November 26, 2004
Got Excuses?
I need some. I have to work today, and it seems that I'm the only one. I don't want to do any work, so I'm looking for some really good excuses because the ones I've come up with so far are pretty lame:
- There are no trials on Court TV today, so I can't concentrate on my work.
- I have laundry to do.
- I need to go to the grocery store to pick up a few items.
- I haven't watched any of my TIVO'd episodes of Northern Exposure for a while.
- It's too cold.
- The dog needs to be taken for a walk.
- There's nothing good here to eat for breakfast.
- There is no real news on TV today, only pictures of crazed shoppers.
- I want to go to Borders to buy the new Tom Wolfe book.
- Something is wrong with my notebook computer and I should try to fix it.
- The battery in my car is dead for the third time in a week, so I need to get a new one installed.
- I have to empty the dishwasher.
- Everyone else is having fun.
Boo hoo.
Posted by Deborah at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2004
Food, Gratefulness and Happiness
Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. That means that we are legally required to eat a lot of food, be grateful for every single thing in our lives even if we are miserable, and say "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone we see. We are also required to hear the people on the news tell us that once again, it is the busiest travel day of the year and look! -- here is a family traveling with 18 children and their plane is delayed because of a storm and they've spent three days in the airport but they are happy and grateful nevertheless.
Then we get to listen to the sob stories (head-on collision of two cars that were going to grandma's house for dinner!!) and the food stories (grateful homeless people being served turkey dinners), and the stories of inspiration and hope (people who have lost their homes in a fire/hurricane/tornado but are happy anyway because God loves them and things will be better next Thanksgiving). Oh, and let's not forget about the turkey hotline and the people who call to ask if it is OK to eat the turkey if they forgot to turn on the oven.
We also need to tune into the food and health police, who always have important messages for us this time of year. It's OK to drool over and admire your Thanksgiving feast, it's just not OK to eat it. It's all bad for you -- full of fat, salt, sugar, carbs, antibiotics, caffeine, nicotine and who knows what else. If you eat one bite, you will explode and die. The healthy solution? Just bring your pitcher of filtered water to the table and drink all 8 of your requisite glasses while everyone else is pigging out. Make them all feel guilty and envious of your willpower. Make them feel even more guilty by announcing after dinner that you're going to do your 10-mile daily run, but you'll be back in 5 minutes. According to the health police, exercise is an absolute necessity on Thanksgiving Day; otherwise, osteoporosis will immediately set in.
Of course, I get to hear my all-time favorite annual story about Friday being the biggest shopping day of the year and how retailers are soooo worried that people won't be spending their designated amounts of money for gifts and how they might have to go out of business if store traffic doesn't pick up and that too many people are waiting until the last minute to shop but maybe it will be a good holiday shopping season after all but we'll have to wait and see and oh, by the way, we are happy and grateful.
Then we get to stuff ourselves and watch football.
Isn't Thanksgiving great!
Posted by Deborah at 6:49 AM | Comments (1)
November 23, 2004
My India Proposal
Yes, I am still working on it. It's been about a month now, and we are on our fifth draft of the Technical Approach section. Today, my job is to generate the sixth draft. I am wondering if this will ever end. It has to end soon, because it's going to be sent out on December 3. By then, we will probably be on draft #10.
I actually thought that someone else would be responsible for putting everything together, but it looks like that will be my job as well. My scope-of-work called for me to spend 25 days on this proposal, and after today I will have 3 days left. In two years, I have never had to ask this client for additional days to complete an assignment, but I may have to do it this time. We'll see.
Here's how I'll be spending my time today:
- Organizing/reorganizing sections and subsections. I noticed yesterday that someone (who?) had incorporated an additional major section. Where in the world did this come from? The RFP calls for only three major sections, and now there are four. The new section contains stuff that should go in the Technical Approach section. If we don't put it there, we won't get any evaluation points for it.
- Figuring out how to get rid of some of repetitive information that is contained in the first two (or maybe three) subsections of the Technical Approach.
- Addressing the various comments made by what seems like 10 people who have reviewed this latest draft.
