What This Covers
This hub takes NGO and nonprofit staff from first research on a funder to a submitted proposal and the follow-up after it. A proposal is written to persuade a funder to give money, not just to describe the project, so preparation comes first: know why you are writing and for whom, know the funder, and be clear about your own strengths and track record. Start at least a month before the deadline, and first decide whether to bid at all. Once accepted, the proposal becomes the framework for the project and the yardstick for success, so promise only what you can deliver.
Start Here
Drafting a proposal with its logframe and budget can take several weeks, and most funders reject late submissions. Name a lead who keeps the schedule, a draft writer, technical reviewers, budget developers and an editor. The editor should not be the writer.
- Write a concept note: aim for no more than four pages unless the funder sets its own limit, and include a realistic budget. The concept note how-to walks through it, the concept note prompt and the playbook help you draft it with AI, and the review rubric helps you check it.
- Structure the full proposal: a narrative, a logframe and a budget, with detail pushed into appendices.
- Build a logic model: a chain of if-then statements. Fifty people given free doctor visits is an output. A 50% drop in emergency room visits among them is an outcome.
- Write the budget narrative, including matching funds and in-kind resources. The proposal budget template sets out the lines, and the budget narrative prompt drafts the explanation for you to check.
- Recover indirect costs: cost recovery means making sure all the costs of delivering a funded project are covered. Recovering indirect costs explains what indirect costs are and how to recover them.
- Follow up: confirm receipt, then nudge politely after a month or six weeks.
Key Concepts
- Concept note: a brief outline of a project idea, often requested before a full proposal. Without funder guidelines, cover title, background, problem, length, location, one expected outcome, key results and activities, beneficiaries and stakeholders.
- Proposal package: the logframe, the narrative and the budget.
- Logic model: a visual description of how resources and activities lead to results.
- Outputs and outcomes: outputs are direct products of activities. Outcomes are the change in the people served. Mixing them up is a common error.
- Budget narrative: the explanation of how each line was calculated, so no lump sum goes unexplained.
- Indirect costs: costs that keep an organization running but cannot easily be pinned on one project. Cost recovery is how you make sure all costs get covered.
- Reframing: fitting a project to one funder's requirements is fine unless it changes the goals or outcomes.
Templates
- Proposal budget template: cost the project line by line, with totals that feed the narrative.
- Concept note review rubric: score a draft concept note before it goes to a funder.
AI for This Topic
An assistant can help you structure a proposal or rough out a first draft of a section. Never paste confidential, personal or sensitive data into a public AI tool. Even drafting a proposal can leak data, and some awards carry confidentiality conditions, so sharing project data could breach a contract. A quick test: if you would not email it, do not paste it. Policies should separate approved enterprise tools from public consumer ones. Staff must review all output before it goes out.