Rachel: Okay. Great. Welcome to our program today. I'm so glad to have you all. We are talking about three advanced strategies to craft winning proposals. So we're doing a little deep dive on our grant writing expertise today. Definitely see some familiar names and faces in the Zoom room. So thanks for showing up. It's great to have you back.
For any of those first timers, welcome. This is a free grant workshop in one of our Instrumentl educational webinars. This is in a series that we're calling our grant seek growth series.
Hi, Giovani. Great to see you too.
So this course is designed for folks that are in kind of the intermediate to expert stages of grant writing taking some core concepts and advancing our skills. You'll also see some applicability for some of our newbies or novice grant writers. But you might want to be writing down notes as you go using this opportunity truly as a learning course so you can advance your skill sets. I've tried to design this with your skills and interests in mind.
For those of you who are new to Instrumentl, we're the most loved all-in-one grants platform for grant prospecting, tracking, and management. We currently help more than 3,500 nonprofits and grant consultants save time in finding and applying for more grants. For those of you who don't know me, I'm sure many of you have heard the spiel before. But my name is Rachel. I'm the events and community manager at Instrumentl. And my job is to help provide fun and educational events just like this one. I have a decade plus of experience in the nonprofit sector, specifically within the arts and culture sphere. I was most recently at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and I'm based in Los Angeles, California. Shout out to our Pacific Time folks out there.
Some reminders about the structure of this event. We're going to be together for about an hour. I've got about 55 minutes of content that I'm prepared to share with you all. It is designed, as I mentioned, to be an instructional course with opportunities for individual work time and peer-to-peer dialogue. So I encourage you to use the chat box. You'll already see that folks are chiming in there.
Since this is a first time for you, this is going to be a space where we share a lot of our key learnings and interact with each other. This will be a super interactive program, so please do contribute to the chat, add your thoughts on polls and use this time as your time to learn and dive in deeper with us.
This workshop is being recorded right now. So you'll be able to access this recording and the slides after the program.
Please honor your personal needs. Come as you are. Bring your water. Bring your snacks and step away if you need to. We'll be here when you come back. But please do make sure you're back here at around quarter till. That's when I'll transition into our Q&A portion. And I'll share some of the ways you can get some of our raffle prizes for today. Lastly, the closed captions are enabled. So please feel free to toggle those on in your Zoom settings so that you can read along as well as listen along with me today.
Some of the key things that you're going to leave this workshop with, I've designed a course workbook for today. That's just special for you all to help you identify some of those key learnings and document specific takeaways that you might want to run with after this program. I'll drop that link in the chat one more time just in case anyone just joined us. And I'll prompt you when we're going to be using those. So don't stress about getting into it now.
But have it open and ready for the moment when we're going to jump into our workbooks. You'll also have access to an event resources page. This is a special web page that I make for every event we host with Instrumentl. And this has links to things that I'm referencing. It'll contain a raw transcript of the chat box if you want to go back and see what your peers are dropping in there. I'll also include any other resources that might come up during the program. So I'll drop a link to that in the chat box.
This is a page you can bookmark and come back to later. I'll take about 24 hours after the program to update it with all the things that we referred to in our live meeting. And then the last thing that's extra special for everyone who's in the room today. To get access to is I do have some special advanced access to our newest tool, which I'm not going to spoil the surprise yet. But I will be revealing how you can get early access to that. And it's really a special treat. So I'm excited to share it with you all. I think you'll get a lot -- a kick out of it as well. And we'll get to that point as we get through our program today. So just a quick kind of mapping of where we're headed, as we go on this journey today, we're going to start by just making sure we understand our current approach to grant proposals. We'll do a quick brainstorm around that.
I'm going to take you through three case studies using three different narrative techniques. One being the problem solution impact technique. One being the storytelling approach, and one being a logic model narrative. And I'll explain more in depth about each of those approaches as we go into this course. Then I'll show you that little sneak peek that I was kind of referencing just a moment ago. We'll talk about how you can speak your funders’ language with four specific proposal tips that'll help you hone in on kind of the language you want to be using when you're looking for specific proposals or submitting specific proposals. And then we'll wrap with some Q&A and a quick little reflection together.
As a reminder, for folks that are already CFRE certified or interested in certifying getting certified for CFRE, this course does qualify you for one CFRE point. So if you submit your feedback form at the end, you can go on to the CFRE website and submit your hours for this program and they'll track that for you so you can earn points towards your initial application or recertification. Plus, if you submit that feedback form at the end and stick it out with me, you could also win a $50 gift card to bookshop.org. So our raffle today will get you access to a really comprehensive site that includes many different resources, specifically around grant writing.
I found over a thousand results for books on how to write grants that I thought could be a fun prize for you all today. But you could also use it for your own personal book interests, whatever you might be compelled to use it for. So, that's our fun prize for today.