- Talking with my client about some of the things that I think are problematic in this draft and figuring out what to do about it.
- Filling in, reformatting and incorporating a bunch of charts and tables. We have quite a few of these because they don't count in the 45-page limitation for the entire proposal.
- Organizing and incorporating the Key Personnel section, which I have to also review and edit.
- Figuring out how to get the entire proposal down to 45 pages.
- Doing everything else.
Some fun, huh?
Posted by Deborah at 4:14 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Toot Your Horn!
It's been a nice morning so far. I spent a few hours doing a proposal review and critique for a new client who is submitting a proposal to the DC Government. The proposal was (hooray!) very well written, although it does need a bit more work on the technical section. I submitted my written comments to this client, and expect that he'll be calling me soon to discuss.
Aside from the technical deficiencies which I think can be easily addressed, I noticed that there were several places where this company could do more to toot its own horn, to help convince the reviewers that this company is the one they should select to do the work. A proposal, after all, is really a marketing document. Although most proposals have a separate section where you can provide details on similar projects, you can also "sprinkle" some of this information throughout your technical section. And, you should also tell them why your company is in the best position to carry out the project. Don't assume that they know, even if you know that they know. You've got to be direct.
- Do you have specialized, proprietary or proven processes or technology? Let them know.
- Can you complete certain tasks ahead of schedule? Tell them.
- Will your approach save them money or be more cost-effective? Tell them why.
- Have you done similar work for other customers or performed similar tasks? Say something about it.
- Have you won special awards or recognization for your work? Mention them.
- Etc., etc.
I sometimes like to use text boxes to highlight some of these things. I put them off to the side (right or left margin), and use a smaller size font and shading. That way, they stand out and don't interfere with the flow of text.
Hope everyone has a good weekend!
Posted by Deborah at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Tricky Stuff
The government has caught on to us. Used to be, there were no page limits for a proposal. Then there were page limits, but no other restrictions. Now, we often get RFPs that not only prescribe page limits, but specify a particular font, font size, and margin settings. That doesn't give us much flexibility when we're trying to squash as much information as we can into a limited number of pages. If we can't change the margins or fonts, what can we do (in addition to editing) to make sure we stay within the page limits? Here are a few tricks:
- Reduce the spacing between lines. In Word, highlight your text, and then go to Format/Paragraph/Line Spacing. Select "Exactly" and then play with the numbers. You can use decimals, for example 11.9 pt. Voila -- you're able to fit more text on a page.
- Move your bulleted and numbered lists to the margin, instead of indenting them.
- Condense your text by reducing the spacing between letters. This doesn't always work well for blocks of text, but if you have a paragraph with only one word on the last line, you can try condensing just that one word so that it fits on the previous line. Select the word, then go to Format/Font/Character Spacing/Spacing and select Condense. Then play with the numbers.
- Change your paragraph settings. If you are double-spacing between flush-left paragraphs, change to single space and indent the first word of the paragraph. Or, reduce the spacing between your double-spaced paragraphs by using the Format/Paragraph/Spacing command. I like to set it at "before" - 0 pt. and "after" - 8 pt. It looks good and saves a lot of space.
- If permitted, use a smaller font size in charts, tables, graphics, and text boxes.
- Take out sentences that just refer to "the chart/table on the following page." You don't have to point out the chart for them to be able to see it.
- If the government says that you have to use a certain font size -- such as 12 pt. -- but doesn't specify the font, use a font that matches the size but takes up less space. One of the best ones that I've found is Elegant Garamond. You may have to purchase it, but it's worth the cost.
Do you know of some other tricks and tips? Let me know.
Posted by Deborah at 5:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
What Will You Do?
Sometimes, I can spot new proposal writers simply by the way they write. Other times, I can spot people who aren't really good writers, but have been assigned to write a section of a proposal because they have the right kind of technical expertise or just because they are there. How can I do this? It's easy. Those who haven't had much experience in proposal writing or those who are just poor writers tend to do two things:
I'm not interested in giving a grammar lesson. In fact, I barely remember any real grammatical rules that I may have learned in my elementary school days. But tenses and voices can be pretty important when it comes to writing a proposal for a grant or contract.
