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Welcome to the second of five parts of the Internet Society's Chapter
Toolkit titled Fund-raising and Seeking Grants. In
this second part I will go over turning your project idea into
a project plan. You have now found
a few funders that look like they might be interested in funding your
project. Do you start writing your grant proposal right
away? No, you create a project plan,
if you haven't done so already. You might have already worked on a project plan,
that's great news. Either way, having a clear project plan
will make the proposal writing process much, much easier.
So, let's look at some of the topics you should consider
and the steps required to create a project plan.
First, consider this: is my project fundable?
Is it appealing to a potential funder? Here are a few of the questions you want to ask
yourself: including can you identify who benefits?
Can you do what you propose to do within the time frame you identify?
Does the project have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Does it have a focused
goal? Can you answer the "so what" question and does it have a
measurable objective? If you can answer yes to the above questions
then you are on the right path. In addition to the previous characteristics
that make a project fundable, there are a few universal characteristics of
great projects. Do you see any of these characteristics in
your own project? So now what?
Plan your project! Every project has external influences
that affect its success and that are out of our control,
but many issues that contribute to an unsuccessful project are
in our control. Things like inadequate needs assessment. When you research the need
or the challenge your project will address, critical issues
are overlooked or intentionally discarded. Human resources.
People make projects successful. People can also make projects unsuccessful. Issues such
as people's commitment, motivation and overall interest
in the project can influence the project success. Most of these
issues are the result of poor project planning
and design. The three minimum parts of your project plan
would include a logic model, a work plan and a monitoring plan. These three parts will
make writing the grant proposal much, much easier. The first part of your
project plan is the logic model or the "why and how plan".
The logic model is defined as a depiction of the processes and targeted outcomes of
the project. It should help you identify strategic objectives,
identify what resources are needed, develop indicators to measure progress
and propose results and to communicate the project's potential value. Sounds
pretty helpful before you write the grant proposal, right?
Here's a template for a logic model. You can work from left to right from needs
to impact. You most likely have a lot of these categories
decided in your mind, but put them down on paper.
Make sure that the logic you were using in your mind
makes sense on paper. Why? Because this logic model
is the foundation of your written proposal, what the funders will read.
Do you see anything missing? Does something not make sense?
If so, make the corrections. If you see any errors,
a funder will probably see them too when they read your funding proposal.
In the previous slide, in the logic model there was a place to list your project outcomes.
Outcomes are defined as increased awareness, knowledge, attitudes, improved skills,
a change in behavior, practice or decision-making. One tip for deciding what your project outcomes
will be is to make sure they are smart. By smart,
we mean that your outcomes are specific, measurable
achievable, realistic and time limited. You'll see why this is particularly helpful
in a few minutes. The second part of your project plan is the
work plan, also known as a timeline or work schedule.
This is a simplified example of a work plan and they can be in many different formats.
The one shown here is one such type. You may prefer to make a list of activities
and dates in a Word document instead of a table.
For your own project planning choose whatever format is best for you,
but be aware that a funder may ask for your work plan
in a specific format. Always follow their requirements
and submit the information in the format they define.
Since you already have a work plan in place before writing
your proposal, it's just a matter of changing the format
if need be. The third part of your project plan is the
monitoring plan, or the "how are we doing" plan.
You may be asking yourself why do I have to monitor my project?
Well, monitoring allows you to follow up the activities being
implemented. Monitoring will allow you to make
relevant adjustments to your project plan as you go along.
And of course it will make it much easier to fulfill the internal and external
stakeholders reporting requirements. That can include
members of your own project team, funders and other target groups.
What are the kinds of questions that my monitoring will
answer? Above are a few examples. You can see that there are three categories
of questions to ask about your project.
Inputs, budget, activities and outputs, results and outcomes and the environment,
which when answered can clearly illustrate how successful your project
has been or where some changes need to be made.
So, how do I monitor my project? The easiest way is to create a monitoring
plan. For each item you want to monitor decide
what you will be measuring. Here's a tip: look back at your logic model, look at the
outputs and outcomes that you've stated there. How will
you collect that data? How frequently is that data collected? How
frequently is it reported?
Here's a simple example of one set of data to monitor
in a project. What we're monitoring is the number of trainings provided.
How is by invoices sent from each trainer. The frequency is the trainers invoices which
they send to us monthly, and reporting to the donor, which we would
do quarterly. Your monitoring plan can be as simple or as
complex as you would like, as long as you answer the monitoring questions
appropriate for your project. Here you can see the three different types
on the left, The performance indicator and other data
you would want to collect. Now, at minimum for your project plan you
have the why and how of your project which is the logic model,
the what and when which is your work plan. and the how are we doing, or the monitoring
plan. Thank you very much for listening to this
part 2 of Fundraising and Seeking Grants. If you have any questions or comments please
contact us at email address listed above. Next up
is part three, which will cover what goes into a great
grant proposal and the letter of inquiry.