Another way that you can enter to win, I'm raffling off things like coffee and lunch on us throughout the program. You can actually share your learnings on LinkedIn if you tag Instrumentl on LinkedIn and include this #GrantseekerGrowth. I'll be able to see those and use those to inform our raffle prize winners. So you can tag Instrumentl and include that hashtag. That's the name of our course for today, Grant Seeker Growth.
Last thing before we get into our content, I do offer an office hour session after the event. You are welcome to stick around if you have the time to do so. I usually just take questions from folks share feedback that I hear or kind of tips or tricks that have come up for us in talking with nonprofits at Instrumentl or just, like, learn more about a few things that I want to share further. So stick around if you want. Totally optional. That's something that we'll do at the end of the event today.
Okay. So let's get started with just understanding our grant proposals. And for those of you who are just joining the room. Oh, yeah. I'll repeat that. Dale, thank you. It's going to be Grant Seeker Growth. And our tag is at Instrumentl. So starting with just understanding grant proposals in general.
Our definition of a grant proposal, that's going to be a detailed written request for funding to support a specific project or initiative. This is probably a no-brainer for many of you who have written many grant proposals before. But I want to make sure we're setting the tone.
We're starting with a common definition so that we understand what we're working towards today. And before the pen hits paper this morning, before we start typing away on some of our ideas and thinking about the existing proposals we have drafted, I want us to reflect a little bit on our current approaches. And so, the way I want us to do that first is I'd like to brainstorm a little bit around some of the challenges that come up when we're writing grant proposals. So I'd be curious to hear.
I'm going to launch a quick poll for folks. What is your biggest challenge when writing grant proposals? Going to launch that here and I'll read aloud the options so you can think about it for a second. What's your biggest challenge? Is it background research on the funder or funding opportunity? Is it crafting a compelling statement of need? Aligning the proposal with funder priorities? Writing a clear and concise narrative? Demonstrating long-term sustainability and impact? Or it could be something else.
And I've accidentally got a choice six in here. You can ignore that. I don't know why that came in. If you put something else, I'd love to hear what that might be in the chat. You can share what that something else is so other folks can learn from the challenges that you might be facing in your grant writing proposals. Awesome. We've got a lot of engagement here. I've got almost three quarters of the room participating. I'll give it about 10 more seconds. What is your biggest challenge when writing grant proposals? Ah. Yes, Elizabeth adds time. That's a great one to be including as well. If folks agree with that, you can thumbs up Elizabeth's comment in the chat. You can add other thoughts. I'll wrap up here and share the results. It looks like we've got almost 90% of folks participating. That's great. Let's share these results here so we can learn about each other's challenges.
Okay. So it looks like our front runner here our biggest challenge when writing grant proposals is demonstrating long-term sustainability and impact. I'm curious to hear in the chat if folks have had similar experiences with that challenge making sure your narratives are super clear on how you're sustaining your funding long term. That is definitely something I've heard from other folks as well.
We've got kind of an even spread across our next ones here. The next one would be aligning the proposal with funding priorities and then writing a clear and concise narrative. And the other two that are kind of tied or this background research element and crafting a compelling statement of need. All of these, I think, could probably be considered challenges. I probably could have put all of the above. But I love hearing what you're currently facing. And let's see the ways we can address some of those challenges in the chat. Yeah. I'm seeing some really great comments here.
Some other examples include from Jenna, program team engagement. I've heard that as well. 100%. Elizabeth says, "The budget when I have to get info from others." That's a tricky one. Chasing down people in the hall, trying to get everything under deadline. Rosetta says the first sentences that can take me out. I hear you there. Just getting it started sometimes as the hardest part. Chris says, "As a consultant, it can be like hurting cats to get info from clients."
Yeah. So on the consultancy side, how are you making sure you're getting enough information in order to write the proposal in the first place? Bridget says, "We run a free helpline and it's really hard to capture success stories and long-term impact because people call once and don't take follow-up surveys.
Yeah. So being able to have that clear kind of formula and pathway to evaluate and collect all of those impact statements. That's something I'm sure other folks can relate to as well. So we'll dive in a little deeper on some of these challenges. We'll continue to support each other in the chat. I love hearing some of these. And maybe we can think of some ways we can address these as a learning community together. I want to start by just also reminding us of why grant proposals are so important.
I know we probably already know this. But the goal of our grant proposals is we want to aim to convince funders of the value and impact of a project, right? That's going to be one of the most important aspects of our grant proposals and make sure that we're aligning our perspective funding goals with funder priorities.
So these are components that I'm going to kind of highlight today as we go through our narrative approaches. And I want you to think critically about your own approaches currently? Are you truly straightening your stuff? Are you showing the best that you can? Are you thinking about the ways that your value and impact is being demonstrated clearly and concisely? And how you're aligning that with funder priorities? We're going to brainstorm a little bit of that together. And I'm curious to see where folks land on kind of their current approaches on how they might improve those.
