BACKGROUND
This workshop was basically held as a result of the growing demand for associate members specifically from Africa as a result of their interest in out sourcing funds in their libraries in order to meet the quality service delivery in the various libraries.
In this session tips were given on how to write a good grant proposal to attract funding from donors. Tips such as:
- The first thing you have to find out is who is, who is funding libraries or who is funding educational institutions in your country.
- Research again to know what is the interest area of the donor. In this case, before you start writing any grant proposal you need to make sure that you have got an in dept knowledge about the funding organization, what they do and what area of interest they normally give out their funds or support. And in some cases you need to make contact with any other organization you know of that has benefited from their grant. This is to enlighten and broaden your knowledge in terms of research about the organization before writing for a grant
- You need to be realistic in your grant proposal writing so that you don’t create doubt in the minds of the donor. The budgets must be realistic given details of how each money will be spent and in addition with time line to each events. In this case if you are not familiar in budgeting, it’s advisable to collaborate with some other institutions or persons who had benefited from such funds to learn from their budgeting methods or break down.
- In your proposal you must also advocate to the donors in order to convince them that this is the problem, if they fund you this is how this problem will be solve stating a realistic methodology, and what are the benefits in term of skills, education or supports the beneficiary will get.
- Finally, you have to be honest or trust wordy. Donors are looking forward to work with people that are honest and in most cases they are looking for partnership so that even if one person is absent or past way (death) the work will still continue.
MY REFLECTION
Coming to Mortenson Center is an opportunity that I will ever be grateful for. I was virtually a novice in grant writing but through the teaching however I learnt a lot. Hopefully from the foundation given to me I hope to build upon it when I return home for implementation. I hope to collaborate with my immediate boss, the University stake holders and decision makers as well as other partners to see how we can come up with something which need funding. My library need a face lift in many areas but I hope through this eye opener together we can make a change.