How to Write a Grant Proposal That Wins?

8 min read

Nikita R.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Jan 9th, 2025

Grant proposals are documents created to acquire funds. As you can imagine, investors and grant-making organizations receive proposals daily. To ensure that your business is seen, it’s a good idea to put down a proposal that stands out.

When writing a grant proposal, you want to ultimately communicate to funders that a project is worthy of funding. One way of getting this message across in your grant proposal is to also include how a project supports an investor’s goals and matches their business criteria for funding.

Join us in this article as we explore how to write a grant proposal or application that clearly communicates the direction of a project.

Tips for Writing a Grant Proposal to Secure Funding

Creating a grant proposal can be a daunting task as it’s an important document for obtaining funds to complete or continue projects. Come take a look at our best practices, which give you a breakdown of the components of a grant proposal so you can gain confidence in your own grant writing process.

Grant Proposal Cover Letter

The grant proposal format starts with a cover letter of intent, and it should introduce your company to the funder. This page is the first piece of information seen, so it should quickly and clearly communicate important information to investors.

A good grant cover letter example or sample would include the following information:

The contact information of your business.

The investor’s name.

An introduction to why you are seeking funding.

A summary of the project.

A demonstration of why your organization and the funder would make a great match. You can discuss how your goals and mission line up with each other.

A short list of the team’s skills and experience to complete the project.

An accurate amount of the financial assistance you need. Remember to state the currency and provide a table showing where the money will be spent on the project.

End the cover letter with an enthusiastic thank you note stating you are available to answer any questions.

Sign the cover letter with a physical or electronic signature.

Executive Summary

An executive summary is included in grant proposals to give the reader an overview of the project. You can present it as the first piece of information on the page that follows the cover letter.

It is often the first page in a grant proposal as it gives investors a chance to quickly get an idea of the entire application without reading through multiple pages.

Make sure to include the following topics in your executive summary to aid busy readers:

Provide a summary by explaining the goals and outcomes of the project.

Describe why the project needs to exist, such as stating the problems it will solve in a community.

State the methods and approaches that will be used to complete the project successfully.

The benefits of the project should be listed.

Any factors that impact the project should also be included.

If you want to add a summary of how the budget will be allocated to the project, you can do so. However, it is not compulsory to add the financial scope of the project to the executive summary.

State some essential organizational information about your team, such as the experience and skills each member has to complete the project.

You can conclude the executive summary with a request for funding.

Identify a Needs Statement

A grant proposal outline should also consider a needs statement. This topic in the document will give funders an idea of the “need“ that your project will solve or fix.

Adding a needs statement in the project description section of the proposal helps stakeholders understand why the venture deserves backing.

Add a Project Description

Our next best tip is to add a project description to the grant application. An example would be a full explanation of the project. You should remember to include arguments for how the project will solve problems and how it will be executed. Investors use this section of the proposal to analyze why a project is worthy of funding.

Consider Goals and Objectives

Your goals and objectives should be added to the extensive project description section. Spend your time wisely listing the project goals to show what your team aims to achieve.

Just as important as goals are the project objectives. Many businesses use the SMART method to help define all the objectives in a grant funding proposal.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. We suggest using this method to ensure you have covered all the objectives of your project.

Include Project Budget Costs

The project description should also contain a thorough budget that showcases all expenses. Employee salaries, supplies, and hardware are just a few examples of the financial costs you can add to a grant proposal.

When calculating the project budget, keep in mind that the expenses need to be realistic and not inflated. You might need to justify the figures you have added to the proposal, so ensure that they match their relevant descriptions and you understand them.

Sign at the Bottom of the Grant Proposal

When you are satisfied with the contents of the grant proposal, you can add a signature and typed name to the end of the document. Signatures can be in a physical or digital format. We suggest adding an electronic or digital signature to your proposal for faster document signing flows.

You can easily add digital or eSignatures to your proposals with Titan Sign. Our signature software for Salesforce is market-leading, 21 CFR Part 11 compliant, and gives you the freedom to choose the best option for any document!

Grants: Writing a Template

As we learned, grant proposals need to contain a lot of text, graphs, and images. With Titan Docs, you can create templates and automate proposals to speed up grant proposal writing tasks.

Watch our Salesforce Document Generation with Titan: Word Add-In Overview video to learn about our features that can assist you with building any custom document you want.

You no longer need to spend weeks manually typing out and designing proposals from scratch every time you need capital for a project.

Generating a proposal for funding from Salesforce in seconds is totally achievable with Titan. Our app gives you a no-code, drag-and-drop builder to support creating templates and documents.

