From the Publisher

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

References

Index (Search Engine)

Moursund's Websites

Moursund, D.G. (2002). Obtaining resources for technology in education: A how-to guide for writing proposals, forming partnerships, and raising funds. Copyright (c) David Moursund, 2002.

Section Headings for Chapter 8

Some General Ideas

Before You Start Writing

Problem Statement and Needs Assessment

National Needs Assessment

Local Needs Assessment

Methodology

Plan of Operation

Project Staff Loading Chart

Project Activity Chart

Evaluation Plan

Key Personnel

Adequacy of Resources

Impact

Organizational Capability

Budget and Budget Notes

Budget Notes

Activities

This chapter examines various components of a proposal and suggests good ways to present these components. This chapter follows the U.S. Department of Education's general outline of proposal components. However, the ideas can be applied to any formal grant-writing situation.

If you have not already done so, you may want to read the sample proposals in Appendices A, B, C, D, and E. They provide models against which you can compare the ideas given in this chapter.

Some General Ideas

Think of a proposal as a contract document in which you clearly specify what problem you will solve or what task you will accomplish. You say when, where, and how you will do this. You specify how the funding agency will be able to assess your progress and determine when you have appropriately completed the project.

A different way to think about a proposal is as a detailed planning document. Some time in the future--when you obtain the needed resources--you are going to solve a particular problem or accomplish a particular task. The proposal is a very detailed plan of how you will do this work.

Sometimes, the work of preparing the proposal itself may be a major step toward your goal. For example, a proposal may contain a survey and analysis of the relevant research literature on a particular problem. This may require a huge amount of time and effort to compile, but the literature analysis is a first step toward solving the problem or carrying out the task described in the proposal.

Viewed as a planning document, a proposal specifies what resources are needed, how they will be used, and when they will be used. If the proposal is funded, you will hire staff and put people to work on a plan of action calling for specific tasks to be accomplished by specific deadlines. Such administrative details can be identified and written into the proposal, greatly reducing the workload of implementing the project after it is funded.

As you write a proposal, keep in mind that your job is to convince the Resource Provider that you will be successful in what you set out to do. Your attention to detail in the proposal provides evidence of your ability to carry out the work of the project.

Before You Start Writing

Writing a proposal is like doing other types of writing. Writing is a process. It begins with brainstorming ideas. It proceeds through a sequence of drafts, with feedback being provided by oneself and others. The final draft is cleaned up ("polished") for publication. Process writing takes considerable time and effort. When writing a proposal, be sure to allow yourself the needed time. Chapter 9 includes a section discussing the desktop publication of proposals.

Before you start writing a proposal, make sure you have a relatively clear understanding of the overall mission or purpose of the project and the goals you want to accomplish. The mission or purpose is a lofty, high-level, overarching motive for a project. A simple, short, clear statement of the overall mission or purpose is highly desirable. This statement will appear in the abstract and body of the proposal, as well as a number of times in other components throughout the document. It is common to include it in the first paragraph of the proposal.

Some people are skilled at developing proposal titles that use short, catchy titles or contain acronyms focusing on the Project Mission. For example, a proposal that provides telecommunications access for the kids in your local school district could be titled Project TALK (Telecommunications Access for Local Kids). This acronym relates to the project idea, which could involve a major emphasis on offering local kids the opportunity to talk with students in other schools by providing them with telecommunications access to the outside world.

After your general purpose becomes clear, begin to think about more specific goals and objectives. These goals are stepping stones to the successful fulfillment of the larger mission. Each of these goals is in turn supported by one or more objectives. Accomplishing the objectives that underlie a goal accomplishes the goal. The objectives may be supported by sub objectives. These objectives and sub objectives are precise and measurable.

The following sample outline for a simple staff development project is used in several of the examples in this chapter.

Task 1: Needs Assessment
1.1 Via Literature Review
1.2 Via Interviews
1.3 Via Survey Forms

Task 2: Design the Inservice Workshop
2.1 Develop Lessons
2.2 Look for Materials such as Textbooks and Web Resources
2.3 Prepare Handouts

Task 3: Recruit Participants

Task 4: Conduct the Inservice Workshop
4.1 Presentations
4.2 Formative Evaluation

Task 5: Complete the Project
5.1 Summative Evaluation
5.2 Dissemination of Results
5.3 Final Report

Table 8.1 Outline for a staff development workshop proposal.

Before you begin writing a proposal, you should have a fairly good understanding of the mission, goals, objectives, and sub objectives. As you proceed in the writing task, you will return to this outline over and over again. You will undoubtedly make changes to this outline, and each change will lead to changes in a number of different places in the proposal and its budget. Needless to say, you should use a word processor and a spreadsheet!

Staff and other project resources will be allocated to each objective and subjective in your outline. At what level? Over what period of time? How will someone be able to tell when an objective or subjective has been successfully completed? The proposal answers these types of questions.

