Letters of Acceptance and Rejection

In our last class we discussed the development and structure of a needs statement in the grant writing process. We went over how a needs statement provides the donor with crucial information about the organization and their financial goals as it pertains to the mission statement and how that goal relates to the problem within a macro level. The needs statement must make sense within a broader context and should avoid “circular reasoning” when it comes to a solution. In other words, the solution can’t be based on an organization’s assumption but should be based on data and should make sense on a broader level. A needs statement should cover the nature of the problem, the contributing factors to the problem, the impact of the problem or need, and some approaches for improved results

We were also tasked with informing all of the organizations as to whether or not they had been chosen to move forward in the grant-writing process. Two committees split off to write the “rejection” and “accepted” letters while the rest of the group helped edit and proofread the letters. We then each sent the acceptance letters to our assigned organizations.