HAITI’S BIG NORTH REGION WILL BENEFIT FROM A NEW IDB PROJECT THAT WILL PROVIDE A DRINKING WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM AND BOOST SANITATION AND HYGIENE CONDITIONS The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will provide $125 million grant for the water, sanitation and…
Food for thought, you may not want to hear this, but we need to re-evaluate celebrities on how they “help” Haiti. With having a platform that allows an individual to connect with the world with a simple click is powerful,…
A much-needed debate about voluntourism is taking off on the web. It includes voices from the industry, academics, travel professionals, and volunteers themselves. From “The White Tourist’s Burden” to “Lions, Zebras, and African Children,” at the heart of these stories…
We’ve said it--don’t just donate, we’ve been preaching this for a while now and will continue to preach it. Sending barrels of clothes, school supplies, food, and more, is a form of dumping; by doing this, you are disrupting the…
Whether you are going to write a grant proposal for a government agency or a private funder, such as a foundation or corporation, the components of the proposal are quite similar. The amount of detail required may be considerably different, but the basic elements are generally the same.
Most grantmakers have instructions on how you should develop your application for funding. You will want to follow these application guidelines very carefully, as they will tell you what elements to include, in what order, and what length each section should be. If you do not have guidelines, use the elements that seem most relevant to your project.
The assigned grant writer should work closely with others to gather the information needed to develop a grant proposal. If the person who conceived the project isn’t the grant writer, he or she should be involved in developing the grant proposal, especially the objectives, plan of action, and budget. However, you want the grant request to be stylistically consistent, so limit the number of people involved in the actual writing. A basic grant writing rule of thumb is: do not write by committee.
Grant reviewers appreciate brevity and clarity. To achieve this, include section headings and sub-headings, leave space between sections, choose a readable typeface and font size, and use standard margins. Always use page numbers and identifying page headers or footers. Don’t use your letterhead anywhere in the request except for the cover letter.
Here is a list of the grant proposal elements that we will be covering in this series:
Following the devastating earthquake in 2010, funders pledged billions of dollars to assist in Haiti's recovery. However, funders promised far more aid to Haiti for emergency earthquake recovery than they delivered; the Center for Economic and Policy Research reported that…
Unfortunately, the lack of capacity evident in the Haitian nonprofit sector can be attributed to in part, the failure of international philanthropy to invest in building and maintaining local capacity and knowledge. This problem is compounded by the fact that the…
Being recognized as the Republic of NGOs, we, as nonprofits, fail to create sustainable projects to benefit the country. The norm of registration within the international community, including the Haitian diaspora, is to register their organization with their government as…
What is effectiveness? As Herman and Renz have pointed out (2004, 1997), the concept of organizational effectiveness arises from a theoretical perspective which posits that formal organizations are created to achieve one or more consciously identified goals. Measures of effectiveness,…
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich.
–(Plato 363 BCE [reprinted 2012])
We have traveled the world to have a great appreciation and understanding of sustainable architecture as well as urban planning. The world is moving at a fast pace of “global gentrification,” and their construction is more innovative and sustainable, some places more considerate of the environment than others. However, within the nonprofit sector operating in Haiti, there is a lack of common sense. Urban planning or sustainability does not seem to play a critical role. When nonprofits fundraise to construct homes, they fail to invest in sustainability. Yes, it is imperative to provide jobs to the locals; however, upon the arrival of the next natural disaster, they will return only to reconstruct the same homes. Would you rather build homes for one-hundred families or would you rather house twenty-five? Any individual would wish to provide homes to one-hundred families; however, if these homes are not being built to be sustainable, to be “livable,” then it is a waste of time and money.