So, yeah, I want you to use this as a chance to strut your stuff. You should show off all the cool things that your nonprofit is working on. You know this better probably than anybody, all this work that your nonprofit is doing in the community. I want you to strut your stuff in your proposals and kind of help make your proposals stand out.
Now, before we get into our narratives, I was just kind of curious. If folks have had examples, what's one creative way that you've made your proposal stand out in the past? I'd love to hear any ideas in the chat box just to get kind of our creative juices flowing, thinking about how we might creatively share out about the important work our organizations are doing right now.
I'll give folks a few seconds to think. Oh, Nitchie, I see your question there. Will we cover invite only funding today? I don't have a specific slide about that since we're focusing on proposal narrative construction. But I do have additional resources around that that I'm happy to share with you if you want to dive a little deeper on the invite only section.
Okay. We got some cool ideas here. Giovani says, "With a video." Yes, I love that. Showcasing your nonprofits impact through visuals and audio there. Shauna says client stories. Kim says, "Using a past success story in the program." I have funders that love that. Kate adding personalized client stories with photos were applicable. Yep, a lot of folks are talking about kind of the visual aids that they might include in proposals. Miguel says impact stories. Yeah. So thinking about how we might apply some of those impact statements, those lived experiences that actually demonstrate our organization's impact in the community. Resetta says statistics. Yes, that is definitely something I'm going to highlight as well, some of the very specific metrics that funders can kind of hone in on when they're reading your proposals. Yeah. Kate says contextualizing our impact data adding how our metrics compare to similar providers. That's a really good tip there.
I want to highlight that, called that out in the chat. Yeah. Ashtin says, "Most funders love media coverage in my opinion." Yes, 100%. I think that's something that folks can relate to.
Awesome. Keep them coming.
I love seeing these ideas. I'll compile these when we do our event resources page so you can look back and reflect on some of the creative ways that your colleagues are making their proposals stand out to funders. Let's think a little bit about some of these case studies that I want to highlight. I've selected three different narrative techniques to show with you all today. And I want to review these successful grant proposals examples in order to highlight the different narrative structures.
Now, I'll call out just from the beginning here. Some of these narrative structures are going to work for your organization and some are not. You're going to need to decide which one aligns with what content you already have available to you, what might fit well with the narratives that you're currently producing, what types of funders you're going for. Right there might be distinction between the types of proposals you're writing for the National Endowment of the Humanities, for example, versus a small family foundation that you've worked with many, many times. So I'm just highlighting that. Think about how this might directly apply to your specific proposals right now. But I'll highlight the three that I think are really compelling, and each one has its strengths.
So we're going to start with the problem solution impact structure. This structure effectively frames a grant proposal by clearly defining the issue at hand, the problem, presenting a detailed and actionable plan to address the issue, the solution, and articulating the anticipated positive impacts or outcomes and the broader impacts that this might have -- the impact, sorry.
This structured approach ensures that the reviewers of your proposal can easily understand really quickly the necessity, feasibility, and benefits of the project. So going back to just how are we showing our long-term impact, how are we showing how we can be a sustainable organization. This type of structure will help make that really clear and really easy to see. So the components of the problem solution impact structure include these three things, right? The problem. We want to make sure we're clearly defining the issue your project aims to address. For the solution, we want to present a detailed plan with metrics, if you have them, on how your project will solve this issue. And the impact. We want to explain super clearly the positive outcomes and broader impacts of our project.
So I'm going to use an example to demonstrate some of these things so you can see how I've taken these three components of the structure and apply it to a real life case study here. So the example I have. This is from the Alexandria Archive Institute. The funding opportunity they were going for was a National Endowment of the Humanities Grant, an NEH grant. So this is going to be a federal grant that might change how they approached this particular proposal. So I want to highlight that as well.
But what they did here is they identified these three segments and wrote them very clearly into their proposal into their statement of need. So the problem here. They were looking for enhanced digital archiving capabilities to preserve precious historical artifacts. So they were highlighting the issue at hand their way, their organization could address that in the solution and making sure it was very clear what they were aiming to accomplish with this particular proposal.
Their solution that they suggested here, developing a comprehensive digital archive, utilizing state-of-the-art technology and expert staff. So clearly identifying the problem, clearly identifying what are the core components of the solution that they're proposing that the funding can directly provide. And lastly, the impact. So the impact here was preserving valuable historical data, increasing public access to historical resources and fostering educational research opportunities. And for this example, they also were able to call on other examples of programs that had been successful.
So they had done other programs where they had increased public access to their archives and they were able to pull some of those impact statements. They were able to show metrics of increased attendance or increased engagement around the archives. So all of that directly led to kind of this clear three-step plan. So this proposal was successful because it did clearly define the problem. It needed those enhanced digital archiving capabilities to preserve those historical artifacts, right?
They presented a detailed and feasible solution through the development of a comprehensive digital archive here. And then they articulated the significant impact of preserving valuable historical data and increasing public access to these resources.
