Separating analysis from writing in philanthropic grant applications July 8, 2009
Posted by Paul Duignan in : Grant writing, Philanthropy, Strategic planning, Communicating outcomes models, Easy Outcomes , trackbackThe other night I was doing some pro bono work with a small non-profit organization which is attempting to restore a significant landmark building and promote its use for educational and community purposes. I was building a DoView results map (outcomes model) for them in real-time in the course of one of their monthly meetings. They’re using the visual model as their strategic planning approach (instead of the traditionally long narrative text-based plans many people in such small organizations spend many hours sweating over).
Building a DoView model is a very quick way for a community organization to build a simple but effective strategic plan. Once built they can then show others the model and quickly communicate that they’ve thought through what they’re planning to do.
As is always the case in such situations, the conversation turned to sources of funding for their work and the effort that needs to be put into applying to philanthropic funding sources - the job of writing the text-based applications for funding.
I talked to them about the outcomes theory perspective on what such funding application processes are really all about. From a conceptual point of view it’s a matter of linking what you’re going to do as an organization (i.e. your outcomes model) to the higher-level outcomes model of the philanthropic funder from which you’re seeking funding. Now, at the moment all this is generally handled through the applicant organization preparing text-based application documents (sometimes just documents, sometimes in the shape of forms which you have to fill out on the web).
What this means in practice is that when someone sits down to write such an application they’re being called on to do two conceptually different things. The first is an analytical task - figuring out how the outcomes of their organization map onto the outcomes of the philanthropic funding organization. The second task that they are trying to do is to word-smith a good sounding application.
The great added value of using a visual results map (outcomes model) modeled in DoView is that once you have done it (for instance, as in this case for strategic planning) you can leverage off the work you’ve done for other purposes. The most immediate thing you can use it for is when applying for philanthropic funding. You can use it to quickly map your outcomes onto the philanthropic funders outcomes. You simply do this by putting in one or more new pages (slices) in DoView which show the philanthropic funder’s outcomes in a visual format. You’re then in a position to quickly visually map (by simply dragging links between the relevant boxes) your outcomes set onto the relevant outcomes in the philanthropic funder’s outcomes set.
Once you’ve done this (e.g. your outcomes: ‘A restored landmark building’ and ‘promoting the use of the building for community activities’; could map onto a funders outcomes such as: ‘develop community facilities’ and ‘increased community events’); you have all the analytical work done.
The point is that the analysis part of the work is done incredibly quickly in the DoView visual format (for instance it can be done in a quick brainstorming session in front of a normal meeting with the dataprojected DoView model). The analysis of how the outcomes relate to each other having been done, the person writing the grant application can concentrate on word-smithing the proposal into the most appropriate language to communicate with the funder.
Grant writing is often so painful because we’re trying to do both the analysis of how outcomes map onto each other while we’re also trying to word-smith a good proposal. Using a visual results map (outcomes model) approach means that these two can be dealt with separately. I even suspect that there’re may be different types of intelligences needed in these two types of activity. In many situations (particularly where volunteers are involved) it makes sense to have those with a more analytical bent do the analysis of how outcomes link to outcomes. Then those who have a flair for good writing (not to say that the first group always lacks this, or that writers can’t be analytical!) can get on with their preference of just writing good prose based on the analysis which has already been carried out.
Paul Duignan, PhD,
Outcomes and Evaluation Blog (OutcomesBlog.org)
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