Nonprofit Grant Proposal Template
Most rejections are fit, not quality. Check geography, field, grant size, organization size and whether the funder accepts unsolicited applications at all before writing a word. Then make the budget add up to what you asked for.
Before writing anything, establish that you are eligible. Most rejected proposals were unwinnable before they were written, because the organization was not what the funder funds.
| Check | Where | Disqualifies you because |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | Guidelines | Most funders are strictly bounded |
| Field | Guidelines, and their 990-PF grant list | Stated priorities and actual grants sometimes differ |
| Grant size | Their 990-PF | Asking $50,000 of a funder whose largest grant is $10,000 |
| Organization size | Their grantees’ 990s | Funders have a comfort range |
| Type of support | Guidelines | Many fund projects and never operations or capital |
| Unsolicited applications | Guidelines | A large share of foundations accept none |
That last row eliminates more prospects than any other. Many foundations, particularly family ones, give only to organizations they already know, and an application to them is a wasted afternoon rather than a long shot.
Use their form
If the funder provides a form or a portal, use it exactly, in their order, with their headings. Proposals reformatted into the applicant’s preferred structure are harder to assess and are read by someone with a stack of them.
This template is for funders who ask for a narrative proposal, and as a thinking structure before you fill in somebody’s portal.
The sections that decide it
The need, with evidence. Sourced figures with years attached, plus what you know locally that national data does not show. Say how you know, and say what you do not know. Assertion without evidence reads as an organization that has not looked.
What you will do, concretely. What happens, to how many people, delivered by whom, over what period. Specificity reads as competence and vagueness reads as an idea rather than a plan.
Outcomes you can measure. With the staff you will actually have. Promising an evaluation framework requiring a full-time evaluator, at an organization with one part-time coordinator, is a problem deferred to the reporting stage.
Who else does this. Name them, including the ones you would rather not mention, and say how you differ or complement them. A proposal claiming no comparable organizations exist is read as one whose author did not look, and it is the fastest way to lose a reader’s confidence.
The budget, where proposals fail technically
The commonest technical failure is a budget that does not add up to the amount requested, or that contains costs the narrative never mentioned. Check the arithmetic twice and read the narrative against the budget line by line.
| Include | Because |
|---|---|
| Salaries for the people doing the work | Including the share of existing staff time |
| Payroll taxes and benefits | Substantial, and the line most often omitted |
| The share of rent, insurance and accounting the project consumes | This is the full cost, and it is real |
| Indirect or administrative costs | Ask. Increasing numbers of funders will pay it. |
| Other confirmed funding for the project | Shows the project is credible to others |
Ask for the true full cost. The pattern where an organization wins grant after grant and cannot pay its bookkeeper comes from repeatedly requesting direct costs only. When a funder asks what you need, general operating support is what most small organizations need most and request least.
Attachments
Read the guidelines for what is required, and send only that. Commonly requested: your IRS determination letter, a board list with affiliations, your organizational budget, your most recent Form 990, and audited or reviewed financial statements if you have them.
Keep a current folder of all of these somewhere you can reach in a minute. Assembling them under deadline pressure is where organizations discover their determination letter is missing or their board list is two years out of date.
After you send it
Diary the decision date and do not chase before it. If the answer is yes, read the agreement before spending anything: note the reporting dates, what the money may be spent on, and whether payment arrives in advance or in arrears, because arrears means you fund the work first.
If the answer is no, ask why. Many programme officers will tell you, and the answer is frequently that the fit was wrong rather than the proposal was weak, which saves you applying again. A courteous reply to a rejection is also how a relationship starts, and next year’s decision may be made by the same person.
Finding funders worth applying to
Three free methods that outperform most subscription searching, and all of them work better than a database for an organization writing a handful of applications a year.
Read your peers’ returns. Every foundation’s Form 990-PF lists the grants it made, with recipients and amounts. Every operating charity’s Form 990 shows its revenue. Find three organizations doing similar work at a similar size, pull their returns free from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and you have a list of funders demonstrably funding work like yours in places like yours.
Your community foundation. They publish their grantees, their priorities and their deadlines, and many maintain lists of other local funders. Several will meet a new organization and advise before any application.
Your board. Small family foundations are frequently reached through a personal connection rather than an open call, and a director who knows a trustee is worth more than a subscription.
Letters of support
Some funders ask for them, and a generic letter of support is worse than none because it signals that nobody involved cared enough to be specific.
A useful letter names the relationship, says what the writer has actually seen, and commits to something concrete. A school that will provide the room, a partner agency that will refer clients, a clinic that will accept the referrals back. That is evidence the project can happen.
Draft it for them. Busy partners will sign a good letter you wrote and will not compose one from scratch, and asking them to means either no letter or a bad one. Send them a draft on their letterhead with an invitation to change anything, and give them a fortnight rather than three days.