The remainder of this chapter examines nine major components of a formal proposal. Some granting agencies will omit or combine some components. Others will require additional components, typically formed by dividing one of the components given here into two parts. Regardless of its specific format requirements, a complete formal proposal must cover each of the ideas underlying the nine components discussed in this chapter.

Point values assigned to these various components vary with the granting agency. The point values for a typical U.S. Department of Education proposal are given in Figure 8.2.

Remember, if the proposal does not address the specific requirements in the Request for Proposals, it is rejected out of hand—that is, it is not evaluated at all.

Problem Statement and Needs Assessment

This component of the proposal is assigned 10 points (10% of the total points) in a typical proposal to the U.S. Department of Education.

The problem statement addresses a project's general mission or purpose. For example, a project might seek to improve the functional hypermedia literacy of students. This is a lofty purpose. If the project is successful, students will be able to create and use hypermedia. Contrast this with a project whose mission is to increase the number of computers in a school. A reviewer of such a proposal may ask, "So what? How will this improve the quality of education for students in this school?" This proposal does not convey the large-scale view of the funding's ultimate return on the granting agency's investment.

The general mission statement (overall project goal or goals) is followed by several more specific project goals. If the mission is to improve hypermedia literacy, specific goals might be to acquire needed hardware and software, develop and test curriculum, develop student assessment criteria and materials, train teachers, and assist teachers as they implement the new curriculum materials.

The mission and goals are followed by a needs assessment. This section often contains a brief summary of the literature relating to the project. Usually one or two paragraphs long, this review provides a transition to the methodology component, which presents a more detailed review and analysis of the literature.

National Needs Assessment

Every project proposal must justify the proposed mission and goals. What is the need that is being addressed? Who will benefit if the project is carried out, and how will they benefit? Sometimes a needs assessment contains two major parts, one part addressing the national, state, or regional need for the project and the second part assessing local needs. The main emphasis should be on the local need, but it is desirable to tie this in with a state or national need.

A national needs assessment may be provided by reports in the literature. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has developed "standards" for mathematics education in the United States. These standards discuss calculators and make detailed recommendations about their use in schools. The work of the NCTM might serve as a national component in a total needs assessment for a proposal about calculators in local schools. Standards that have been developed by the International Society for Technology in Education are a useful component of a national needs assessment.

You might be tempted to make use of, the 1983 report entitled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. This contains general recommendations about the use of computers in schools. This report is often cited in needs assessments for proposals on this subject. Quoting publications from 1983 in a proposal related to a field changing as rapidly as educational technology strongly suggests that you have not kept up with current events. A proposal evaluator might give you a lower rating for citing out-of-date literature. In a proposal involving rapidly changing technology, many of your citations should not be more than one or two years old.

Finally, a national need may come from a national political agenda. As an outcome of the historic Governors' Meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1989, the Governors of the 50 states adopted the six National Education Goals for the education of all students in the United States. Two other goals were added later. The National Education Goals are that by the year 2000:

1. All children in America will start school ready to learn.
2. The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.
3. All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography, and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our Nation's modern economy.
4. United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.
5. Every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. 
6. Every school in the United States will be free of drugs, violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and alcohol and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.
7. The Nation's teaching force will have access to programs for the continued improvement of their professional skills and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct and prepare all American students for the next century.
8. Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children.

Interestingly, none of these goals directly mentions computer technology. However, the Clinton Administration did set some goals for technology, including that every classroom should be connected to the Internet. Substantial progress occurred toward achieving this goal.

The Bush Administration has consolidated its education agenda into the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This legislation might serve as part of a national needs assessment in a proposal.

Local Needs Assessment

A local needs assessment should specifically address the mission of your proposal. It is not enough to say that the NCTM recommends routine use of calculators in schools. What is happening locally in the school where you will carry out the calculator project? Are there already some calculators in use? Have the teachers been trained? Are appropriate curriculum materials available? What do parents, school board members, and other stakeholder groups think about the idea?

Similarly, it is not sufficient to quote the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Students, Teachers, or School Administrators. What are the state and local goals within these standards areas? A "need" exists where there is a large discrepancy between state and local goals and what is actually being accomplished in the schools and school districts.

Conducting a needs assessment can be a lot of work. However, if your organization has done a careful job of long-range planning, the planning process may well have included a great deal of needs-assessment work. If so, this will prove useful in your proposal writing.

For example, suppose your local science and technology museum has done long-range planning. In the planning process, your museum has discovered that many similar museums have developed large computer-based exhibits and offer various computer courses. Your museum then surveys various local stakeholders, including local companies, schools, and museum members. These surveys show strong support for computer-related activities. Finally, the museum's board of directors sets as one of its long-range goals a substantial increase in computer-related activities. This work of the long-range planning group could make a major contribution to the needs assessment component in a proposal you write.

Methodology

The methodology component of the proposal is assigned 30-35 points (30-35% of the total points) in a typical proposal to the Department of Education. This is by far the largest number of points assigned to any component.

