December 30, 2016
For many funding opportunities, particularly Request for Applications (RFAs) released by government agencies, you’ll have roughly six weeks to prepare and submit your proposal.
For private foundations, the response times can vary significantly depending on whether the foundation has rolling or set deadlines for receiving applications. Sometimes you’ll need to work within a very short window of 2-3 weeks, which can happen when a funder requires brief letters of interest before inviting a shorter list of applicants to submit full applications. However, six weeks is a typical time to prepare a proposal.
With this six-week period in mind, you can create a proposal development plan that consists of a general timeline of draft due dates and review periods. Once you have a general outline for the 6-week proposal process in place, you can adjust it as needed for opportunities with shorter or longer time horizons.
The Building Blocks of a Proposal Calendar: What Tasks Need to Be Scheduled?
Writing a grant usually consists of the following steps in this order. Each of these steps should make its way onto the calendar:
Week 1
The grant announcement/RFA is distributed to the proposal team. The “team” should be broadly defined to include everyone who may play a role in preparing the proposal. Typically, this includes one or more senior leaders of the organization, technical staff whose expertise will be central to the response, development staff representatives, and finance staff responsible for developing the proposal’s budget.
An initial meeting is held. This meeting can be conducted in person or virtually, will take 60-90 minutes, and will be an opportunity to review the response strategy, team roles (i.e., which team members will participate as writers and which as reviewers), and the key due dates for the proposal’s development.
A follow-up meeting is held to discuss the response outline. Follow-up meetings will review the details of what should be covered in each proposal section, the themes to emphasize, and related topics. These more technical meetings will be attended by a subset of those who attended the initial meeting. Once the response outline is complete and roles are assigned, the next step is to begin writing.
Week 2
The first draft is due. The first draft (assuming a 6-week turnaround) should be due about 1 week after the initial meeting, but no later than 1.5 weeks. If more than one person is writing the proposal, each writer’s section will need to be reviewed and assembled into a single draft for distribution to the reviewers. Depending on the proposal’s complexity and length, it may take several hours to assemble the draft for review.
First draft review. The draft is distributed to the reviewers (~3-5 people) for comment. The reviewers should be given 24-48 hours to complete their reviews.
Comments distributed. The reviewers' comments should be reviewed and consolidated (removing any duplicate/similar comments), then returned to the writers. Reviewing the comments and sending the draft back to the writing team can take a few hours.
Week 3
Second draft of the technical proposal due. The technical draft will follow the same pattern outlined above—sections assembled and distributed to reviewers (ideally, a different set than for the first draft). The review panel will again be given ~24-48 hours to review.
First draft of the budget due. The budget components depend on the technical proposal's contents. For this reason, the first draft of the budget will come out around the time of the second draft of the technical proposal, after there is an idea of what the project will involve and who will do what. The budget review process will differ from that for the technical proposal and will usually involve a different set of reviewers. The budget review process, at least for the first review, might consist of a meeting between the finance staff member who prepared the budget and the technical lead for the narrative proposal.
Comments due, second draft. As with the first draft, the comments will be assembled, reviewed, duplicate comments eliminated, and any remaining comments sent to the writers for their response.
Week 4
Third draft of the proposal due. The third draft will probably be the last draft before final polishing. As with the prior drafts, the proposal pieces will be assembled and distributed to reviewers.
Second draft of the budget due. If all activities to be completed have been identified and all personnel covered by the grant have been named, the budget can proceed to the next level of review. The review could serve as a sign-off at the organizational or institutional level, or, for smaller organizations, by the organization's director. For the final budget review, the reviewers will likely request a final or near-final copy of the technical proposal.
Week 5
Final review of the technical proposal. By the time the final review phase is reached, the proposal will have undergone at least two reviews by a small group. The final review may involve 1-2 senior leaders, or possibly just the organization's head, and could lead to a decision to reorganize or rethink parts of the proposal. Because the final review may raise new issues, it is important to allow several days for this step.
Technical proposal and budget finalized: By the middle of Week 5, the technical proposal and budget should be finalized. There should be no substantive (i.e., major) issues remaining at this point in the process. The remaining tasks to be completed over the next week should be at the “polishing” level.
Assemble the final draft: The technical proposal, attachments/supporting materials, and budget are likely to be separate files. They will need to be collected and assembled into a single package per the funder’s instructions. The budget may need to be a stand-alone file or combined with the technical proposal (with the table of contents adjusted accordingly) and submitted as a single package.
Editing. The proposal will have undergone multiple reviews at this stage, but they will have been at the content level, not the copyediting level. It's beneficial to have a staff member conduct a close read of the proposal and identify issues in formatting, spelling, grammar, and consistency in terminology at this stage. If your organization can afford it, you can hire an editor to review and revise the proposal. If you plan on using an external editor, you'll want to make this decision early in the proposal process to ensure enough time to find a suitable editor and complete the necessary paperwork.
Week 6
Final edits and submission: It can take several days to assemble, photocopy, and send off the proposal electronically or by mail. To avoid last-minute issues with the submission process, aim to submit the proposal several days before the deadline.
Tips on Assembling the Calendar
Writing Time: The first draft of the proposal is usually the hardest, so consider allowing writers more time for the first draft than for subsequent drafts.
Review Process: The review process should involve several people, but not too many, as scheduling reviews and responding to all the feedback can be overwhelming. The first-round review panel should be the largest, as it helps gather the most feedback early in the process, when there's still time to address major problems. As the drafts continue, the review panel ideally should shrink. The final review might involve only 1-2 people. The review panels can operate in parallel or sequentially. With concurrent reviews, reviewers receive the draft and submit their feedback simultaneously. In the serial review process, one person reviews the draft and then passes it to the next person. The advantage of the serial review process is that it can eliminate the risk of duplicate comments on an issue. The disadvantage of the serial review is that if one person falls behind, the entire process is delayed.
Institutional Sign-Off: If you are part of a large institution or organization, it may be possible to obtain institutional review and sign-off before the technical proposal is in its final, polished form. The Institution will likely be most concerned about the budget, so the technical proposal may still be undergoing edits at the time of the institutional review.
Holidays: When creating the proposal calendar, be sure to note any holidays that fall within the 6-week period and could affect team members. The holidays should be factored into the timeline, not used as due dates for any of the pieces.