So again, this structured approach makes it easy for reviewers to understand that necessity, feasibility, and potential benefit of the project if they were to fund it. The next approach I want to share here is talking about the storytelling approach. And I saw some of you probably use this type of approach even if it's not necessarily with this terminology.
A few of you mentioned how you might use case studies or customer stories or, you know, event attendee spotlights or highlights to demonstrate the impact your organization is having on the community. So the storytelling approach is going to use a compelling narrative to humanize your project, to engage funders emotionally and connect the project's goals with broader mission objectives.
So by incorporating some of the personal stories, testimonials, and relatable examples, this technique is going to create the emotional connection that strengthens your case for support. So let's talk about the elements that we want to make sure included when we're approaching this from the storytelling narrative. We want to start with an engaging story. That's probably the most important aspect of this, right? So you want to begin with a story that's humanizing the issue and drawing the reader in emotionally. If you're thinking about going in this approach direction, I'd even draft out a couple of different pathways, different stories your kind of narrative could take.
Maybe you have a couple of different case study examples of impact in your community. Evaluate those and make sure they are actually engaging and they actually are going to demonstrate some of the relevance here, which I'm going to talk about in just a second. So we want to make sure that the story that we're highlighting here is related to the broader project goals. So making sure that the story we're selecting has relevance.
It'll make it so much easier for you as you're crafting your narrative to connect directly to the goals of your funding project. And then evidence. That's kind of one of the also most important aspects of the storytelling approach. You can tell a great story. What you really want to do is also use data that you have and testimonials to support the story and also strengthen your proposal's credibility. You can tell a lovely story about an anonymous individual.
And maybe it sounds really lovely on paper, but it doesn't actually provide much tangible evidence that your organization had a ton of impact or that the project you're submitting for proposal actually impacted this specific individual. So making sure that your data and testimonials are supporting the narrative that you're creating here. We'll make sure that that proposal is significantly stronger.
The case study I want to highlight here is from an organization called Sasha Bruce Youthwork. They work to support unhoused youth. And so, I'm going to break down how they used one of their stories. They actually also created a video. And I'll show you how you can access that video so you can see an example.
Some of us were talking about those creative proposals. They actually did use this and they used the specific narrative application here to create that video for grant proposal. So for the story, they actually shared the story of Debbie Shore who is one of their founders. And it talked about her personal journey and the organization's subsequent impact on unhoused youth. So they directly connected the funder narrative of the nonprofit and showcased how that was impacting the organization's direction on the youth they were serving.
For the relevant piece, they made sure that the narrative connected to Debbie's story and the lived experience that she had with the organization's broader mission to support at-risk youth. So again, making sure that the project is super relevant to -- sorry, the story was super relevant to the project goals. And then for the evidence piece, they included testimonials from program participants that were willing to participate there and the metrics and data that they had on improved outcomes for the youth they serve. They had a really great way of demonstrating. Here's a lovely impact statement from a participant. And then we could clearly see that we had provided X amount of maybe food or services to folks that were unhoused in their programming that had directly impacted such and such number of total youth over the course of the programs run. So they had a really great way of demonstrating the evidence through a kind of emotional narrative story.
The Sasha Bruce Youth Work proposal succeeded by starting with that engaging in humanizing story with Debbie Shore, which are drawing the readers in emotionally, right? This is a little bit more of an emotional approach and connected them to the organization's mission.
The narrative itself also was really compelling. It effectively highlighted the relevance of their work in supporting unhoused youth and used the testimonials and data that they had to back it up to make it a compelling story. This emotional connection combined with the evidence-based support made the proposal resonate strongly. So one I think big take away from this, you can have a really great story. Make sure it has that evidence-based support there. That's probably one of the most important aspects of crafting a really compelling storytelling narrative.
Our third narrative model here is going to be the logic model narrative. And this is going to organize a proposal into a clear framework that details the project's inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact. This model is going to be a little more systemic systematic -- I'm sorry, and very transparent in the way that it's demonstrating how the project will be implemented and what measurable benefits it will deliver. Hopefully, you know, building funder confidence in the project's potential success. This one's going to take out some of the emotional aspect of our last technique here and take it into a really clear demonstration of the specific benefits that the program will deliver on.
So our first aspect of the logic model, I talked about inputs. These are going to be identifying that the resources needed for the project, what is applicable for your project, what resources do you need to make sure are available and why. The activities, this is going to be the specific actions that are going to be undertaken during the project's run. The outputs, these are all the direct results of those activities. The outcomes, those are going to be the short-term and long-term effects of the project. And lastly, we have the impact, which is probably in all of these techniques here. The ultimate change or benefit resulting from the project being funded.
And I have my last example here, our last case study. This is from the City of Pleasantville. They were working on a clean school bus project. So they were working on essentially innovating their fleet of school buses to provide more clean energy school bus options. So the inputs here, they identified it specifically the needs around what resources were required in order to implement this project, funding, staff, and procurement of those new clean energy vehicles.