We often use the word "proposal" without thinking about what it really means. In essence, we write proposals to tell funders what we are going to do if -- in the future -- they will be kind enough to award us the contract or grant that we are applying for. So, when we are describing our project and the activities we propose to undertake, we want to use the future tense: "We will implement the following activities," not "We are implementing the following activities" (present tense), unless those activities are something that you are actually doing now. A lot of people tend to mix present and future tenses in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. But you can avoid this if you remember that your proposal describes the things you are going to do after you get your money.
Use of the active voice is also important in proposal writing. The active voice is more forceful than the passive voice. It gives the reader the impression that someone is actually going to do something or that some event is going to occur -- "The Project Director will prepare the final report" -- as opposed to something that will somehow just passively take place -- "The final report will be written by the Project Director." While these may not be the best examples, you can look up the terms "active and passive voice" to get a better idea of what I mean. In my view, the active voice should be used as much as possible when writing a proposal.
And that's my proposal writing tip for today.
Posted by Deborah at 2:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
E-Mail Days (or Daze?)
I get e-mails every day from people who have visited my website. Some are looking for information, others want to know about my services, and still others have nice (or not-so-nice) things to say about my site. Yesterday was a typical e-mail day. Here's what I received:
- An inquiry from an organization in Africa accompanied by a Word file that explains what they are about. They want me to do quite a bit of work for free.
- A request for grant money from an organization in Asia.
- An e-mail from a U.S. organization that is (or will be) preparing a grant proposal that is due 10 months from now. They want to know if I can review and edit their proposal.
- An e-mail in ALL CAPS from someone (where?) who is looking for "big money grants" to start a ministry for homeless families.
- An inquiry from a U.S. company that is looking for proposal assistance and wants more information on my services.
- An e-mail from an individual who is a new grantwriter and is seeking advice on marketing and fee-setting.
- An e-mail from another U.S. organization that wants to know if I can provide advice and editorial assistance for a proposal they are currently preparing.
- An inquiry from an African (I think) company that wants me to provide them with information on a tender for men's clothing.
- An e-mail from someone in the U.S. who wants a copy of my resume but doesn't say why.
Just another day in the exciting? life of a consultant.
Posted by Deborah at 6:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2004
Site Update and Some Thank You's
This morning I updated my main site at Proposalwriter.com with some useful new resources. You can see what I've added by going to my What's New Page.
For some time now, I've wanted to publicly thank the Foundation Center for including numerous links to various pages of my site. For those who don't know, the Foundation Center is the world's foremost authority on foundations, grants and philanthropy. I don't know exactly how many links to my pages they have included, but there are at least 4 or 5 links to me on different pages of their site. So, thank you, Foundation Center -- it would be an honor to be mentioned even once.
I also want to thank all of the people who regularly read and have subscribed to this blog. I never dreamed that so many people would be interested in proposals and related subjects. So, thanks everyone!
And that's all I have to say today.
Posted by Deborah at 8:55 AM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2004
OK, I'm Back...
and happy to be home. Except, of course, the airplane cough and cold have come home with me. So now I'm making meals out of prescription cough syrup that expired a year ago. Why didn't I buy some of this stuff while I was in India? I often buy meds overseas, and this trip I picked up some Amoxcillin and Ambien. But I didn't think of buying cough syrup -- darn! Now if only there was something for jet lag. This is the second night that I've gotten up at 2 AM. It will take about a week for my body clock to return to normal. That's the trouble with short trips. You get somewhere, and by the time you have adjusted to the new time zone, it's time to leave and the whole process starts all over again.
Before I left Delhi at the ridiculous hour of 3 AM Sunday morning, I formatted the second draft of the technical proposal and e-mailed it out to people for review. The formatting didn't work out very well. I ended up with five levels of text, which -- to my mind -- is two levels too many. But that will be fixed in time (I hope), although my feeling is that we will end up with four levels.
My client called yesterday afternoon. Apparently, while I was gone, they decided that I should also prepare the Management and Staffing section of the proposal. I am not sure how this came to be, since I was originally told that this was someone else's responsibility, and my scope-of-work makes no mention of it. But that's OK. I will get it done.