Writing Examples: Proposals for Funding

There are many online grant proposal examples that you can obtain. Take a look at our checklist for a grant proposal, and feel free to apply the framework to your specific use case:

Checklist for Grant Proposal	Yes/No
Cover Letter with Title and Introduction
Executive Summary
Evidence for the Need of the Project
The Project’s Objectives and Goals
The Project Description
Partnerships Associated with the Organization to Assist the Project
A Description of how the Project will be Evaluated
A detailed Budget
A List of Factors that will Impact the Project
A Conclusion of the Proposal with Signatures
Any Annexures, like a Grant Proposal Letter

How to Write a Grant Proposal for a Small Business?

To create a well-written grant proposal, you need planning skills. We already provided a checklist of a grant proposal that you can use as a template. Your next step would be to set up meetings with all stakeholders in the project to ask them questions about the assignment. During these sessions, pay attention and take notes on the details they provide.

This approach will help in eliciting the requirements of the project and give you an idea of how to structure the information in your grant proposal template.

Next, you can find out which organizations are providing grants. You want to stick to the ones that match your organization’s project. For example, if your project supports community donations, then you want to focus on government agencies providing assistance.

Once you have found a potential investor, it is wise to check out their guidelines for funding. Some key points to remember for your grant application would be submission deadlines and any supporting documents that you need to provide.

Now, you can use all the information gathered from your meetings and research to write a winning grant proposal. Remember to double-check your proposal for any errors or missing information. These factors could jeopardize the success of your grant application, so it’s a good idea to review your business grant writing skills.

Your approved grant proposal can now be submitted to the investor. Make sure you deliver the proposal on time if there is a deadline.

And that is our take on an example of a grant proposal process for small business funding, which can be applied to any industry.

Save Time by Using Titan’s Document Generation Software

If you would prefer to automatically create and generate grant proposals and templates to eliminate all manual document management tasks, then come on over to Titan Docs. Writing a grant proposal from scratch each time is not feasible.

Titan’s powerful document generation software lets you build custom templates in multiple formats for any document you can think of, like proposals with absolutely no code.

Your teams will enjoy Titan Doc’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder to accelerate proposal creations. Even though Titan Docs partnered with Salesforce gives you lightning-speed automations, you can trust that all your data in proposals are secure with our end-to-end safety measures.

Automatically generating proposals from Salesforce can be accomplished with a single click of the button. Watch our Titan video to see how we generate a document from multiple Salesforce records.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a grant proposal and a grant letter?

They each serve different purposes. So, use a grant proposal when you want to obtain funding for a project. Check out our article above to get an idea of how to write a well-structured grant proposal.

On the other hand, a grant letter is a document from the funder with their decision to either back or reject your project.

How to write grants for nonprofits?

In this article, we have provided tips and advice on how to write proposals to apply for grants. Please scroll up for more information.

How to Write a Grant Letter?

Start by finding out who the funders are in your specific industry. Then follow the below guide to write a structured grant letter:

1. At the top of your letter, you will include your contact information, the funder’s business details, and the date.
2. The next step is to greet the funder. It’s best to obtain the funder’s name during your research phase, but if you did not find one, you could start with “To Whom It May Concern. “
3. Your introduction should be in the first paragraph of the letter. It must clearly communicate why you have reached out to the funder and describe the project.
4. The second paragraph must explain the need for your solution. You can explain how your project delivers solutions to the problem it is addressing. To make your letter stand out, embed graphs, statistics, and your research results into the writeup.
5. The third paragraph should mention the project goals, objectives, and timelines.
6. Now, you can comfortably introduce financial data. Remember to explain all the project expenses, even those that have not been paid yet. You must also describe how the money will be spent during the duration of the project.
7. The next paragraph should discuss your organization in detail, such as its mission statement and history. You can be quite granular and add the accomplishments and skills of team members or partners who will be working on the project.
8. It’s important that you also include a paragraph that describes how you will evaluate the success of the project. If there are any factors that will impact your project, this is a good section to list them.
9. Now that you have provided all the information about your project, you can conclude the letter with a thank you note and let the funder know you are available to answer any questions.
10. Lastly, add your name and a signature to the end of your letter.

How to write a grant for education?

In this article, we have provided general tips and advice on how to write proposals and templates to apply for grants. Please scroll up for more information.

Proposals that Get Granted Funds Fast

Thanks for reading our article on grant proposals. We hope we have inspired you to speed up your proposal creation processes. Make sure to check out Titan Docs, our point-and-click document generation solution for Salesforce can create custom proposals and templates with no code. With Titan Docs, you can propel your proposals to success and automate any workflow you like!

For more information, contact us through one of our social media channels below.

We hope to see you soon!

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