Writing a Successful Grant for Literacy

The Ohio Literacy Resource Center (OLRC) suggests before you start writing a successful grant for literacy that you complete these important preliminary steps first:

figure out your organization’s identity, strengths and weaknesses
make sure the project you decide on supports your organization’s mission
put together a brief but detailed project description or mini-proposal
research potential funding sources
identify funding sources that fit your particular organization’s projects and ideas
gather application information and guidelines
clarify the questions about the guidelines before starting to write
divide up the labor of the various tasks involved and begin

Once you’ve laid a strong foundation, you can begin the process of actually writing the grant. The article Teachers: Top 10 Tips for Successful Grant Writing states that you want to be succinct and to the point as possible when writing a grant for literacy. The majority of grants with official reviewers usually read a tremendous number of submitted grants, often numbering in the thousands.

As such, it’s not the time to experiment with creative writing skills. You want to get straight to the point and state the need, address the project, itself, and provide succinct responses that have been asked by the grant committee. Basically, you don’t want to write colorful, flowery statements to state something that’s matter of fact.

Now that you’ve covered the nuts and bolts in writing a no-frills kind of grant, you now need to consider the most important points in terms of the evaluation aspect. A terrific grant writing article by Eric Digests says that reviewers are often guided by one single question and that is: “How will this proposal increase student literacy?” It’s as simple as that, and the question, itself, should guide the proposal’s conception and its different parts.

The Latino Family Literacy Project, has been funded at many schools and districts through special literacy grants and can make an enormous difference on the overall academic and language acquisition success with English Learners. Please contact our office for specific program research to add to your literacy grant!