HOW TO WRITE A GRANT PROPOSAL

Mr. John Silva

September 22, 2007
Astoria Plaza
Oritgas Center, Pasig City

(Host Intro: Writer, fundraiser, and advocate for the arts and heritage preservation, the next speaker know what he wants and how to get it, and yes, he really wants world peace. Here to show you how to write winning, unforgettable, and fun grant proposals, is the senior consultant of the National Museum, Mr. John Silva.)

John: Good afternoon.

Audience: Good afternoon.

John: When I was asked by Kara to give a little talk on fundraising because she had attended my grants workshop, grant writing workshop several months ago, when she specifically told me that the audience would be cancer advocates, I was immediately drawn to it, and I immediately said I would do it, and I would do it waiving my fees because of the fact that one of my best friends was just diagnosed with breast cancer. She got her operation, she now considers herself a survivor and she’s fighting her way and she has been doing such great environmental work and progressive work that I felt that I am doing this in tribute to her courage; and I guess now I realize that I’m doing this in tribute to your courage and to the work that you all do.

(Audience claps)

I don’t say that to sort of scratch myself on the back, but I think it’s also very important when we’re asked and called to volunteer that we do it, and that sometimes people don’t know it, and it’s just sort of important that volunteerism is something we are all asked to do.

My work work, of course, is with the National Museum, and with the fundraising for the Museum, but whenever I can do this kind of work, I’m very happy to do it. Much as the focus of the introduction had to do with my work in arts and culture, I actually did, for several years, be the director of an AIDS organization in the United States. I started an AIDS organization for the prevention of AIDS in the Asia Pacific Island Community, along with taking care of people with HIV, since nobody would take care of them when they were stigmatized by their parents. So, I must say that this is sort of a parallel route and so I know the hardship that we all face in raising funds for sometimes a disease that may be stigmatized, I don’t think it is as much stigmatized now about breast cancer as it was in the past, but it is the same kind of parallel situation.

I’m giving you a truncated version of my How to Write a Grant Proposal, which is usually a whole day course; and so in one hour, you are going to become experts in fundraising. But, let me tell you what I’m going to leave with you, though, is I’m going to leave you with a sense of confidence, because you have to be confident about writing a fundraising appeal, either it’s a proposal or it’s a letter. Two, I want you to be able to get a sense of urgency. One of the reasons why a lot of my successful fundraising appeals is always been with the notion that what we’re asking for is urgency, and that it has to be taken care of now. That’s very important. And lastly, I think I’m going to sort of make you understand that brevity is more important than long winded writing. And I say that because I know that I always think about the whole notion that when we’re faced with issues like illness or death, we actually use very sparing words; we don’t become loquacious, we don’t become very, we don’t become super descriptive. Usually, when I have to visit, when I have to pay my respects to someone who just passed away and I’m in the church, and I see the widow, you have very few words to say. You just sort of embrace the widow and just say “my condolences” and that’s that. And that’s how spare your words should be on an issue that is very urgent, that deals with sickness, with getting better, with death and dying. So, without much ado, I’m going to start with my How to Write a Grant Proposal.

I just wanted to show you some of the work that I used to be in the past various organizations that I was part of. I was development director for Oxfam America, for Greenpeace, for a Boys’ School called Salisbury School in Connecticut, the North Star Fund, which is an alternative funding organization in New York City; for Mother Jones Magazine, which is also an alternative magazine, and then for the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, which is the organization that helped to care of people with HIV and doing AIDS prevention.

I wanted to start off with my work. Where do I work now? I work at the National Museum, and this my building. This is the former Finance building in Luneta, in the Rizal Park. There you can see all of our treasures; I can consider myself a steward for our national treasures.

This is the Manunggul Jar that you can find in National Museum. I guess everybody knows this, the Spoliarium, and I wanted to say that this is one of our masterpieces that hang in the National Museum, and it is the painting that inspired Jose Rizal to decide to become a radical; and because of that, he became our national hero and helped found the nation. So, we are one of the very few countries in the world that can say that our country was founded on and inspired by a painting by Juan Luna. I’m saying all of these things because of the fact that I have to raise 40 million dollars for the rehabilitation of the National Museum; and I also raise every year, we have a budget of 300 million pesos for the National Museum. We give that budget to the national government and we are only given a hundred million. So, we have to raise 200 million every year for the National Museum. Arts and culture, like health, gets the lowest priority in any national government budget.

So, what do I do? Aside from raising the money, I have to write about the topic; and this is maybe something that I want to share with you. The reason why I am also able to get the funding that I need for my various causes is because I also write about the subject, and I make sure they come out in the local press, or in the national press, or even in the international press. So that people know what the subject matter is all about. I’m just now introduced to the various cancer organizations that are now throughout the country; I actually, and I must frankly tell you, I only know only 5% of the organizations, and so all of these are new to me, and yet all of you are doing good work, and all of you should come out in the local press. All of you should have much more public presence because public presence means then that you can develop a constituency. And when you develop a constituency, that’s when you can garner public support. But if you don’t have your constituency, and you are dependent on grants writing, which is also good, but in the end, you have to go back to your constituency.