The order to write it in
| Order | Section | Why here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Budget | If the numbers do not work, nothing else matters |
| 2 | What you will do | The budget forces you to be specific about activity |
| 3 | Outcomes and measurement | Follows from the activity, and must be resourced in the budget |
| 4 | The need | Written to justify exactly the work above, not in general |
| 5 | Who we are, and who else does this | Context, once the proposal knows what it is |
| 6 | Sustainability | Honest answer about what happens when the grant ends |
| 7 | Summary | Last, always. It summarises something that now exists. |
Writing the summary first is the most common sequencing mistake, and it produces a proposal that spends the rest of its length trying to live up to an opening paragraph written before the thinking was done.
Reporting is the next application
The report is read by the same person who will decide your renewal. Report against what you promised, in the same words and the same measures, so the reader can see at a glance whether it happened.
Say plainly where something did not work, with what you learned and what you changed. Experienced programme officers know projects deviate, and a report claiming everything went exactly to plan reads as either unobservant or untrue.
If you will miss a target materially, tell them before the report rather than in it. Funders can almost always accommodate a change discussed in advance and almost never one discovered afterwards.
Download this template
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Questions people ask
How do I write a grant proposal for a nonprofit?
Check eligibility first, then write to the funder's own structure.
Confirm geography, field, typical grant size, organization size and whether they accept unsolicited applications. Most rejections are fit rather than quality, and this check takes twenty minutes against a proposal that takes days.
Then: the need with sourced evidence, what you will do concretely, outcomes you can actually measure, who else does this work, a budget that adds up to the amount requested, and how the work continues when the grant ends.
Write the summary last, on one page, so it stands alone if nothing else is read.
How long should a grant proposal be?
Exactly what the funder asks for. If they specify a page limit or a word count, meet it precisely, because exceeding it signals that you do not follow instructions and that is the first thing being assessed.
Where no limit is given, three to six pages plus a budget suits most small grants. Longer proposals are not more persuasive, and a reader with a stack of applications is scanning for whether the numbers are plausible and whether you know what could go wrong.
Put detail in attachments rather than in the narrative, so a reader who wants it can find it and one who does not is not deterred.
What should a grant budget include?
The full cost of the work, not just the direct costs.
Salaries for everyone doing the work including the share of existing staff time, payroll taxes and benefits, programme costs, travel, and the share of rent, insurance and accounting the project genuinely consumes.
Ask about indirect costs. Increasing numbers of funders will pay a reasonable rate, and organizations that never ask are the ones that win grants and cannot pay their bookkeeper.
Then check two things: the requested column adds up exactly to the amount on your cover summary, and every line appears somewhere in the narrative. Budgets that do not reconcile with the narrative are the most common technical failure.
Should we mention other funders in a proposal?
Yes. Confirmed funding for the same project makes you more credible, not less.
Funders generally prefer not to be the sole supporter, because it concentrates their risk and it suggests nobody else assessed the work favourably. Showing that others have committed is evidence.
Distinguish clearly between committed and pending. Listing an application as though it were an award, and having the funder discover otherwise, costs you more than the gap would have.
Include the decision dates for anything pending, so the reader can see when the picture will be clear.
How long does a grant decision take?
From submission to money in the account, commonly six to twelve months, and sometimes longer.
Foundations often review on a quarterly or annual cycle. A deadline in March may be decided in June and paid in August. Federal grants are slower again.
The practical consequence is that grants cannot solve a cash flow problem you have this month. Grants fund the year after next, and individual giving funds now.
Diary the stated decision date and do not chase before it. Chasing early is noticed and it does not help.
Why do grant proposals get rejected?
Most often fit rather than quality: wrong geography, wrong field, wrong size of organization or request, or a funder that does not accept unsolicited applications at all.
After that: budgets that do not add up or do not match the narrative, activities described too vaguely to picture, outcomes the organization plainly cannot measure, and requests for support types the funder never gives.
And sometimes the proposal was strong and the money ran out. Foundations routinely decline good applications for that reason alone.
Ask. Many programme officers will tell you which it was, and that answer is worth more than the proposal was.
Should we hire a grant writer?
Only once you have a pipeline of well-matched prospects, because a writer cannot fix a fit problem.
A skilled writer applying to funders who do not fund your geography, field or size will produce well-written rejections.
Do the research first. If you have five funders who demonstrably fund organizations like yours, and nobody with time to write five applications properly, that is when a writer earns their fee.
Avoid arrangements paying a percentage of grants won. Professional fundraising bodies consider commission-based compensation unethical, and many funders will not accept applications prepared on that basis.
What attachments do funders usually want?
Read the guidelines and send only what is asked for. Commonly: your IRS determination letter, a board list with each director's outside affiliation, your organizational budget for the current year, your most recent Form 990, and audited or reviewed financial statements where you have them.
Some also ask for a list of current funders, key staff biographies, or letters of support from partners.
Keep all of these current in one folder. Assembling them under deadline pressure is where organizations discover the determination letter is missing or the board list is two years out of date.
Do not send extras. Unrequested material is not read and it suggests you did not read the instructions.
This is reference information, not legal or tax advice. Rules vary by state and change over time. For a decision that carries real consequences, check the current text at irs.gov or your state registry, and talk to a nonprofit attorney or CPA.