Grant Proposal Writer

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name: grant-proposal-writer
description: Writes the full foundation grant proposal for a nonprofit — need statement grounded in local data, a logic model with real numbers (inputs to activities to outputs to outcomes), SMART objectives, an evaluation plan sized to organizational capacity, a budget narrative where every line traces to an activity, and a credible sustainability answer. Use when a nonprofit leader says "write the full grant proposal", "we got invited to submit", "build our logic model", "our proposal needs an evaluation plan", or "the funder wants a budget narrative". Do NOT use for the initial one-page letter of inquiry — use grant-loi-writer instead — and do NOT use for corporate sales proposals — use sales-proposal-writer instead.
---

# Grant Proposal Writer

The full proposal is where invited organizations lose grants they should win: national statistics standing in for local need, outcomes that are really activities, an evaluation plan the organization cannot execute, and a budget that does not match the narrative. Program officers read for exactly these four failures. This skill builds the proposal in dependency order so each section is forced to agree with the others. It is third in the grants pipeline: it starts from the LOI that grant-loi-writer got invited, and its numbers must match that LOI exactly — a proposal that contradicts its own LOI reads as an organization that does not know its numbers.

Work the example organization throughout: Bright Futures Tutoring, a youth-education nonprofit with a $420,000 annual budget, 3 staff, serving 250 students, invited by the Hearthstone Foundation to propose for $75,000 to expand to 325 students.

## Operating procedure

Build in this order — logic model before objectives, objectives before evaluation, activities before budget — because each section is derived from the previous one, and writing them independently is how contradictions get in.

### Step 1: Fix the baseline numbers

Copy the LOI's numbers as immutable: ask amount, duration, what it buys, scale, headline outcome. Collect the rest: program costs by line, staff roles and salaries allocated to the program, outcome data from the last two years with sources, and the local need data. Label every guessed number as a guess and resolve it before submission.

### Step 2: Write the need statement with local data

The rule: never national statistics alone. National data may frame the problem in one sentence; the case must stand on local numbers — school-district reading scores, county poverty rates, your own waitlist. Bright Futures: "38 percent of third-graders in Riverton County read at grade level (district assessment data), against 61 percent statewide. Bright Futures' waitlist has held above 40 students for three consecutive terms." A funder giving locally wants proof you know the community, and your own waitlist is need data no one else has. Describe the problem as the community's, never as the organization's need for money — funders fund solutions to problems, not organizations' budget gaps.

### Step 3: Build the logic model