The key idea here is that a project should be designed to solve a problem or accomplish a task. Don't propose to reinvent the wheel. Instead, use a methodology that takes advantage of and builds on the previous work of others. The methodology component of a proposal is closely tied into, and often expands on, the brief literature survey in the Problem Statement and Needs Assessment component.

Everyone has an opinion on how to solve educational problems. Funding agencies are interested both in seminal research on these problems and on implementation of carefully researched ideas that have a high probability of success. Are you proposing to do seminal research, or are you proposing to implement ideas that others have carefully researched? Many implementation proposals lack the references to the research literature that might suggest the proposal writer is quite familiar with was will work--what will lead to success in the project.

Suppose that your overall mission is to improve the level of computer literacy of students in a school. It occurs to you that if teachers knew how to use computers for their own personal productivity, they might better help their students gain computer literacy. But how do you know this is true? Where is the research evidence to back your hypothesis? What methodologies are most apt to lead from increased computer use by teachers to computer literacy among students?

In proposals focusing on research, materials development, and implementation, a through review and analysis of the literature is important. In proposals to agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education, such a literature review is required. The level of detail in the review must be consistent with the size of the proposal. Thus, a $1 million proposal requires a much more detailed literature review than does a $50,000 proposal.

Because it can take hundreds of hours to carry out an adequate review of the literature, Resource Seekers ordinarily write proposals in areas in which they have a great deal of technical expertise. They have already spent hundreds of hours developing the general background necessary for a literature review. They may have obtained a doctorate in this area of study. Thus, they may be able to carry out the literature review for a specific project in only tens of hours.

Indeed, if you are writing a "small" proposal (perhaps for $5,000 or so), you may be able to complete an adequate literature review in just an hour or so. See appendices B, C, and D for examples of small proposals.

Reviewers evaluating your proposal will be familiar with the literature related to your proposal topic. At the same time, they will expect your literature review to increase their own knowledge and bring them up to date. Thus, this section of the proposal provides an opportunity for you to show your professional preparation and competence.

Plan of Operation

The plan of operation component is assigned 10-15 points (10-15% of the total points) in a typical proposal to the Department of Education. This component of a written proposal may be longer and more detailed than is suggested by the modest number of points assigned to it.

Here are six major parts of a plan of operation.

• Project Design
  Resources will be used to solve a problem or accomplish a task. The Project Director will manage the use of the resources. The project needs to be designed so that it can be effectively managed and its goals can be accomplished. A project design includes details on the tasks that will be carried out, the order in which they will be done, and the resources necessary to do them. The proposal reviewers should be convinced that you have carefully thought through the detailed management of the project and that your project design is adequate to the task at hand.
  
• Relation of Objectives to Mission or Purpose
  The problem statement is the anchoring point for the proposal. It says what you intend to accomplish. You will have a number of tasks related to the various objectives. Remember, a goal is supported by measurable objectives.
  
• Use of Resources to Achieve Objectives
  What resources will be brought to bear on the various objectives? A Project Staff Loading Chart, illustrated later in this section, is an effective way to represent use of staff resources. For each staff member and objective, it gives the number of days to be allocated in each project year. The proposal reviewers and the funding agency look very carefully at this part of the plan.
  
• Management or Organizational Plan
  Who will do what, when will they do it, and how will progress and completion be measured? A Project Activity Chart, illustrated later in this chapter, addresses these important questions and lays out a time frame for the task.
  
• Dissemination
  How will the results be disseminated? Dissemination at both the local and national levels is often desirable. Many proposals contain only a weak dissemination plan. Poor dissemination limits the impact of a project.
  
• Equal Access and Treatment of Underrepresented Populations
  This is often a weak part of proposals. Of course, some projects are specifically designed to address this issue. Strength in this part of a proposal can often add several points to its overall evaluation.

Project Staff Loading Chart

Several parts of the plan of operation can be represented using tables or spreadsheets. We will use the staff development workshop proposal (see figure 8.1) to illustrate this idea. The spreadsheet in Figure 8.3 lists all project staff, their FTE, and the number of days allocated to each task. This is a very extensive staff development activity. It will have 10 full days of inservice during the second semester of the year, and 10 full days during the summer. All sessions will be held in the Educational Service District building. We will be making use of a large classroom that is equipped with 40 networked computers.

Some of the staff time may be listed in the form of in-kind contributions of time or time contributed by volunteers. Such details can be given in other sections of the proposal or as notes tied to the chart.

Figure 8.3. A sample Project Staff Loading Chart.

Project Activity Chart

A Project Activity Chart (see Figure 8.4) lists the main activities and sub activities outlined in the proposal. It gives a time line for each. It might also show who is responsible for each activity and how completion will be measured. The spreadsheet format effectively summarizes a lot of information. Sometimes you will want to accompany the spreadsheet with notes similar to the Budget Notes near the end of this chapter.