When I was doing AIDS work, nobody wanted to fund me. So, what did I have to do? I have to go to the parents of the people that I was helping with HIV and AIDS. The brothers and sisters, the friends, those were my constituents. But how do you get to know your constituents? Let them know about your particular work.

In this truncated version, I just realized now when I see this, I know I am putting it in the context of a whole day, and now I’m putting it in the context of an hour. Let me change my identity for a while, and my identity now is the program officer of a foundation, which I also do. I represent several foundations. We give out funds to deserving organizations. And so I wanted to show you what is the head set of a program officer when a proposal is being sent to them concerning your concerns. I thought about it and thought about it, and I’m giving you a checklist of what a program officer looks at when he or she thinks a proposal is of importance.

One is how does the organization raise money for its daily operating costs? Now, that is to say that when you usually apply for funding from a grantor, you’re usually asking for funding for a particular project; and so what happens for me as a program officer, I review how is it that on a daily basis, how do you keep yourself alive on a daily basis? Because what scares us is that maybe if we give you the money for the project, a lot of that money might be sucked into daily operating cost. We do know in reality that up to 15 to 20% of the project’s grant goes to operating costs. Reason is because we know that the director, the assistant director, etc. have to be paid, and that they’re going to actually administer and review the project. So, we allow that, but anything more than 20%, we’re very hesitant about giving, and we want to make sure that the organization is financially viable on a daily basis.

Who are the board of trustees? And who is its executive director? There are 300,000 non-profit organizations in our country, of which 60,000 are certified. But even with 60,000, it’s a small universe, and so when I receive a proposal, if I may not know you, we Filipinos are so connected personalistically that just about three or four phone calls, I will find out who is this board of director? or who is this executive director? What am I looking for? I’m certainly looking for reputation. I’m basically doing due diligence like a banker because we are going to give funds away and we want to make sure that we give the funds to the right people; and so your board of directors is very important. Who you choose as your board of directors, and I beg you to always, especially if you’re a start up organization, to choose board of directors that are going to work for you as volunteers, not to be decorations. They’re going to out there, they’re going to sell the fundraising tickets, they’re going to try and get money for you, they’re going to go all out, but not just for pure decoration. If they’re going to be there for decorative purposes, you have lifeless board members. And your executive director has to be that visionary. That executive director has to be the passionate person, has to be the one screaming and shouting everyday about your cause. It is important. They have to be almost a little weird, a little obsessive, because they will get the notoriety; rather than somebody who just feels like a bureaucratic executive director.

What makes a proposal unique? Doable? Successful? Unique because in reality, there are maybe several thousand children’s organizations dealing with street children in our country, and yet if we look outside, I don’t think anything has happened anymore that 10 years ago; and yet there are more and more and more street children’s organization. So, there’s a problem. There’s a problem in that it doesn’t seem like they’re doing their job. So, you have to have a unique proposal that is going to say “My work is really going to make the difference, and it’s doable, and it will really reap success.”

One of the things that we now do in the funding world is now we now have baseline targets. We want to see pre and post. So, for example, I am with Sinerhiya, which is an education reform organization, and whenever we go, before we go into any municipality, we checked the grade levels of the children, and then a year later, after we’ve done our intervention, we check the grade levels again of the children; and we always want to make sure that of course, the grade levels have gone up. The reading and comprehension skills have gone up. So that then we can present that to our funders, and then the funders will say, yes, we’ll give you more money. Funders nowadays will not give you money just on the basis of feel good, compassionate work. It’s got to have results.

Are there counterpart funds, if partially funded? This is something you may not know, which is that in a given year, as a program officer, I may be giving let’s say 20 million pesos per quarter, okay? In that particular quarter, I have 30 worthwhile organizations that I want to give, but I’m limited by the amount that I can only give that quarter. So, you know what happens is we start weaning away, we start relooking at the proposals and we say this proposal will continue its work even if, let’s say, we only give 3/4s of the funding that they wanted. You don’t know that, you think that you’re being funded 3/4s or half only because maybe they don’t like you as much. That’s not the reality. The reality is that we have a lot, we can only give so much, but we now have to make sure that everybody gets their share. So, we want to see that you’re also doing fundraising work, or you want to say somewhere in your proposal that you are going to make sure that this thing will work out regardless of how much you are actually eventually going to get from the funder.

Will this grant be groundbreaking? Will it add to the foundation’s prestige? I have consulted for the Ford Foundation, and for several other large foundations, and in reality, they also have egos. The ego is that they’d like to be with an organization that they can pride themselves with and say “we funded them.” And so, you’ll want to show that your organization adds to the foundation’s prestige; and that also adds to your organization getting the funding.

