In Assignment #4, you designed a new program and developed a budget to describe the funding needed to run that program for an NPO. It’s now time to get the funding to run the program. In this assignment, you will write a proposal to a specific funding organization to convince that organization to provide you with the needed funds.
Be sure that you demonstrate that you fully understand:
The organization that you represent
The program that requires funding
The mission and goals of the organization from which you are requesting funds
The approach that you will use to execute and manage the program
The costs associated with the program and how you will use the funds requested
The outcomes that you propose to achieve and how you will measure your progress on achieving them
This is a full proposal that will be written to an organization that can provide funding to you. The funding organization may be a government organization or a private foundation. Choose a funding organization that is appropriate to the nature of the program you want to run. (You can use the Red Cross, the Gates Foundation, the US Dept. of Education, or any other organization with a mission that supports your program.) You want to show that you have a mastery of the information about your program and its costs and that you understand the donor organization, its mission, and the type of projects that it funds.
Just to be clear, here are a few guidelines: (1) You should use the same program that you “invented” for the previous assignment; and (2) You should identify a real organization (government agency, foundation, etc.) as the recipient of your proposal. You will probably want to get some information about the funding organization from their website. However, do not follow the guidelines for proposals that this real funding organization may provide there. Follow the guidelines provided in this assignment.
Proposal Content
Your proposal should be organized in the following way and include the following information:
Cover Letter – a one page letter written by you to the funding organization to request consideration of the proposal you are submitting
Introduction – information that identifies the who, what, when, where, and how of your request
Statement of Program Need – information that describes the need for your program, its purpose, the type of benefits it will provide, and who will benefit
NPO Experience – information that describes your organization’s demonstrated expertise and program delivery capabilities (You can be creative here. I understand that you may need to “invent” some of this information.)
Approach – information that describes how your program will be delivered
Funding Requirements and Sources – information that describes what funding will be required to run the program and what sources of funding you currently have. Identify both the funds that you are requesting from the recipient of the proposal and additional funds that will come from at least one other source (e.g., from a fundraising activity or another donor organization)
Program Management – information that describes how you will manage the project to ensure that the funds are wisely expended (with an emphasis on good financial management)
Appendix A: a detailed Program Budget that includes both (1) all Sources of Program Income and (2) all Program Expenses. Include this budget in your proposal as Appendix A. Either create it in a table in Word or create it in Excel and paste it into the Word document.
Please note: Your assignment should be presented as a formal proposal to the donor organization. It should be presented in sections using the bullets identified above. There should be a section for each bullet. In addition, check out the Assignment Criteria that appear below.
Assignment Criteria
The assignment should be presented in a professional style. It should be eight to ten pages long, and it should be double spaced – except for the letter, which should be singled spaced on one page. Please include two references to relevant information in our usual APA style. These citations could come either from our reading or an outside source. Generally, the best way to include references in a proposal is to find data from a reliable source to supports the ideas in your Statement of Program Need. You must include a budget, and it should be presented as Appendix A in the same file. Consider the feedback on your previous program budget creation assignment to address areas that require improvement. This is a critical element in your proposal. You will refer the reader of this proposal to Appendix A for budget information in the text when you describe the way that funds will be expended in support of the program.
I have included the program I came up with in Assignment 4.
Feedback for Assignment 4
Thanks for completing the 4th written assignment for our class. The program described was well-thought out and the details of the financial assumptions were very logical. The upfront work done here will facilitate the completion of the 5th assignment for the class.
The submission was also very professional in its look and writing style.
There are just a few minor comments that I have that are easy to fix in future assignments not only for this class but in future classes: 1) use an introduction section heading on the first page, 2) make reference to the appendix in the body of the paper. Just a simple sentence that begins, “As shown in Appendix A,…” 3) it looks like there are extra spaces between the entries for the references – but since references weren’t required for this assignment – no harm done; 4) This could be due to the instructions for the paper but I thought the conclusion was too long and some of that information belonged in the body of the paper. My feeling is that a conclusion should summarize the paper in a paragraph or two. The guidelines for this assignment on the conclusion are: “An effective conclusion the sums up your reasons for believing that the financial assumptions that underlie your program are reasonable and appropriate.” In hindsight, I would split that into two sections: a) a section that shows your support for your financial assumptions, and b) a conclusion to the paper. That’s a long way of saying that I didn’t take any points off for the conclusion.
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