{Grant} Writer’s Block

Artwork by Morgan Harper Nichols

We’ve all been there: you sit down to begin your grant proposal, and nothing comes to you. Not a single word about your program or the great work you’ve been doing…. Blank, except for that increasingly annoying cursor.

Here are my top three tips for blowing out those mental cobwebs and getting your words down on paper so you can get back to serving your audience.

Write out the questions.

If you’re lucky enough to be in a position to respond to a proposal with direct questions, typing out those questions is a great way to overcome the blank page nightmare. Copy those questions down into the document, and start riffing on responses below each section.

Outline, outline, outline.

I almost always begin a proposal with an outline. It’s a quick and easy way to organize your thoughts. It’s also a super easy way to connect with your team to make sure you’re all on the same page before you get too far along in the process. Bonus: the top lines in the outline can be easily transferred to section headers.

Create a living document that houses language about your organization and its programs.

That way, you can easily pull what you need and adapt from there. I often create Fact Books, as I like to call them, for clients to pull from after I leave an organization. This is a really helpful way to get ideas down on a page so you’re able to react to them and mold responses to the current scenario, rather than starting from scratch.

And that’s it! Give it a go - I know you can do it.