Does the organization require assistance after the grant? This is very important because this is a challenge to all of you when you write your proposals. The challenge is when you present the final figures for your proposal, let it be that figure – that is to say that you want to be able to achieve the success of the proposal with the funding that you are getting; none of this sort of “oh, maybe next year, we could ask for another 500,000.” Because from a program officer’s point of view, we feel that when we looked at your proposal, it is self contained, and when we give you the grant, we feel that you are going to achieve successes with what is already given to you. The second year, the third year, we may give or we may not give; but we want to make sure that you are going to be successful with the first chunk of money we gave you.

I want to share with you a confidential memo that I wrote. I took out the names just so that the names won’t get involve, but this is how I would write a confidential note to the board of trustees of a foundation, to let you know my thinking on how a grant gets approved or not approved, no? So, there it is, memo 2, from me, and then “Dear Board of Trustees,” and then “I was to review five proposals,” and then I developed my criteria for how I’m going to give the money away. My criteria was that the proposal had to approximate the vision and mission of our foundation. That means the vision had to be so very similar to ours. Second, the organization had a working track record of at least three years. Third, the grant size must be a maximum of only 350,000 pesos. So that’s all we can give.

So, you can see that the program officer actually has very immense powers, and so may I ask you that when you’re thinking of applying to, let’s say, to a foundation, and if they have program officers, call them up and ask for a meeting with the program officer to introduce yourself, and to already let them know who you are. Because then the program officer will tell you what is his or her criteria for funding, and with that you are a lot more knowledgeable about how to craft your proposal.

So, here were some of the proposals I reviewed. One was about publishing three storybooks containing civic education, and the request was for book development and production cost. The project cost was 890,000.00 and we did not recommend funding because as I said, we are not in the business of publishing and marketing books. Second, this is for a one-year sustaining project benefiting the 28 baranggays of Lubok municipality from the Children’s Choir to the Folk Bands. It is an overall proposal to preserve the culture of the municipality, the cost is 4,502,000.00. Clearly, we did not recommend funding because the whole proposal fits the funding criteria of NCCA, and the financial are large, larger than the maximum, and the thrust is not in keeping with our foundation’s mission and vision.

I also want to show you that in red what happens to programs officers is if we do not think that you are a fit, we will also think of other places that you should apply for to get a fit. So, if you are again denied, please don’t just take it personally. You can actually call the foundation and say “What was wrong with my proposal?” And they invariably will tell you or they will direct you to a place that is more fitting for your proposal.

Third, there is a request for 500,000 pesos to purchase a thousand chairs for the students, we did not recommend funding. The association is already fundraising dinner for its alumni and it seems they will reach their fundraising goal, and we, the foundation, is not in the business of providing chairs; and Rotary Clubs should be tapped for the purpose.

Fourth, an education program to fund out of school youths with emphasis on instructural managers, request us for 150,000. We did not recommend funding because the timeline for the program began January 2005, I had gotten the proposal in March of that year. We had little knowledge of the organization’s track record and they did not state how they would benchmark students’ progress. Again, I told you about the new foundation ruling of making sure we know whether you have done better or not. The program has some merit conceptually and is best for their organization to monitor the organization’s work for future collaborations and partnership.

Again, this is where I will tell you I get a lot of rejections. You will get a lot of rejections when you write proposals, but never feel disheartened. What maybe a non-fit for the foundation now maybe a fit next year. So again, call them up and ask what happened here? What happened there? A lot of it has to do with the fact that sometimes, board of trustees has incredible influence on the foundation’s giving. If the board of trustee says “you know, this year I don’t want to give to breast cancer, I want to give to ovarian cancer or something else.” Then you seems like you’re out of the loop, but actually you may be in the loop next year.

The proposal five, is a continuation of grant to help in establishing children’s museums in the following sites; and then we recommended a grant of 500,000. The president of that organization is one of the original founders of our foundation, and therefore he’s used to its vision-mission. We recognized the work in educational value of that organization since we knew the president. And then the proposal request for 623, with them providing a counterpart funding of 768, that was music to our ears, because it meant that they were willing to give money. We in fact, ended with recommending a grant higher than the maximum amount in recognition of its work, and we even considered funding the full amount requested. Why? Because I had rejected all the four other proposals and we had a lot of money to give away. So, a lot of this is arbitrary and human, you know.

