Grant proposals should be written and presented with the right mix of academic jargon and everyday language to appeal to donors effectively. Proposals fall somewhere in between professional and academic writing. On the one hand, they are appeals for highly technical projects whose details only the most advanced specialists would be able to understand or execute.
On the other hand, these appeals for funding usually target not necessarily academics. Instead, the people whose attention you are trying to get are wealthy individuals, corporations, organizations, or agencies that are not specialists and who would not understand highly technical and academic language.
Therefore, a delicate balance should be achieved to convince your audience of the need for funding while not drowning them in hard-to-understand jargon. So how do you solve this dilemma? Well, there are several strategies that you can use when writing your proposal to solve this issue.
While writing a grant proposal might not be the same as writing a research paper, you should adopt formal academic language when writing it. However, you should also take care to use more professional as opposed to academic language when addressing a business-type audience.
Read on to learn what can be done to connect with your target audience.
1. Use visual aids in your grant proposal
You have heard it a thousand times before. One picture is worth a 1,000 words. Yes, it’s true. If you are appealing to an audience that are not technical experts, then you should use visual aids such as diagrams in the form of graphs and illustrations to help them get the point. Illustrations can help crystallize the point without the need for your readers to get through highly jargonistic writing.
2. Include a brief and clear summary
Including a brief summary serves a purpose similar to that of an abstract. The non-technical expert is often guilty of dong what many students and researchers are often guilty of doing; namely, reading the abstract of a paper without reading the whole thing.
Organizations are often flooded with requests for funding. Whether or not they will even bother to read your proposal depends on how appealing your summary is. The short list of what proposals could be approved probably depends on how well your summary is written. And how is an effective summary written?
First, the need for the project should be stated clearly, which should then be followed by clear objectives and results or in the case of proposals, expected or preliminary results or a unique combination of both.
3. Tailor your language to the target audience
This does not simply mean avoiding detailed jargon and explanation of complicated scientific processes. It also means engaging the issue from the perspective of a possible funder. It is often safe to assume that most people with funds to invest would be primarily concerned about the best returns on investment.
However, we should not be too cynical with this assumption. It would be even better to do some research on the organization that you are targeting for funding.
For example, you could find out the projects and causes this organization is in the habit of funding or the other non-research-related investments or activities they fund and find a way to link that to your research.
Such an approach would ensure that the values of your research match those of the organization that you are appealing to. For example, an organization that supports environmental causes might be interested in funding energy sources that are more green or environmentally friendly.
Final thoughts on writing grant proposals
Always keep your target audience foremost in mind when writing a grant proposal. You are not simpky writing for academics. You are not writing for experts. Instead, you are trying to persuade persons of influence who may have a deep interest in what you are proposing.
Therefore, ensure that you make it clear what your proposal is about with a brief summary and by using visual aids. Always approach the issue from a perspective that is in line with the values of the person you are appealing to.
This means doing background research. Finding out what the hobbies of these persons are, and what they have invested in before. Make sure that your proposal is something that they would find appealing, as opposed to tryng to convince them about something that you are persoanlly interested in.
Comments