Aaron Ausland raises the age old question of how exactly ‘participatory’ all this community-centred development (and conservation) work is. It’s a serious and almost inescapable problem. Our overall goal might be facilitating community development, but in any given meeting we are almost certainly focused on facilitating the next step of our project. A good facilitator [...]
Posts Tagged ‘proposal writing’
22 Mar
Bad news brings in the wonga
We’re all familiar with the unfortunate fact of life that bad news tends to be much more newsworthy than good news, e.g. this recent example. This is doubly true for NGOs, as Karen Rothmeyer points out. (H/T: Tom Murphy) We depend upon bad news to bring in the money. So, although we do like to [...]
7 Feb
Good strategies need good implementation
We’ve just submitted another funding application. As is usual in such cases I took on the lion’s share of the writing. Indeed this is one of the most important roles played by me and my peers in other small NGOs about the developing world. We’re the rain-makers for three reasons. Firstly our command of English [...]
28 Jan
My ideal donor
I just received a delightful email from a chap who was setting up a new grants scheme for somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. He had read my rant entitled Preposal Prepostery, and wanted to know what advice I would give to a donor wanting to do the right thing. My dream come true: a chance to [...]
10 Dec
Proposal Prepostery
We recently got a consultant’s report appraising a project proposal in which we’re a partner. The good news is that the donors are going to fund it, but they want a revised proposal. Apparently some fairly important issues were not clear to the donors which is fair enough. However, appraising consultants clearly believe they’re not [...]
24 Jun
A useful lesson
When I was about 15 I had an English teacher who didn’t much care for dissenting views. A critical or negative essay about one of our set texts would be marked down as, or so it seemed, showing insufficient appreciation for the magnificent literary powers of the author. In quasi-Orwellian fashion we were supposed to [...]