The activities that they highlighted here, purchasing and deploying clean school buses, and conducting community awareness campaign. So these were two very clear and tangible activities that the proposal identified that were directly related to the inputs and subsequent other three kinds of elements here. So the outputs, they clearly identify the number of clean buses purchased in operational and then the number of awareness or outreach events conducted.
Again, applying these outputs directly to the activities that are listed in the proposal here. The outcomes. They wanted to reduce emissions and improve air quality in the community. So they use metrics to identify other examples of success of these kinds of projects not in just the City of Pleasantville but other examples across the country of these initiatives and how they could apply some of those wins from those into their own funding project if they were funded. And the impact. So the long-term health benefits and environmental sustainability for Pleasantville residents demonstrating again using that research that data that they wanted to pull from other examples in order to bolster their proposal and show the measurable impact that the funding would have.
Yeah, I think so, Rosetta. Rosetta's question is, "Is there a thing of using a bit of all three?" I absolutely think so. And I'll talk a little bit about that in just a second. I want to highlight why this proposal was effective. It utilized a really clear and systematic logic model. This is going to help outline those projects inputs activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts. This model helps just organize the proposal in a way that demonstrates a well-thought-out plan. It's going to show funders exactly how the project would be implemented and the measurable benefits that it will provide.
This level of detail and organization is going to give funders the confidence in the project's potential success and sustainability. So as Rosetta kind of highlighted, she got hinted ahead at what I was going to share here. I think there are aspects of your proposals that might combine methods of all three, right? And we all know that proposals are not just one narrative. They consist of many different aspects.
We've got our, you know, organizational history. We've got our statements of need. We've got our maybe proposal summary or a cover letter. You might be applying multiple narrative techniques throughout your proposal and you might be narrowing down on some of these depending on what part of the proposal you're working on. For example, a cover letter might be a great way to employ some of those storytelling narrative techniques. But in your statement of need, you might be wanting to look more towards a logic model narrative so that you can be really clear and identify all of the very specific elements that need to be addressed for the funding proposal.
Awesome. Yeah. Allan brings up a good point. Subject to space allowed. We always need to keep an eye on those word counts. Don't you just hate when the word count isn't listed until you've submitted it onto the application? Gosh, that kills me.
So my next task for you all here, I'm curious -- and I might be hard for you to identify just one. But if you wouldn't mind sharing in the chat, you can put number one, two, or three. Of these three techniques, which one do you feel that you often use for your organization?
Or if you're not currently using one of these, which one do you feel like might be the best fit given the content that you already have access to the resources that are available to you as the grant seeker in your organization.
Awesome. I'll give folks a sec to respond. Okay. We've got a lot of ones. The problem solution impact. A couple twos, the storytelling approach. Looks like Kim is saying logic modal narrative. Number three. Litya says one and three. Okay. Yes. Definitely some common applications of both.
Nicole also said a combination of one and three. Z says two. Yeah. Okay. A combination of all. It looks like there's a really great spread. And again, I'll emphasize that you are the -- you know best. You're going to be able to determine when -- which solution works best, at which technique works best depending on the proposal that you're working on. But I want to give you access to all of these tools so that you can decide when you want to be able to activate on some of these techniques.
What I'm going to ask you all to do next, I'd like for you to reflect for a moment, think on one current project or program. Maybe you already have a funding proposal that you are working on, that you're currently drafting. Maybe you have one that's just a twinkle in your eye that you want to get started on. But I would like for you to pick one of those and then I'd like for you to select one narrative technique of the three that I've mentioned.
If you open up your workbooks, you can scroll down to page three and you'll see I've made a table for each narrative technique. Now, I'm going to give us a real quick amount of time here because I want to give folks a minute to think, but also to come back to this. But pick one of those narrative techniques and using some real quick scratch notes. Draft how you might use that technique to outline your grant proposal for the particular project you're thinking of. Yes, I will do that. Let me grab that for you all. And, yes, everyone will get access to the recording afterwards. So again, your directive here. You're going to consider one program or project you currently need funding for, and then pick one narrative technique.
In your workbook, you've got those three tables there. Just pick one. And start by using some of those quick scratch notes. I've included some little bullet points here to help you. Just do a rough outline. Draft how you might use that technique to outline your grant proposal for the project that you have in mind. And I'll give folks a little over a minute, minute and a half or so to think about what they might want to share here and then we'll share out in the chat.
Awesome. I'm seeing quite a few dones. I'm going to take that as my cue to move us along. Don't stress if you are trying to think of things to write here. This is your workbook. So you'll have a copy of this to go back to. Also, if you picked one technique this time and maybe you want to come back here and think about how you might employ another technique on another proposal or another section of the proposal you're working on. This is something that you can copy and paste and use many times over. So I'm encouraging you to use this workbook as much or as little as you'd like over the course of your proposal writing.
