Successful grant writing is a highly iterative, detail-oriented process. To craft a truly great grant proposal, you need to demonstrate to a potential funder how all of the parts of a grant application both fit together and affect one other.

To ensure a grant proposal is both logically and structurally sound, use a logic model (also called a theory of change) to demonstrate how all of the moving parts in a proposal work together to form a cohesive, measurable project. A logic model is a blueprint that evaluates and measures how certain assumptions, inputs, activities, and outputs (the process-focused components of your program or project) lead to the desired goals and short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes that will best serve the target audience and effect social change.

Pushing your grant writing skills to the next level is an exercise in focusing on the details. Our newest course “Advanced Grant Writing” shows you how to ask iterative questions of yourself, your team, and your proposed program in order to sharpen and refine your grant proposal and push it to the top of the pack. By looking closely at how a logic model can shore up your proposal at each key stage, the course will demonstrate how to push your planning, evaluation, and budgeting from good to great.

Most of us spend half (or more than half) of our waking hours in the workplace. At work, we communicate with a range of people with different roles, experiences, cultures, perspectives, and power levels. Knowing how to communicate skillfully across such a wide spectrum of colleagues is an essential skill set in the modern workplace.