What You Will End Up With
A methods and approach section that shows your plan is sound. It tells the reviewer who you are, with your mission, history, experience and strengths, and where you work with community collaborators. It sets out the logic from resources to results. And it includes two visuals: a flow chart of the sequence of events and a timeline chart (a Gantt chart) listing every activity with its projected completion date, in order. Together they turn a description into a plan a reviewer can check.
Before You Start
The approach section leans on groundwork, so do these first.
- Secure letters of support or participation from the same collaborators you will name in the approach. They go in the appendices, and a collaborator named without a letter looks like a gap.
- Write your theory of change as a pathway of outcomes: early outcomes must be in place for intermediate outcomes to be achieved, and those in turn for the long-term ones.
- Decide where your accountability ceiling sits. This is a term some planners use for a line on the model. It is a marker on the model, often a dashed line. Outcomes below it are ones you hold yourself accountable for; the impact above it is a result you hope to contribute to but will not answer for alone.
Building community support before you apply helps too, because it matches what funders want to see: a mission that serves the community.
Steps
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Build the logic model. A logic model is your best guess, drawn out, of how each thing you do leads to the next and finally to the results you want. Most logic models have four parts: resources (also called inputs), activities, outputs and outcomes.
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Test the logic. Read the model from left to right and check that every element follows from the one before it. A gap in the chain is easier to fix now than after a reviewer finds it. Revisit your long-term goals and challenge the assumptions in the theory of change, rather than treating it as a fixed plan. Draw the accountability ceiling on the model so it is clear which outcomes you are answerable for.
A short illustration: a small health NGO in a rural district lists its inputs (staff and clinic space), its activities (training community health workers), the outputs of those activities (workers trained) and an early outcome (families get advice sooner). Each link has an "if" behind it: if workers are trained, then more families get advice; if families get advice sooner, then illness is caught earlier. Write those assumptions down. They are what you will test in the field, and what a reviewer will probe. Below the accountability ceiling sit the changes the NGO tracks itself; above it sits something like lower child illness across the whole district, which many other factors affect.
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Make the two charts. The timeline chart gives a detailed list of all activities and their projected dates of completion in sequential order, and it is usually required, though you should check the call. The flow chart shows the sequence of events. The first answers "when" and the second answers "in what order and how one step leads to the next." The methods section should hold both.
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Write the approach narrative. Describe your mission, history, experience and strengths, and point out your links to community collaborators. Frame goals and objectives so they are feasible and measurable. Promising a realistic percentage change over a defined time is better than promising a dramatic one.
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Fold in the evaluation plan. It has to show you can reach the primary or secondary data you will need, and say whether you will evaluate implementation, short-term outcomes or long-term outcomes. Build it in four moves: clarify objectives, develop questions, develop methods and set a timeline. Describe how information will be collected and analyzed, and how and when you will share findings with the funder. The main product of an evaluation should be a report shared with everyone involved.
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Check the budget against the plan. As a guide, evaluation work takes roughly 10% to 15% of the total program budget; check what the call allows. In the budget justification, explain the need for each line item and show how the total was calculated, in one or two sentences each.
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Match the letters to the text. Open the appendices and confirm that every collaborator in your approach has a letter attached. This shows the partnerships you describe exist.
Using AI Safely
An assistant can help you shape a draft but cannot supply field experience.
- Keep confidential material out of prompts: internal finances, organizational data and the names of your collaborators.
- Ask for a generic logic model structure, such as the causal chain for a health project in a rural setting, and fill in your specifics yourself.
- Check every causal link against your own theory of change. Drafts tend to be optimistic and skip over local realities.
- Check where the accountability ceiling sits. An assistant may suggest you can claim credit for changes at a system level that are beyond your power.
Treat it as a drafting aid, and make the strategic choices yourself.
Common Mistakes
Leaving out the accountability ceiling. Without a clear line between outcomes you will claim and outcomes beyond your reach, the plan reads as unrealistic.
Treating the theory of change as fixed. Assumptions need testing. A model that never changes after contact with the field is probably not being used.
Setting targets that cannot be measured. A vague or extreme target fails the feasibility test. Name a realistic percentage over a defined time.
Describing evaluation without the how. Say what information you will collect, how you will analyze it, and how and when you will report to the funder.
Naming collaborators without letters. A collaborator in the narrative and not in the appendices suggests the partnership is thinner than you say.