I'm curious to hear, how do you do? You can let me know with an emoji in the chat box kind of how was your writing sample feeling? Was it easy to come up with some ideas around your outline? Did it take you a second? Can you think about what that felt like? I'd love to hear a little bit from folks.
Yeah. Rosetta says, "Back to kind of that first sentence." Is that still a little bit of a struggle for you in this exercise? I like Deb's heart. That makes me feel like it was a good feeling. Monica said, "Definitely got some good ideas on how to adjust." Yeah.
The method one is the fastest one for this amount of time. It's one of the least amount of, like, different boxes to fill, right? Oh, I'm so glad, Allan. That's great to hear. Joyce said, "I thought about a story in a new way relating to a need that's not obvious."
Awesome. Yeah. Just getting these kind of, like, giving yourself space to think creatively about the ways that you're pitching your programs, that's something that I want to make sure we're using this time for. So I'm glad to hear that was successful for you, Joyce. Yeah. Elizabeth says, "I've been thinking about these couple of grants so that -- so much that it helps to have it broken down into the most based."
Awesome. Yeah. Again, kind of like reframing how we might approach our grant proposals even if we are the pros ways we might think about them differently and more creatively. Love to hear it. Awesome. Okay. So before I wrap this up with some tips here, I want to remind us what we're leaving this workshop with.
And one of the things that I hinted at the beginning was special advanced access to our newest tool. So I asked our co-founder if I could share this with just this event today. I'm highlighting our newest beta feature. And I'm going to highlight that it is not released to the public yet. This is a tool that is currently in development. And I'm so excited about it.
But essentially, we're working on an AI grant writing tool. So if you're interested in creating some of those high quality private grant applications more quickly, our new grant writing tool is letting you access private funder grant applications directly on Instrumentl and write proposals even faster by leveraging some of our personalized answer recommendations inside the applications. This is taking some of your examples. Maybe you've written a proposal 1 million times and you have that language ready to go. That grant writing tool is actually taking some of that -- those past examples that you've been really successful with and it's going to help you write future proposals based on your language that you're inputting into the system, which is really cool. Yeah. Much needed. Very exciting. This is like a very cool tool.
If you are interested in getting special access, I am allowed to give you all access to this form. You'll be able to help shape the tool with your feedback and receive a special rate on this beta tool. But there are only a few limited spots. So I'm going to drop the link in the chat in order to express interest in checking out this tool. And then the other component I want to highlight here is that you do need to have an Instrumentl account in order to be eligible for this. So I'm going to add a link here.
If you are interested in getting access to Instrumentl, make sure you also follow this link. I've got a special link just for this event so we know that the folks that are using the signup link attended my event and can get access to this form. So two steps here. If you're a current customer, great. You can just go right into that application. That's going to be the apply for a spot AI beta tool.
And then if you are a new user to Instrumentl and you want to gain access to this, I have this special link just for our event today. That is going to start your -- kickstart your trial. It'll get you right into the platform. So I'm really excited about it. I'm sure I'll be to share more out as we kind of work on refining this tool. But really exciting and something that I'll hopefully save you all a ton of time in your grant writing efforts.
Okay. Wrapping up. We're about a quarter till. So we're doing great on time. I want to talk a little bit really quickly about how we can help customize some of our language. We've talked about the narrative techniques but how are we actually applying funding -- I'm sorry, project goals and aligning those with funder interests and using language that actually really resonates with funders. We want to highlight all of those mutual benefits, right?
Excuse me. So my four proposal tips for you. We're going to start with this one, which some of you probably already do. You want to make sure you're mirroring the funders language and terminology. So make sure when you're working on your proposals, you want to carefully review the funder's website, annual reports, and any published guidelines to identify key phrases and terminology that they frequently use and integrate these terms into your proposal to reflect their language. Just like you've probably heard as a tip for resume writing, for example.
When you're looking through a job posting, you might see specific keywords that you want to actually use right on in your resume so that you're reflecting and mirroring the terms that the organization is using. So an example here, if a funder is frequently mentioning things like community resilience or sustainable development, make sure to use those exact phrases in your proposal when discussing relevant project outcomes.
This is important because mirroring the funders language will show that you understand and align with their priorities, making your proposal just all the more relevant and easier to connect with for funders. My next tip here is hone your tone. Thought that was a fun little rhyming tidbit. But adopting a positive and confident tone using positive and assertive language to convey confidence in your project. You want to avoid any tentative phrases, things like "we hope to" or "we might." And instead, use strong affirmative language such as "we will" or "we are committed to," right? So an example here, instead of writing "we hope to reduce youth unemployment by 20%," easy switch there, we will reduce youth unemployment by 20%.
So just kind of making sure we are addressing our tone. And a confident tone is going to just convey assurance in your project's success and demonstrate your organization's capability and commitment to seeing that success through.
