Grant Writing for Beginners: Making a Good First Impression with Your Executive Summary
The Executive Summary is the most important part of your grant proposal. It is the very first thing reviewers will read and, when done well, it encapsulates your whole proposal. It is best to save writing the Executive Summary for last, so you can effectively summarize each part of your proposal.
This blog is part of our new series, Grant Writing for Beginners. The series covers all the stages of preparing a grant proposal from writing a Letter of Inquiry to submitting a proposal. To continue the series, here’s how to write an effective Executive Summary:
The following should be addressed in your Executive Summary:
Who are you?
Describe your school or district and its history and mission.
What do you want to do and why?
Explain the needs you hope to address and how your project will meet them. Describe your target audience, and your objectives.
How are you going to do it?
Describe how you’re going to carry out the project, and why your organization is uniquely qualified to do so.
How much will it cost?
Give a general overview of the funding needed to complete the project. Mention any funding you’ve already received for the project.
Think of the Executive Summary as a brief but complete overview of the rest of your proposal. If you’ve already written the rest of your proposal, you can go back over each section and pick out the main points. Use these points as a roadmap for writing the summary, making sure you hit all of the most important ideas. Stay tuned for more from our Grant Writing for Beginners series. Next time we will get into writing a description of your school.
