Each document linked below is an example of a successful grant proposal that I prepared. There’s a school of thought that, because every project is unique, there’s not much to be gained from reading old proposals.

I disagree.

If you want to master the art of chair-making, study chairs made by an expert woodworker. Similarly, to cultivate the art of successful grant writing, study the work of a successful grant writer.

That’s not sufficient, of course. I don’t offer these proposals as platonic templates to be slavishly copied. In fact, as I was prepping the HIV Prevention sample proposal for upload, I noticed several errors. I considered editing the piece then decided against it. These are complicated artifacts, written under deadline pressure.

That holds an important lesson for beginning grant writers (and a useful reminder for veterans): Your grant proposal is never going to be perfect. And it doesn’t need to be. Observe the Pareto Principle. (Commonly stated as: 80% of the return comes from 20% of the effort. My corollary: To achieve perfection requires infinite effort. Leave it to the angels.)

The library’s pretty thin right now, but I’ll be uploading more grant proposals over the coming weeks, so stop by again!

Government Grants:

• Low-Income Wind Project (PDF) (HTML)(Community Services)
• AIDS HIV Prevention (Office of Minority Health)

Foundation Grants:

• Breast Cancer Awareness (Marin Community Foundation)