So, what is the summary? One, a grant is rejected if it does not subscribe to the mission-vision of the foundation; and this is where I beg you all, instead of chopping down so many trees and writing shotgun proposals, what I call generic proposals and sending to 1,000 foundations, that’s not going to work. You must focus like a sharp shooter on 10 of the foundations. You do a lot of research. Only 5 or 10 of the foundations that you know has the highest possibility of you getting funding, and then work on that and make personalized fundraising proposals or fundraising appeals. That to me is a better way than if you send generic proposals. And as I can tell you as a program officer, I read generic proposals and once I sensed it’s a generic proposal, it’s in the basket. Other funding agencies may be more appropriate, I told you about why we do that.

Funding request can be fulfilled by its own fundraising plans. If we feel that an organization can actually do it, we’d rather that you do it rather than depending on a grant. No mechanism to benchmark or show results later. The organization is unknown, that’s why you need to always advocate and present your face to the public. And then the organization that did get a grant fulfilled the funder’s mission-vision. The organization showed they had counterpart funding and the funding cycle had the monies to fund. That’s how, I think, should a regular memo to the board of trustees for funding happens, at least in my beat.

This is something you need to also again really think about is when you go to the foundation, it’s important because then you get to know who the program officer is. I’ve been wining and dining the Aboitiz Foundation and I was finally there just a couple of days ago; and so I found out who it is really, aside from the program officer, I now realize who it is that actually says yes or no. Well, I’m not going to tell you yet, you have to do your research. I did my research. Okay, let me just give you a hint, it’s the wives of the Aboitizes. Okay? All right? Okay, that’s all you know. And so it turns out it’s not a program officer that I had to wine and dine, it’s actually Mrs. Aboitiz, right?

Anyway, so you know the program officer. What you want to do is you want to visit with the program officer and it’s very important because you want to learn the officer’s interests. You know when you read the brochure of a foundation, the brochure of the foundation is actually inadequate or it could be old, it could be stale, it could be five years old; and the officer has, it turns out, in some cases, the officer has immense powers, like me, I know that. I know that sometimes the board does not want to deal with giving money away; they just give it to me whole hog whatever I had to say. So, you want to know who the officer is because the officer maybe has certain little quirks that you need to know, which will be his or her kiliti, which will add to the impact of your proposal.

Learn the foundation’s interest. I told you that sometimes the foundation’s funding interest changes with the advent of new board members. So the board members might have an effect on the foundation’s trust, and you need to know that again when you sharpen the makings of your proposal.

Lastly, you want to also advocate for your project before proposal submission. As I’ve told you, there are so many tens of thousands of organizations out there; so you need to go in and do your rah-rah pitch and make sure that when you leave, the program officer’s totally impressed by your organization.

You want to secure tips on making your proposal be selected. Sometimes I do this, and I know many other program officers do, which is that sometimes when I read the proposal and I just see a couple things that are sort of jarring or not in cue with the needs of the foundation. So, I actually will tell and especially if I like the overall proposal, I will actually tell the writer, you know you can just erase this part, or why don’t you expound a little bit on this part because this is the part that we are going after. And those kinds of cues we give. Why? Because funding officers are in the business of giving away money. We’re not trying to hold back money from you. We are by law given the task of giving funds to good organizations. So, if it just a matter of tweaking a proposal, then we let it happen, and therefore you might be able to get your proposal past.

Lastly, you want to develop credibility with the foundation. In this country, as I’ve told you, there may be tens of thousands, this is a country that has unfortunately has abused the whole foundation and non-profit system. We had the Erap Foundation, we had the Marcos Foundations, we have foundations that are set up by congressmen, and they name it after their girlfriends, or they name it after biblical scripture, you know, and yet they only put in their pork barrel monies into these foundations and then next thing you know, they’re buying the newest Pajero. So, there are a lot of unscrupulous foundations there and you want to make sure that you want to tell the foundation that you’re asking money from that you are not unscrupulous. I mean you’re not a bad guy, you’re a good foundation, I mean organization.

Well, here are the proposals that will fail. What are some of the things that I think a proposal will fail. One, of course, unsubstantiated claims. If you claim that you’re going to eliminate cancer in 2008, I consider that an unsubstantiated claim. If President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo says she will eradicate poverty in 2008, I call that an unsubstantiated claim.

There are no projected results. We want benchmark results. We want to know what it is that you are going to achieve two or three years from now, or what have you achieved.

It’s outside the funding guidelines – that’s why again I beg you not to do generic proposals. Go for the foundations that really fit the mission-vision of your organization with that if theirs, because if not, it’s outside funding guidelines.

Outside organizational mission – if we find out that your proposal is really outside your own mission, we’re not inclined to give it because it might change your mission and vision of your organization.

Of course, questionable reputation.

Unrealistic budget request is another one. I do not like to write budgets, I’m sort of the concept person, but I make sure that an accounts person or an accountant, or somebody good with numbers will sit down with me and come up with a realistic budget. You’ll be surprised how many Filipinos do not like to talk about the money part, and so sometimes, there’s a high percentage of proposals that I receive that have no budgets in them, no figures; and it’s a well written proposal, and so sometimes I have to call them up and say “How much are you asking for?” and then they’ll say “Bahala ka na.” And there’s no “bahala ka na” in this business. You know, fate and the gods are not going to help you because I cannot read your mind. You’re going have to tell me how much exactly it is going to cost.

