanies the proposal but is not stapled to it. There is only one cover letter for the entire proposal package. The cover letter should include a short, one-paragraph need statement to give the sponsor a preview of the proposal, followed by a paragraph indicating that the original and the requested number of copies are attached. The transmittal function can also be served by an enclosure or attachment line after the complimentary close that lists the contents of the proposal package.

Cover page—A cover page is a standard one-page sheet provided by the sponsor to be stapled to the front of your proposal. The cover sheet usually includes the name of the project, the names of the key people in your organization who will lead project efforts, and the chief financial officer, the duration of the project, how much and what kind of funds you are seeking, a short abstract (50-75 words), and the name and address of your organization.

Dissemination plan—In the dissemination plan, you will describe how you plan to disseminate the findings and outcomes of your project to different stakeholders. Not all projects require a dissemination plan. The dissemination plan is often part of or follows the evaluation section.

Evaluation—In the evaluation section, you will describe what procedures you plan to use to evaluate the effectiveness of your project in meeting your objectives and in helping the target population.

Financial application—The financial application is the name given by some government sponsors to the project budget and the budget narrative. The financial application is accompanied by a technical application (another name for the project narrative).

Fixed cost or firm fixed price contracts—These types of contracts stipulate that the price you quote in your budget and that the sponsor agrees to is the total amount to be paid to you—regardless of how much time and how many resources you actually spend on the project.

Five principal parts of the proposal—The five principal parts of the proposal are the problem (need statement), the solution (including, methods and tasks), the capabilities section (credentials of your staff and organization), the cost (budget), and the benefits to the target audience (outcomes).

Goal—The goal of your proposal is a short, one-sentence statement of the major change or outcome for the target population after the project is completed.

Grant—Sponsors sometimes award grants, which do not have the strict reporting requirements or deliverables as do contracts. There are fewer rules and restrictions governing grants and expenditure of grant funds than there are for contract funds.

Letter of transmittal—A letter of transmittal is a one-paragraph letter that tells the sponsor the name of your proposal and how many copies are included in the proposal package. There is only one letter of transmittal for each proposal package, and it is placed on top of the original and copies, not stapled to the original or copies. You will have to choose whether to include a letter of transmittal or a cover letter‹not both‹with your proposal package.

Methods—The methods are the approaches or strategies you will employ to achieve your goals and objectives.

Monitoring plan—The monitoring plan describes how and what kind of information you will systematically collect to monitor your progress in meeting project objectives on an ongoing basis. A brief description of your monitoring plan is usually included in the evaluation section.

Objectives—The objectives are more specific and measurable than the goals, and they comprise the major activities or major steps you will undertake to accomplish your goals.

Project or program description—Sometimes the project or program description contains the problem description and all of the other sections (objectives, methods, evaluation) up to the budget. But in many cases, all that is called for here is your expanded description of the problem.

Project narrative—The project narrative includes the following proposal sections: need statement, goal(s), objectives, tasks, evaluation, dissemination, and sometimes appendices. Mention may be made in the project narrative of total project costs, but no mention of costs is permitted in a technical application.

Proposal logic—A logical relationship must exist among the program's or project's goal(s), objective(s), tasks, and evaluation sections. This is a causal relationship that moves from general to specific from goals to tasks.

Reporting plan—The reporting plan describes how, when, and to whom you will report your progress while you are conducting your project. You will use financial information and the information from your monitoring plan to prepare these reports. A brief summary of your reporting plan is usually included in the evaluation section.

SMARTE criteria—The proposal objectives should meet some of the criteria specified by the acronym SMARTE: Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, Timebound, and capable of being Evaluated.

Solution—The solution describes how you will solve the problem that you introduce in your proposal. It includes the goal(s), objectives, tasks and activities, evaluation, and sustainability sections of the proposal narrative.

Sustainability—In the sustainability section, you will describe how certain aspects of your project will continue to provide benefits to the target population after your funding stops. The types of sustainability that you should try to build into your project are financial, managerial, social, technical, and environmental sustainability. Sustainability is sometimes part of the evaluation section.

Technical application—The technical application is the name given by some government sponsors to the project narrative and its appendices. The technical application is accompanied by a financial application. No budget information is included in the technical application.

Summary

Writing Assignment

1. In Chapter 6, you were asked to contact your most likely sponsors and ask for their guidelines for writing proposals. You will want to revisit those guidelines in Unit 4 because you will need them as you write your proposal. Save a copy of the guidelines, if you can find them on the Internet, in your electronic notebook.

2. Update and revise the problem portion of your need statement, and save your revised problem statement in your electronic notebook.
   1. Include only the context of the problem, its justification and scope, and the aspect of the problem you want to work on in this proposal.

   2. Make sure you incorporate how the problem meets the sponsor's priorities and follow the sponsor's guidelines.

   3. Also, make sure that your revised problem description engages the reader in both your problem and the proposed solution.

3. Give your project a name. The name should reflect your goals or objectives.

4. Write out the goal, objectives, methods (approaches or procedures), or tasks/activities for your proposal using the worksheet in Exercise 8.1 Identifying Goals, Objectives, and Tasks.

   Remember, you will probably only have one goal, perhaps one to three objectives (Make them measurable!), a series of tasks or activities, and maybe even sub-tasks under each objective. If you have many goals and objectives, without even reading them, we know that some are incorrect. When you have too many goals and objectives, you are confusing goals, objectives, and tasks and mixing them up.

5. If you are working as a member of a team, provide copies of this assignment and exercise to your peer group for review, and incorporate their suggestions.

6. Reflect on the following after you have written out your Goals, Objectives and Tasks:
   • a. What did you learn from this assignment?

   • b. Did you have any trouble identifying the differences between goals, objectives, and tasks?

   • c. Did you have to go back and add more SMARTE criteria to your objectives?

   • d. Did the peer review comments help you to differentiate between these different levels of specificity, that is, between goals, objectives, and tasks?

7. Save a copy of your revised problem description and your goals, objectives and tasks list into your electronic notebook or add it to your print notebook.

Top

Home >> Study Guide for Students >> Chapter 8

Webmaster Copyright © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Pearson Longman - Legal Notice