My third proposal tip here, that personal touch. So personalizing the proposal for each funder. Many of you also probably already do this. Personalize each proposal by explicitly mentioning the funder's past contributions to similar projects. You do have access to organizations that this funder has already funded in the past. You can pull that information from 990s or you can actually in Instrumentl, if you're a user already, you can go into the funder profile and look at past grantees.
You'll be able to see examples of other organizations and how that funder support aligns with your project as well. So highlight specific aspects of the funder's mission and research initiatives that resonate with your project. So an example here, you know, something like we've noticed that funder has a strong commitment to promoting educational opportunities in underserved communities.
As seen in your recent funding of other grantor, right? Our project aligns with this commitment by focusing on literacy programs for at risk youth. Great alignment and using that some of that research that you're probably already doing to make sure that they see the direct connection there. Hone your tone. Yeah.
All right. And my last tip here is making sure you're getting specific. Again, something that we probably already try our best to do. But something that we should always keep at the front of our minds. We want to use clear and specific language. So as much as possible, avoiding vague and abstract language, being super precise about our project's goals, methods and outcomes and using concrete details and measurable objectives to identify those.
So here's a quick example. Instead of writing, we aim to improve community health, right? Instead, we will provide biweekly health workshops to 200 community members resulting in a 15% increase in regular health checkups over the next year. So again, just that clear and specific language shift can make proposals easier to understand and evaluate, providing vendors with a tangible sense of what their investment actually will achieve.
Awesome. So we've covered a lot today. We've talked a little bit about how we understand our grant proposals currently. We've gone over three narrative techniques through some of those case studies. I've shown you a little sneak peek of a cool new feature in Instrumentl and we talked a little bit about some proposal tips for speaking your funder's language.
I'm curious if anyone has questions, I'm going to go back through the chat. But the best way for me to find those, if you asked a question earlier that I missed, you can go ahead and copy and paste that down below here or add it back into the chat. I'd love to see what questions you might have. You can use three hashtags at the front too to help me organize in the chat.
And I'll go over any questions that anyone's kind of buzzing around in their brain right now. Yeah. Okay. I'll look at -- I'm looking at this question about how the AI tool differs from ChatGPT. And Giovani is right. It's essentially using the same technology as something like ChatGPT. There are many different types of AI tools. ChatGPT being the one that probably most of us are familiar with. But it uses essentially artificial intelligence to take in some of the proposal work that you've already done.
So it's taking your own writing, your own language, and applying it to new applications that you might be working on submitting through Instrumentl. Oh, Giovani asked, "When are you releasing this new feature?" That's a great question. I'm pretty sure this is going out with our fall launch. So that will be in October. So beta testing will go throughout the summer. And if you are a current Instrumentl account holder or you're on a trial and you are interested in applying to participate in beta testing, you'll have early access to that now.
Cool. Oh, Sherry. I see your question. Go ahead and submit your application and see. It also depends on space. I know that they're limiting the amount of beta testers that are currently having access to this tool. So it might not be because you're on a trial. It might just be that there's limited space to access. But go ahead and submit that form and express your interest. And then even if it's not in this first run of beta testing, you might be asked to participate at a later time. Oh, this is a good question.
And Chris, I might need to even, like, do a little research on my own and follow up on this. I want to pitch this to our expert council. But the question here is what would you say are the mistakes grant reviewers see the most frequently? Some of the ones that come top of mind, maybe are not necessarily mistakes but oversights in the grant proposal process.
The first one seems like a no-brainer but proofreading. I think sometimes that can fall by the wayside. And when we're rushing to complete applications and we're the one person show responsible for getting everything in, sometimes errors in the application can be apparent. And that's just like not a great look for your organization. So making sure you have a proof reader available to just do one quick pass. Also, some of the things that I think are common oversights in proposals, some of those vague terms. I mentioned some of those specific examples, kind of noodling on our language and trying to be more confident and assertive. Also, not necessarily applying tangible measurable outcomes to some of our statements. Those things are also going to impact just the confidence and assertiveness of our proposals in general.
If folks have seen other things that you would say are, like, oversights or mistakes or things that you think you've worked on honing in on in your grant writing, feel free to add thoughts to the chat. I love to hear what folks have kind of refined on in their grant seeking skills.
Yeah. Okay. Lean's question says, let me go back here. "Online grant applications have questions that give sometimes more characters than you need. If you put in 500 and it is up to 1,000, do they frown on that?" And Chris says, "I have wondered the same thing." I'll share my personal opinion on this. And then I'll also invite any folks in the chat box to chime in. My thought is if you can say it in 500 words, say it in 500 words well. You don't need to add language just for the sake of adding characters. What funders want to see is that you're able to concisely, clearly and just overall kind of like demonstrate that confidence of your proposal in your statements of need in your organizational impact. All those statements. So don't add flower language, don't add characters just for the sake of filling the box.
