Draft a Concept Note from Project Notes

Get an AI prompt to turn rough notes into a structured concept note, designed to reduce invented data, with checks for you to run.

What This Prompt Does

This prompt turns your rough project notes into a short concept note in a fixed order of sections. Anything your notes do not cover is marked as a gap for you to fill, which reduces the chance that the assistant invents statistics, citations or names.

A concept note is a brief outline of a project idea, usually written for a potential funder before any full proposal. Its job is to explain the idea briefly and be engaging enough that the funder wants to know more. At this stage the funder wants a high-level view of the problem and the response, not a detailed problem analysis or detailed activities.

Do not paste personal or sensitive data about beneficiaries into public AI tools, since this can breach data-protection rules. Check your organization's AI policy. Have a person, ideally someone other than the writer, review the draft before it goes to a funder.
You are helping a nonprofit draft a concept note for a funder. Use ONLY the facts in the project notes I paste below. Do not add statistics, citations, program names or facts about the organization that are not in the notes. If something is missing (a baseline, target, budget figure, statistic or source), write "not in our data" in its place. Never guess. If a baseline exists but has not been measured yet, write "not measured yet", never zero. Write the concept note in this order: 1. Overview block, one line each: title, location, duration in months, budget with currency. 2. Background: one short paragraph on the organization, any partners, and how the project was identified. 3. Problem statement: key evidence, who else is addressing it, why more input is needed. Maximum [WORD LIMIT, e.g. 400] words. 4. Objective: one sentence. 5. Expected outcome: one. 6. Key results: at most five, each written as a change, not a task. 7. Key activities: at most three per result, written as tasks, kept short. 8. Participants (beneficiaries): who they are, why chosen, other stakeholders and roles. 9. Total budget: the total needed and the amount requested from the funder, no breakdown unless the funder asks. Check that the chain holds: activities lead to outputs, outputs to the outcome, the outcome to the objective. Do not describe a plain headcount as a change in people's lives. Funder format and limits: [PASTE THE FUNDER'S FORMAT, QUESTIONS OR PAGE LIMIT. If the funder gives one, follow it exactly. If none, keep it short.] End with a list of all gaps and assumptions I need to fill or confirm. PROJECT NOTES: [PASTE YOUR NOTES HERE]
Open it, with the prompt already in:ChatGPTClaudeGemini(opens empty)

How to Use It

  1. Collect the funder's format and limits. If the funder supplies sub-headings or questions, the note must follow that structure and answer every question.
  2. Paste your notes with confidential and personal details removed.
  3. Run the prompt, then fill each "not in our data" gap from your own records.
  4. Once the gaps are filled, edit the draft yourself, or paste the completed notes back in and run the prompt again.
  5. When the funder sets no limit, keep it short. One NGO training guide suggests no more than four pages, and another gives 2 to 3 pages as the ideal summary length.

Check the Output

  • Trace every number and name back to your notes or a real source, and confirm the year and figure for each statistic. Delete any citation you cannot find.
  • Read the results chain from activities to outputs to the outcome to the objective, and check it holds. Indicators should show skills gained rather than activities counted, such as the number of people trained.
  • Confirm the length and word limits, and that no plain participant count has been inflated into transformed lives.
  • Confirm each gap was flagged, not filled, and that results read as changes rather than tasks.
  • Check that the budget is not a guess. It need not be exact, but the full proposal budget should not later differ from it by more than about 20 percent, though some funders set their own rules.

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