Why to write applications

What do grant applications provide other than headaches and money?

I've met very few people who talk excitedly about grant applications and reports. About two. Applications usually consist of a lot of questions unrelated to substantive activities: tell us about your mission and vision, your evaluation and monitoring system, your anti-corruption policies, the professional development of your team. And you want to be given money for good deeds! What anti-corruption policies?

🔑 In fact, applications are a very valuable trove of knowledge that you need about your own project. And the more complex they are, the better.

Why so?

Doing something we often believe that we are doing it in the only right way and by the only right means. In fact, it is almost certain that someone before us has been down a very similar, if not exactly the same, path. And big donors with long histories are familiar with these cases. They know what worked well and what didn't, and they sometimes even understand why. You may not know it or you may not notice it, but applications help to illuminate those blind spots.

Applications often include questions about strategy, mission, vision. You may not have this at first, but people who have been working in the field for many years understand that without a clear mission, effective work will not be possible.

There may be questions about how you keep accounting records, how you deal with financial risks, etc. You may have no accounting at all, and you may not know anything about risks. And donors realise that such ignorance can lead to huge problems in the future.

The application will almost certainly ask about clear and measurable project indicators, and you may think, what are the indicators? We're doing a good thing! And how can we even plan anything at a time like this? But the people who have collected crumbs of money to give to solve the problem rightly want to understand exactly how and in what amounts the problem will be solved.

And so on ad infinitum.

The questions in grant applications are important benchmarks that can help your work. Not all of them will be necessary: some US money requires you to be registered under US NGO law, and some European money requires additional accounting systems and accounts. And that you may not need if you don't plan to receive that money.

🔔 But if you can't answer questions about what the purpose of your work is, that's a red flag.

But you'll do fine, I think!