Introduction

When applying for a grant you should be able to understand about the impact of your project to the community you want to assist. Impact is the positive influence of the activities on the community the project is serving. The grants application should be clear on what changes you envision and how you intend to measure your project is on the right tract to achieving these changes.

In addition, you should be able to understand about Monitoring, Evaluation and Leaning because this will become very relevant to understanding the scope of your project and achieving successful result. So, before we proceed further, let’s look at the definition of these three terms, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning.

Monitoring refers to the collection of results, information, or analytics also refers to as data about a particular initiative, event, or training to measure progress based on expectations/targets.

Evaluation is the process of judging your project outcomes and see if the process is making sense and Making adjustments to improve on your project. It provide helpful information first to you and your organization.

Learning provide insightful information and tend to provide answers to the question – what can we change or do better based on the new information we have?. Based on your evaluation of the data collected, learning can be defined as the process of incorporating these findings into the project you are implementing and better tailor your strategy to adopt the needs of your stakeholders.

Develop a problem statement

A problem statement is a description of the problem that the project is seeking to address. It should capture real or on-the ground information that describes the challenges that the target communities are facing, the structural obstacles, and only other factors that are involved in the project that you intend to do.

In order to come with a  strong Problem statement you have to read widely or utilize recent articles and research that describe the problem as a good place to start but make sure that your statement is unique and original with deep knowledge of the topic.

You can reflect on the project you want to carry out and ask yourself questions like why is this project necessary?. Put down all the points that you consider relevant to your project to address and how to address this problem.

Has your organizations done something like this in the past?

Is there any team member in your organization who has done something like this before?

What types of training work best for your targeted audience/community?

How would you describe the capacity of the organizations you will collaborate with?

What were the results last time you collaborated with them?

                              Example of Project statement

Children are not benefiting from free nutritional program to improve their health in “country/region X”

Establish a theory of change

Theory of change describe the logic that serves as the basis of your project. Ie IF, THEN statement with a language that generally encompasses the activities and subsequent changes that will occur because of successfully implementation of the project.

Considerer the following questions when developing a theory of change:

What is the overall goal of the project?

What needs to change in order to achieve that?

What activities are necessary to achieve the objective?

Who are the main actors involved? What type of support do they need?

Set goals and activities

A project goal is the overarching aim of the project. It tend to give an overview of the project. The best goals use clear and concise language and encompass the expected results of the project as a larger impact within the targeted group.

Here are some of the questions to ask when developing a project goal:

Why are we doing this work?

Why is this important?

What is the problem we are addressing with this project?

What would an ideal solution look like to this problem?

Given this ideal solution. What can our project contribute to making it a reality?

What do we consider success for this project?

How would we know we have achieved our goals?

Example of project Goal

Health of children in “Country X” have their health improved

In conclusion, on this section think of your goals as your vision for the project.

Develop Key performance Indicators (KPIs)

Budgeting best Practices

Consider the sustainability of your project

Write your project narrative

Integrating Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)

Communications and End of Project reporting

Conclusion

To come up with a good grant application be sure to consider………………….

What is feasible eg time, geography,budget. How much time will your activities take and how much will thay cost?

How can you scale them? What will be the cost for team members to manage them and to support partners in their work

The inputs- what types of resources do you have? Training manuals? Expertise? How can you use them to address the needs of your community?

Your partners and their experience carrying out activities. Have you worked with them before? What experience do they have and how to they work?