Of course, a poorly written proposal – this is something I really, really push for, because I know that a proposal has all these particular things you have to follow. You have to make sure you have the executive summary, you have to do this, you have these guidelines, do you have all the papers involved, all these checklist that you have to do. All of that is the bureaucratic part; but may I really press on you that when you start to write the narrative part, what you’re going to do, make that be your 1000% perspiration, because that’s the part where you have to tell the story about your organization, about what you want to do, what you want to achieve. You want to inspire the person, you want to make that person, the funding officer, cry at the end of your proposal. Really, it has to be that dramatic, without being hyped. Everything else, yeah, follow the guidelines, but the rest you have to do a well crafted, well written story.

Academic development language – that is the death knell of many of your proposals. If people think that technical fundraising proposals, technically written is the way to go, it’s really not. So, academic development language should be avoided. One word that you should no longer use in your lips is the word “empowered.” That’s just like, I hate the word, you just say empowered and it’s supposed to mean something, and it doesn’t. But if you say, we give 5,000 pesos to women who want to set up a store and they will get a…there’s a 97% return, blah, blah, blah, that to me is empowerment; but don’t say empowerment without further description.

Other organizations are doing the same – it is a competitive world out there and there are many organizations doing very good work and in fact many of you may actually be competing with one another. So, other organizations are doing the same, and so we have to find, we may sometimes, after a while, it’s like a roulette, and the ball lands on the number that we think is the number because everybody is doing the same thing.

So, this is where I will actually, and I don’t know whether Kara has thought of this or Alice or you have ever thought about this, but there was a time when I was doing AIDS work, that there became a proliferation of AIDS organizations throughout the country, and after a while, there was only so little money to give away. So, I pushed and pushed and pushed for

end of disc 3, DAY 2; Missing minutes

…as one large organization. You might think about that, because in the end you’re going to go hitting after limited funds and you’re going to be competing with one another.

Oh, here’s an example of academic development language. This is the kind of proposals I get that I really get freaked out. “After decades of pursuing an optimization objective, the depletion of natural resources, the degradation of ecosystems, diminished harvests in terms of both quantity and desirable species, human population pressure and other factors, the need for better management – (snores) I’m already sleeping – is now widely appreciated. The strategies now available include the ecosystem approach, the precautionary principles, adaptive management, community centered management, and co-management.” You know where that went, straight to the garbage can, and what it is, it’s an egotistical, it’s just too ego driven, and it’s also trying to impress and somehow I don’t get impressed, and I know many other program officers don’t get impressed with this kind of language.

So, I reviewed it, and this is actually is what this paragraph wanted to actually say: “Managing the world’s resources is more urgent today after decades of uncontrolled abuse, lower harvest yields and population growth. There are new varieties of strategies to help and disregard.” That’s exactly what it wanted to say, and that’s more something that I can understand. So, please avoid academic development language, and you’ll be surprised that even in your own work, in cancer advocacy, you have your own language. Be careful of the jargon that you use and always remember that a third party person who may not know the kind of healthcare advocacy that you’re doing may not know the meanings that you all understand each other. Please avoid that.

This one is a bathroom renovation letter, I think we’ll pass this one. All I’m just saying is that this proposal letter is an example of getting a person connected to a cause. One of things that I do, or one of the things you must do is to try and find people who are like‑minded to what you do and once you find that person, you have greater chances of making sure that you will get the support that you need.

And I’m now in the area of what we call fundraising letters, because after fundraising proposals, actually the bulk of things that I write are fundraising appeal letters to people of influence, people of power, people who are wealthy. And of course, what are some of the obvious? The obvious are people whose families you know of who have had to deal with cancer that, of course are obvious people that will certainly help in your fundraising appeals. And so there’s a little bit of research that has to be done with that, but it’s better than if you didn’t go for a person who did know about the disease. So, this all about that letter, and I just don’t want to continue.

I wanted to talk about photographs and how photographs and pictorial documentation is actually very important before and after. For example, like in this letter that I wrote about, there was a feeding program in Negros that I wrote about and fed 90,000 children, malnourished children in one year. I wrote a very beautiful report to the funders but I knew that this was more powerful, the before and after photographs. The before photograph of this child that I saw in a Bacolod hospital who could be dying, who was almost to die, getting his first nutribun, and then a year later, I made an effort to really try and find the same child, and I found the child, luckily, he was still alive, healthy, and ready to go to school. His before and after photograph was more powerful than any beautiful prose that I could ever write about doing work with my malnourished children. This is something that you need to think about in your work and cancer advocacy.

