The GR forms are your best opportunity to communicate why your grant should be funded.

Remember that your audience is roughly 40 people who have no knowledge of the grant or likely the agency (even if this is a repeat agency, we need to be reminded about it again.). Your (member and agency) job is to express the essentials about the grant in the forms so that the reader ends up with a clear idea of who MBTF is giving money to and what they will do with it.

Also keep in mind that there might be as many as 12 grants for the members to read for one meeting, so brevity is appreciated. Please provide as much information as needed to understand the grant, but not pages and pages.

Overall: Avoid vague terminology and jargon and keep it simple; it’s better to say ‘building’ rather than ‘constructing infrastructure’. Be specific and avoid generalizations. If a statistic is cited, be able to name the source.

Member Form:
This is the place to get your reader excited about the project, because you are excited enough to do the work to put the grant together.

Matching question: This is asking if the MBTF grant payment is conditioned on the Agency raising matching funds. Matching grants are useful to stimulate fundraising. The ratio of MBTF to Agency may be anything. A 2:1 match is requesting $2 from MBTF for every $1 raised by the Agency. A 1:1 ratio is an even match, and 1:2 would be $1 of MBTF money for every $2 raised.

Matching grants are appreciated because MBTF funds are leveraged into a larger fundraising goal, and the effect of our grant can expand.

Short description: This does not have to be limited to one sentence, but you should be able to summarize the agency and grant purpose in a brief, simple manner. Please cover the who, what, when, where and how here.

Impact Assessment: This is where you tell the reader why you think this is a good agency and grant, and what you hope it will accomplish. What excites you about the grant and why should we fund it?

Highlight your grant’s strengths here, such as their track record, your involvement, the impact you’ve witnessed, the need it fills.

Also address any weaknesses the grant might have, and explain why they are not deal- breakers.

Personal Involvement: This is self-explanatory. Personal involvement is not a prerequisite for a grant but it does strengthen it.

Agency Form:

After reading this request, a lay person should know what you plan to do with the MBTF funds, and how you will do it. Please frontload the essentials of who, what, when, where and how in the beginning summary.

Same overall style guides: Remember that your readers are not conversant in your field and avoid all jargon and vague terminology. If you refer to something by its initials, first write out the full name followed by the initials in parentheses.

Brevity is very much appreciated. We are interested in this grant and your agency but we do not need a detailed history by year or to know every aspect of your programs.

Please be sure to answer all the questions.

The percentages in Section C, Question 2 should equal 100.

Answers in the body of the grant request need to tie into the financial statements and make sense. Especially important is that the answer to Section D, Question 1 “what percent of the project budget is the amount you are requesting?” corresponds to the project budget.

We strongly prefer grants that accomplish a specific purpose, I.e. “project.” If the request is for general operating support, the Project” would be your projected budget for the upcoming period, and the MBTF grant would be the percentage of loss you hope to offset, or the percentage of the profit you hope to increase. If for a specific area of your operations, use the same method for just that area.

We do not reproduce in color. Please submit materials in black and white only, and especially eliminate any shading or color used in the financial statements. Please do not use all bold or Caps in your text.

Financials:

1. The project budget is the most important part of the grant.

   1. The grant request cannot be completed without a project budget.

      1. The costs to accomplish the project should be detailed.

2. The annual agency budget is needed to see the projections of operations for the current or upcoming year.

   1. Whenever possible, please eliminate detailed subaccounts, and present the annual budget, not monthly.

   2. Ideally the budget will not be more than 2 pages.

   3. Please note whether the budget contains the costs for the project or not.

3. The financial statements for the most recent fiscal year end are required.

   1. They consist of a Balance Sheet (Statement of Assets, Liabilities & Equity) and a Profit & Loss (Statement of Operations).

   2. We prefer those produced by your CPA at year end, but an internal printout is acceptable.