Yeah. I see Giovani is agreeing there. Yeah. Vicki has a good question. Do the same people who review LOIs review the full application? Is it okay to use the same language in both? It depends on the organization. It's going to be depending on the foundation, especially for things like maybe federal grants may have different reviewers. What I will say is it's okay to replicate information as long as you're making sure that in the full proposal you're maybe flushing out some of the details. The LOI is intended to be kind of that initial peak of interest. You might use some similar language and some similar metrics, which is absolutely okay. But also making sure you're adding on and flushing out their proposal more fully.
Oh, this is an interesting one from CRC education. Colorado funders have reported up to 50% of proposals being incomplete or ineligible. Yeah. So that's a -- absolutely. That's something to consider, right? Just making sure you're eligible for the grant you're submitting for in the first place and completing all the fields that are required going back through and having time before the deadline. You want to make sure those are done.
Okay. Elizabeth's question here. This will be my last one before we wrap up today. What are some of your best tips on discussing or measuring impacts of educational programming which incur over -- sorry, which occur over long-term growth. This is a tricky one and actually just from some of my personal experience working in museums even maybe more challenging than schools where you have students coming back day after day over the course of one school year in a museum program.
We often struggled with seeing students one time, right? They might come in one day for a program and we might never be able to demonstrate long-term impact for that specific cohort of students. One thing we employed when we were conducting evaluations of our programs both for grants we' been awarded and those that we were submitting proposals to is putting together a longitudinal evaluation plan.
We had a director of evaluation at the museum who set us up with a survey that we could conduct with a set number of student groups that came through the museum in a given three-month time span. So we had kind of like a survey that we had prepared in advance. And we had asked teachers in advance, "Hey, can we interview you at the end of this program?" And then we conducted the same type of surveying with similar groups of students after we had implemented a specific, like, number of programs.
So part of it was kind of determining how we could see impact not necessarily with one group of students, but perhaps changes we were seeing in the programmatic offerings that we had been doing. So, like, maybe we had seen that our program staff had improved on their facilitation of these programs, that learning objectives were more clearly gained or identified in programming. So we kind of took a way of approaching that and applied it to the variables that we had more control over. That's one example.
If folks have other ideas in the chat, please feel free to add thoughts. And Elizabeth, I'll noodle on this a little bit and get back to you if I have other ideas or ways we could kind of apply that specific question.
Awesome.
Oh, yeah. Okay. My last question. Isaac asked, "I'm looking for project -- proposal examples. Where can I get them?" And I already got someone who responded my answer in the chat. If you go to your last page of your workbook, you will actually see a list of resources, which includes examples of proposals. You can dive into those links. I encourage you to do a lot of digging there. There's a lot to cover. But a lot of them have some really great case studies and examples.
All right, folks. That's all I have time for today. I want to get us back. But before we go, I do like to do a little quick class photo. And I don't want to put anyone on the spot. But if they're willing, if anyone would like to turn on their video camera, I would love to take a quick little photo of everyone who's in the room and just celebrate that we completed this course today.
I'll give folks about five seconds to get ready and then I'll count us down for a quick little cheese. Okay. Ready to go here. One, two, three. Yay. Okay. One more page. One, two, three.
Awesome. And one more. You guys are smiling so great. Thank you. One, two, three. Awesome. Okay. You can go off camera now. I so appreciate you joining in. I love seeing all your smiling faces. And thanks again for being with me today. Couple things to close us out. I would love to hear your feedback. This is going to be a way that you can also enter in our raffle for today. I'll remind you what that is in just a moment. Let me drop that link for everybody here. So our feedback form is just going to be a way that you can share.
Of course. Thank you, everybody. Where you can share what you thought of the program today, any improvements you'd like to suggest. Again, I read every single response. So please feel free to add your honest opinion on this program and how we can offer more exciting and interesting educational sessions for you in the future.
And as a reminder, you'll be entered to win that $50 gift card to bookshop.org. Lastly, we've got some really cool events coming up. This is the first event in our next grant secret growth series. And I have two more sessions coming up next week and the following. So we've got our Get Your Board on Board: 5 Tips To Get The Grant Management Budget You Need. That's going to be next Thursday. And then we've got one following Thursday, The Mysterious Funder: How To Decode 990s With 7 Expert Tricks. So I'll be excited to dive deeper with you. I'd love to see you all come back. I've also got a link for folks to invite friends.
These are special spaces that grant seekers don't often get access to. And I love providing this free programming for you all. I'd really love it if you can include some of your peers in this programming too. I know we know folks who could benefit from learning spaces like this. So please involve them. Please give them access to these special rooms as well. And I'm excited to see you all back for future programs. In the meantime, have a great rest of your Thursdays.
Lovely to see my friends that have come back. And thanks to those who are newcomers today. You can say hi to me at rachel.canella@instrumentl.com or add me on LinkedIn. I'll drop that in the chat as well. Otherwise, I'll stick around for a few minutes for office hours. And have a great rest of your days.
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