Then, when I turned on the computer this morning, there was an edited version of the technical section in my e-mail. Someone on my client's staff had already edited the draft I had sent out for substantive -- not editorial -- review. It is far too early to start editing. It will likely end up to be wasted effort, because the versions that I expect to receive from the technical reviewers will probably be considerably different in terms of substance and much of the wording will have changed anyway.
Everyone wants to be an editor. Inherently, this does not sound like a bad idea, but it is. It's a bad idea because we all have different writing styles and different ideas of how things should be done. Active or passive voice? Serial commas or not? Two spaces after a period or one? Etc., etc. You wouldn't think that things like the number of spaces after a period would be something that people would want to take the time to discuss, but questions like these can actually evolve into major arguments and time-wasters. I once worked with someone who was fixated on spacing. She would take a whole proposal and go through it to find places where there were extra spaces between words, and would mark them with a red pen. We don't really have time for this type of nonsense in a proposal -- our goals should be clarity, readability and consistency.
Aarggh, don't get me started on the subject of editing...
Posted by Deborah at 2:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 4, 2004
Accomplishments
I'm still in India this Friday morning and getting ready to pack in case I need to move to a different hotel. They are booked solid here, but I'm holding out some hope that there will be a cancellation so I can keep my room for a couple more nights.
We've come a long way with the proposal. I spent much of Wednesday and part of yesterday working on the second draft -- writing new sections, re-writing the stuff I wrote before, and reorganizing some of the material written by other people. Yesterday afternoon we had a review meeting. Everyone seemed very pleased with the progress that's been made to date. The one thing I need to do now is to format the document to make it easier for people to review. I didn't have time to do that yesterday, but everyone agreed that it is needed before a more intensive review can take place. So I will be working on that today and/or tomorrow. We're just talking basic formatting here with clearly lettered/numbered subsections so that the structure is more obvious.
What we've got now is a 50-page technical section of the proposal. Eventually it will need to be condensed to approximately 25 pages, since the page limit for the entire proposal is 45 pages. But right now we're not concerned with that because we're focusing on content and substance.
Once I've sent out the draft again with better formatting, each of the three organizations that are working on this proposal here will do an intensive review of what's been written. Various people in each organization will read it, make changes, comments, additions, etc. Then I will get back three new versions that I'll have to combine into one. We talked about doing a round-robin on the document so that I would end up with only one new version, but that won't work due to people's schedules, an upcoming holiday here in India, and other factors. It makes things a bit more complicated and time-consuming, but that's the way it needs to be done for now.
Time for some breakfast.
Posted by Deborah at 7:33 PM | Comments (0)
November 1, 2004
Some Progress
Well, it's 7 AM Tuesday morning here in New Delhi, and I'm getting ready to go to a meeting. I've got an hour to spare before I leave, so I'm just sitting around in my hotel room having some coffee. Yesterday, an IT guy from the hotel came up and looked at my computer, because I was having so much trouble getting an internet connection. He took out my wireless card, put in another card, and did some other stuff. It appears to be working much better now, although the connection still goes in and out.
The purpose of the meeting today is to review and discuss the first draft of the proposal. Amazingly enough, everyone turned in their assignments on time. The draft was e-mailed out to everyone last night. It's pretty much a mish-mosh, but that's to be expected. The second draft will be due on Friday, and once that is done, I can get out of here. I was originally supposed to leave on Saturday but the flights were booked, so I am ticketed on Sunday. I'm going to see if I can find another flight on Saturday that I can get on. I'm really tired and the airplane cold didn't help things any. Frankly, after spending half my working life going back and forth to various overseas destinations, it just isn't appealing to me any more. Lots of people would probably kill for these international opportunities, but for me it's just getting old. Maybe I just won't travel anymore -- I don't know. I've said that before but I've always ended up getting on the plane.
One more thing. If you're in the U.S., please go and vote tomorrow. I did an absentee ballot before I left. Yes, I voted for Kerry. Things have just got to change. That is my one and only political statement on this blog.
Posted by Deborah at 8:54 PM | Comments (0)