Oh, this is a new area that we are now getting into, which is having your own website, having your own blog site, doing more through the internet. I have found that I reach a lot of my constituents, a lot of members, a lot of donors, a lot of funders now through the internet. And one is to have your own website, if you can do that. There must be some intellectual geek in your community that can just do a website, a very simple website, because what will happen is the minute you have your website and you show your vision-mission, all the things that you’re doing, all the projects that you’re doing, etc. if that is on, that is your advertisement 24 hours of the day, and so people will know about your organization, will ask information about you, and it’s important to have that, or a blog site. So, this is just an example of my own blog site where I put in all of my articles, and people now know me and people also know about the work that I do, the advocacies I represent.

This is another example of a fundraising letter that I wanted to talk about, and this one is about using important personalities in your midst, no? And this one, at the end of this letter, I wrote this letter but the end of this letter was signed by Washington Sycip. Washington Sycip was the chairman of our foundation, the Sinerhiya Foundation; he is into education reform. So, I’m a trustee, and I wrote the letter for him, and I made sure that he signs the letter because I think that between me and Washington Sycip, no matter how much I think I’m good, I know that Washington Sycip can pull in the bucks. So, I wrote the letter for him.

Already, we targeted a man named Joey Mendoza. Now, it turns that Globe, for example, has many departments, and has little chunks of money to give away to community organizations. The reason we focused on Joey Mendoza is because Mr. Mendoza happened to be a good friend of Washington Sycip and it turns out that Joey Mendoza does owe a favor to Washington Sycip. So, we did our research and already concentrated on ten to twenty friends of Mr. Sycip that we knew we will write a letter to and we would have a 98% chance of getting money. So, we focused on Mr. Mendoza and we went through the letter.

I just wanted to give you a sense of what the letter is, very straightforward. I’m really uncomfortable that starts with “Dear Sir John,” and “Mabuhay ka!” The reason is because “Dear Sir John” is so anti egalitarian. You know when we talked about being a partner to a funder, we really mean it; but when you start saying things like “Dear Sir John,” it suggest servility, and it doesn’t turn me on, and it makes me feel like the letter is going start begging; and I don’t want people to beg, I want people to say “this project really demands your attention and it should be funded for the following reasons:” So, none of this “mabuhay ka” or “Dear Sir John,” or “Dear Ma’am,” the worst part now is that this country is so, they no longer distinguished between sex; the guards just say “dear sir/ma’am,” “hi, sir/ma’am” you know, it’s like one word, really frightening! It’s like take your pick.

So: “Dear Mr. Mendoza, On behalf of the Sinerhiya trustees,” immediately from the first paragraph, “I am inviting you to be part of our second year Tipanan celebration.” Immediately, so there’s no running around the bush here. I want, this letter is going to invite you blah, blah, blah, to this affair that we’re doing.

My second paragraph is always this – it’s always about the organization I represent. So, it’s always about who I am, what we do, and then of course you make a little punch line about why your organization is unique. So you say, I, we say “In Sinerhiya, we have seen dramatic improvements in student test course gleaned from the periodic testing done by our Sinerhiya partners.” And that’s something I say with incredible, I say this with incredible pride because it’s true; and I get really full of gusto with it. I was just in Tanauan, Batangas, where we have one of our Sinerhiya partners, and we are there with Grade 1 kids, 3,600 kids, they’re now been one year through our reading comprehension skills, I can tell you that before we came in, the 3,600 kids had a average mean score of 64%, which means that they failed in reading part, they failed in all their subjects. But one year after, after teacher training, after parent’s intervention, getting involved in the PTA, after teaching the teachers how to love museums, etc. the test scores now as of last week ago was at 84%. And you see, that’s the kind of figures you should have immediately in your head or when you write it down; because I can say that with incredible pride and with incredible certainty, and I know that kind of passion is what turns on people who will fund us again. So, anyway, that’s your second paragraph.

So, then this third is about the rationale for this event and then last year, this is what we did, and if you want to do a before and after, we want to do first that we had this Tipanan, we had this celebration and this is how many people we drew, and then you want to do an after, which is that this year we are going to do this Tipanan celebration again, and we plan to increase the number of visitors to, adding 20%, you know, or whatever the arbitrary percent is; so that you want an organization to ride with something that’s successful. You don’t want to just say “Fund us again, fund us again, fund us again.” That’s not good enough.

The second page of the letter adds more to this “go with us.” First, we’re saying that if you gave us money, we’re not only going to just spend the money but we’re actually going to make sure that our organization we were inviting gets to put up booths so that they can sell stuff for Christmas. So, there’s a really wonderful appeal to Globe and thinking “aha, this is not a doleout.” They’re going to also help; the money is going to help them increase the money of the various organizations. So, that’s a plus, plus. And even a plus, plus, plus is that we’re saying “we’re not going to spend all your money, in fact, if we get so much money, we’re going to give a part of this money, and we are going to fund one of the organizations that is a member of Sinerhiya.” So, they feel even better that the money isn’t just to spend for this celebration, to hire this site, to get the food, to get the drinks, not just as an expenditure, an all out expenditure.

