Last year we submitted a concept paper for an external grant to fund a rural development project in the Northeast and after a few months of sparse communication thought that we hadn’t gotten it. Then, at the end of the May, we were invited to submit a full proposal that combined that concept paper and another peacebuilding project that we’d pitched to them. The catch is that it had to be in by the end of June.

(I should note that the sparse communication and late notice for the proposal was because of COVID-19. The grant funder didn’t know if they’d have the budget to bring our project on until May.)

It’s always intensive to write a grant proposal for a new funder. It’s a balancing act. Since a proposal is a promise it’s important to make it realistic and grounded…but since a proposal is also an invitation it’s important to make it compelling and evocative. There’s always a tension between balancing their priorities and our priorities. Which is more complicated when it’s new funder so you don’t necessarily understand their priorities. There’s the actual writing; making sure to communicate clearly in accessible language but not totally accessible because we want to show that we have technical mastery too. Gathering all of the requested information and completing all of the supporting documents (e.g. normally, MCC uses a Logical Framework but this funder wanted to see an Effects Chain instead).

This is challenging when it’s all internal but because of MCC’s accompaniment model the proposal also involved two of our local partners, Women Peace Makers and the Cambodian Rural Development Team. So we had to balance their priorities and needs as well. It also added a dynamic where we had to demonstrate MCC’s value added. Why shouldn’t the funder just award the grant to one of the local partners? In an ideal situation, both local partners would have be in the room together with us during the initial planning stage. But because the concept paper only included rural development and peacebuilding was brought in later it resulted in a less holistic process.

Other MCC country programs also have active grants or are submitting proposals to this funder. So there was also a dynamic of making sure we didn’t set up a precedent that would sabotage them. For instance, later in June we were offered more funds if we could agree to a higher cost share… MCC Cambodia could manage this financially but if we agreed to it then we’d be setting up MCC in several other countries to answer why they couldn’t afford a higher cost share.

So I spent a lot of time in June working on this grant proposal. A blessing in disguise was that two partners asked me to review three grant proposals of their own and that offered some good cross-pollination. I was able to share suggestions based on our process and learn things that I could bring back.

I think the end result is very strong and I’m feeling optimistic that it will be approved. I’ll have another post up in a bit on the content of the proposal.