Are you feeling bored with your grant proposals? Are you getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again? If you are feeling bored, there is a good chance your grant reviewers are also bored reading through your grant proposal. Why not add some creativity to your grant proposals?

Spice up your grant proposals with these creative ideas.

1. Get out of your office and participate in the project/program for which you are writing a grant proposal. You will have more information to draw from if you experience the project/program first hand.
2. Start the grant proposal with a client’s story or a startling statistic that leads into a story. Your nonprofit is doing fantastic work. You are helping people or animals or the environment. You and your nonprofit are making a difference. Share how someone’s life is better because of your nonprofit.
3. Weave in the story of the people, place, and mission throughout your whole proposal including the budget.
4. Include a quote from someone your nonprofit serves – If it is a written proposal, use a text box.
5. If you can format the proposal, use titles, italics, boldface, tables, pictures with captions and/or graphics, and fonts that are easy to read.
6. Leave some white space – even on an online application. Think about how an online application will look printed out.
7. Look at the readability statistics on Word or Grammarly – aim for a 9th-10th-grade reading level, 0% passive sentences, and more than 60% reading ease. You can make it a game to see if you can get all your proposals to those levels.

What sparks your creativity? Reading. Painting. Drawing. Hiking. Playing with your kids/grandkids/fur kids. Running. Journaling. Crafting. Sewing. Knitting. Coloring. Music. Mindfulness. Make sure to add those activities into your work week because burnout is the enemy of creativity. Creativity takes practice so give yourself permission to practice. Your grant reviewers will thank you.

What are your favorite ways to add some creativity to your grant proposals?