So, we then close with an invite, inviting them to be a corporate sponsor. We tell them that there is this range from 50,000 to half a million, and then of course, I always use the Washington Sycip line, which is he always uses this; he loves it and it always, the tearjerker line, which is “having been a product of the Philippine public school system, I applaud the efforts of this organization in revamping its current state so that it will regain the educational excellence that it once secured and for which I benefited from.” That’s a very powerful statement from one of the wealthiest man in the country to say I was a product of public education, I want public education to say that the same kind of excellence as it used to have; and then you don’t bother with the details, especially if you’re talking sort of at this level. So, your development officer, our development officer is going to talk to your development or your marketing officer to talk about the details, and we make sure, of course, that three days after this letter is received, we call up Mr.†Mendoza’s office and then thank him in advanced for Washington Sycip.

And then of course, not only that, we expect Mr. Sycip to also write a personal note like “Joey, let’s play golf next week.” Or something like that. Just to really make them, so that Joey knows if he does say yes to playing golf to Mr. Sycip, Mr. Sycip will remind him again about the Tipanan celebration. So, very, very pressured, but use your most important influential person to work for you.

Letter to Ben Chan. So, my best friend, Ben Chan. I’m with the Ballet Philippines, and so I need to clothe my ballet dancers, but I realized, this is an example of don’t always ask for money, if you can get something else, fine. So, Ballet Philippines is going to have a performance and it turns out we needed clothes for a 120 of our dancers and the orchestra – all Bench jeans and Bench tops, or jeans and tops; and instead of asking for money, I decided let’s just ask him for the product itself. So, the letter, I know it’s very bad to read because it’s in red, but anyway, first, I wanted to show to Mr. Chan that one, this is an example of a win-win letter, rather than feeling like “oh Mr. Chan is going to be hit up again for more money.” So, Mr. Chan, we’re going to do this ballet piece, and it’s going to be very modern, and it’s so modern that it’s not going to be tutus, it’s actually going to be dancers going to wear jeans, and we want them to wear your jeans.

So, the first appeal here is that “can you imagine, Mr. Chan, that these beautiful, physically ravishing dancers are going to be pirouettes and jumps with your jeans on.” So, that’s a plus, plus; this really gets him excited. So, that’s what it basically is: “Imagine leaps and twirls on Bench jeans.” And then, we said you know, you have all these wonderful billboards, we’re even willing to have our dancers go on the billboards to advertise Bench jeans. And then we say it’s a win-win because we know that our market right now is the youth market and your market is the youth market, so it’s a win-win here. So, if you sponsor us, more young people are going to see your products and then you’re also going to be given the certain enough plaudits, right? So, we have young, hip, creative people, I hope you’re interested, we give you a Merry Christmas, and then I put in a joke about I’ve always wanted on a Bench billboard. So, every time I see Ben, I always say “Ben, you know, I almost got into an accident because of Diether. Diether, you know, he really gives me high blood pressure, you know.” And he always laughs. So then this time, I said to him, at the end of the letter, I said “You know, Ben, you got to think of me as your next model, but I want to be with Diether, and the title is going to be My Trip Bench.” And I said that “I promise I’m going to sell you, I’m going to sell 8.5 million t-shirts, because 10% of the population is gay.” So, did I get the money? I got the money, I mean I got the jeans. From then on, we have always gotten in kind support from Mr. Ben Chan.

So, the lesson here is: if it’s a win-win, go after that person, be creative, think out of the box. Don’t give this cute, don’t give this sort-of appeal letters, you know, but think of Ben Chan as wanting to go with something innovative and something different. I also told you I use a lot of the internet now; and instead of writing reports to our foundations that give us money, for example, like the USAID, gives us a lot of money for education programs in the North and in the South, I now do a “.pdf” file, “.pdf,” does everybody know what a “.pdf” is? Okay? Can you ask your children? Anyway, a “.pdf” is something like, it’s in the computer. Instead of doing just a plain report, this thing will, if you put in the text and you put in your pictures, it makes a beautiful pictorial report, so it’s called a “.pdf” file. So, just ask your local geek about the details.

So, anyway, I take the pictures, I have this beautiful text, and you just put it all together, and it makes this wonderful, parang travelogue information about the work that you’re doing. So, when I gave this to the USAID, my program on teacher education, the USAID program officer was so stunned and so happy to see the beautiful pictures and wonderfully written it is and everything else, it’s no longer just a word document. And so, of course, the next day, you get a call that said “John, you need anymore money for your program? Because you make it so much more appealing to people.”

