Hello Mesher, we just thought of writing a short post to help the youth who may be applying for any upcoming grants. Hope its helpful: Some tips for writing a winning grant application. We were lucky to win sometime back. If you are applying for a small business grant especially the ones that are given by international organizations please bear the following in mind:
🤑 They are very specific on grammar and any spelling mistakes are a real turn off. Remember they are investing in your business so typos give the impression that you didn’t care enough to check your documents. It’s advisable to write out your answers on a word document, spell check then transfer on the portal that you are using.
🤑 Always remember to align your business to the millennium development goals. So for example show how you plan to eradicate poverty? What’s your plan to promote gender equality and empower women? How are you going ensure that you are environmentally friendly? Etc
🤑 They will ask you to show your revenue and profit projections. Please be realistic. For example Say you are selling environmentally friendly packaging. Don’t write that in the first year you expect a sales revenue of 500k with a 50k profit then the second year you expect revenue of 5million. Be realistic and give a growth curve that seems rational. Things may go better but its best to have projections that look reasonable. Remember its not wrong to show a loss in the first year because that’s when you incur capital expenditure and hence so much going out.
🤑 They will ask you about your competitors. How do you intend to deal with them? Don’t just write “better quality products” , that’s a very subjective reason. Give explanations like “I have done market research and customers are demanding better, faster delivery of products and seamless after sales service and I will tap into this gap”. Also please don’t bash your competitors. Keep it very professional.
🤑They will ask you about the risks that your business faces. So for example one of the grants I looked at this year, I was thinking everyone would write about a pandemic being a major risk but less than 10% of the applications mentioned it. Most people wrote employee theft which is very understandable but also think in a strategic way not just operational. For example you can give risks such as lack of access to raw materials for production, increases in government taxes etc
🤑 They will ask you how you intend to mitigate these risks Always use insurance here as one of your main answers. Also think of things like employee training etc
These are just some of the tips that we thought would really help. All the best and if you have any leads on new and upcoming grands please share with us Meshers ndio #Tujijenge sote. Otherwise be on the lookout of MbeleNaBiz & Africa Business Heroes.
