Attachments and Supplemental Materials

by Cynthia M. Adams, CEO, GrantStation.com

Attachments and supplemental materials can provide the winning edge when your proposal is compared with others. Throughout the proposal development process, collect materials that can be included with the grant request. You may not end up using them all but at least you will have a set of possible attachments to sort through when the time comes to package the grant request.

In most cases, your grant request initially goes to a program officer, who reviews it to make sure everything they’ve asked for has been included and that your request fits the grantmaker’s goals and objectives. After the preliminary review, the next step is to distribute the proposal to a decision-making committee or the board of directors. The decision-makers will often not have the opportunity to "see" the attachments, so make it a point to refer to any attachments/supplemental materials that should be reviewed in the body of the full proposal. For example, if you quote from one of your letters of support in the project description section, reference this letter by adding: (Please see attached Letter of Support, Superintendent of...