What are the most common mistakes organisations make when developing proposals that should be avoided?
Question submitted by: Bonsile Dlamini, Eswatini Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders, Eswatini
The most common proposal mistakes often happen before you write the proposal. The final document is shaped by decisions about whether, when and how to pursue the opportunity.
The first mistake is applying when there is no genuine fit. If you do not meet the funder’s eligibility requirements, their priorities do not genuinely align with your work, or there is little reason to believe the opportunity suits your organisation, it may be better to walk away. The question should not only be, “How do we write this proposal?” It should also be, “Should we write it at all?”
Starting too late is another common problem. Good proposals need time for programme design, partner engagement, budgeting, internal review and, most importantly, thinking. When everything is compressed into the final days, weaknesses become much harder to address.
For me, weak project design is one of the biggest issues. I see projects designed backwards from the available budget, logframes that don’t quite connect, untested assumptions, and problem analyses that don’t demonstrate a strong understanding of the context. Good writing cannot compensate for that. The project needs to make sense.
Avoid shortcuts: recycling old language without adapting it to the funder, bringing partners in at the last minute, skipping internal review, or presenting a budget that doesn’t match the narrative. Experienced funders notice.
Another mistake is describing activities rather than explaining change. A proposal can be full of activities and still leave the reader asking what will actually be different because of the investment.
Finally, don’t make your organisational capacity invisible. Show your systems, and be honest about areas you are strengthening.
A strong proposal is one coherent story: the context leads to the problem, the problem leads to the approach, the approach leads to the outcomes, and the budget supports the whole argument.
Before you polish the language, ask:
“Does this make a convincing case for why this problem, why this approach, why this organisation and why this investment, now?”
That is where the real work is.
(This answer was provided by Lucy Njue, a Kenyan fundraising and sustainability strategist, and Founder and Executive Director of Realtime Insights)
