The Grant Proposal as Organizing Plan

While background information is good, with so many proposals, it's not clear how the work will happen. We need plain, specific information about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it.

—GAYE EVANS, Appalachian Community Fund

If the promise looks extravagant, it probably is.

—HUBERT SAPP, Hartford Foundation

Grassroots groups tend to operate minute by minute and hand to mouth: dealing with crises, putting out “brush fires,” worrying about the payroll. When the world is falling apart and your group is close behind, long-range planning is considered a luxury. For many of us, it's hard to justify taking time—our most precious resource—to create a comprehensive plan to guide our strategy.

Under these conditions, improvisation becomes a way of life and, for many people, a badge of honor. After years of improvising their way from project to project, some organizers resist planning, fearing it might limit their flexibility or autonomy. As activist and financial consultant Terry Miller writes in Managing for Change (1992, p. 6), “Some will argue that they cannot plan because something unexpected may happen. There is no better way to ensure something unexpected happening than not to plan. If you have a plan and the situation changes, you will be working with a revised plan; otherwise, you will be working with revised instinct.”