This is again something that I just did recently. We set up a foundation among our classmates. I’m from La Salle Greenhills, I went to high school there, and right now, we’re now in middle age, or old age, and it turns out some of our classmates are getting sick. And so, we decided to set up our foundation to take care of classmates who are sick and cannot pay the medical bills; so even if their wives are sick and cannot pay the medical bills; and it’s an acknowledgement of a boys’ school that supposed to be having rich boys’ kids, rich kids, it’s an acknowledgement that some of us didn’t do very well in life and therefore needs to be helped. So, we set up a foundation.

What did I do? I gathered all of our old photographs that I found, and then I did this appeal to my classmates, I found all of their email, sent the email, and then I sent a second appeal, and the third was a threatening appeal, I said “if you don’t give me any money to buy tickets, you are out of our class of ’69.” Ganyan na, you know, and then in the end, we were able to get our big chunk of money to start a foundation. But again, the use of old photographs, nostalgia, and then clean lines on the “.pdf” file.

Same thing with this one, in Ballet Philippines, I became this one-man advertising agency. Instead of saying to the Board of Trustees and to our constituents “please come to our next Ballet Philippines performance,” I just took a little moment to do this “.pdf” file. I used my old photographs, I think of a clever title “How Do You Teach Kids to Love?” and then I tell them about our Christmas performance “An Angel Earns His Wings,” and it’s done in two columns, all you do is tell this machine, do it two columns like a newsletter and then it’s sent out to all of your list, and again a lot more success in getting money.

We don’t have time, but this is something that I want you know happened to me very recently, I want you to always remember how to talk about your organization in just five sentences, because it happened many times that you get into occasions where you meet up with somebody who actually may be able to fund your organization, and you may be at a loss for words. So, I asked you to sort of memorize in five sentences what is your organization all about. So, it’s usually about, I think it’s here, so anyway, this is all about…it’s this, think about a sentence about your organization, what it has been doing. Second sentence, what it is doing now. Third sentence, the project you want to do, that’s the fourth sentence, the amount, and then the results. Okay, all of these in five sentences. Always just think about that, five sentences. The reason is because we lived in a very fast world and sometimes you will meet up with people who will need to know about your organization, and you need to be able to just say it in just five sentences.

I’ll tell you a little story about the…one time, Jaime Agustin Zobel asked me to give a, to have the National Museum, he wanted to borrow the National Museum, he wanted to invite a potential business partner, so the National Museum was to be his for the evening; and there was a candlelight dinner for twelve people, and he was going to wine and dine this potential business partner, and I had to be there to be the tour guide. So, it happened that evening, the whole National Museum was for him alone, and the best part about it was his wife, Lizzie Zobel, could not make it that evening. So I felt like the first lady, and I really had a great time with this gorgeous hunk, right? So, I’m giving the grand tour, everybody’s impressed. The dinner happened, and then several days later, I’m talking to my best friend, making telebabad, you know, and then my friend’s voice is lost and another voice comes in.

“Mr. Silva?”

I said “yes?”

“This is Jaime’s secretary, he’d like to speak to you.”

I said “Excuse me? How did you intervene?”

“Well, you’re a Globe subscriber.”

I said “my God.”

So next thing I know there’s Jaime Augusto. “Hi, John! How are you?”

(Sharp intake of breath) “Hi.”

“You know, that was a great evening that night, I really, really want to repay you.”

(Sharp intake of breath) So I said “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, anything, anything.”

“Are you really sure?” So, then I said “Look, no, it’s not part of the deal. I’m doing this for the National Museum, your wife Lizzie Zobel, in fact, is a trustee, so this is all a freebie.”

He says “Well, then, what can I do for you? I really want to make up for it.”

I said “Well, you can’t really do anything for me, Jaime, that would be a little bit weird.”

He says “Well, I know that you’re involved in various organizations, what can I do for your organizations?”

Aha. Then, I felt there was no longer a conflict of interest. But then I had to think real fast because I could hear in the background another phone ringing, you know. And so I could sense that Jaime was only going to give me ten seconds. So, I gave my five sentences about the program that I do. I teach NGOs how to write advocacy letters. Sometimes, an NGO does not have money to attend. Can Ayala Foundation fund it? And it only cost 3,000.00 pesos. I did it in five sentences, Jaime said “Absolutely, John. Just call my secretary anytime. Goodbye, goodbye.” Bingo. I got my grant.

See? So, remember to always remember how to just, you know, just five sentences; and you’ll find yourselves in these situations. I know I have to close, I mean, I know I have to end, so, I’m going to end with just this: After 30 years of writing all of these proposals and being rejected, of course I will never tell you my rejections because you’re supposed to be positive about this. So, I think about what is it that came to that really made it successful? So, these are my secrets. And this is sort of going to end my talk.

My first is write as if you are sending a proposal to a close friend or relative.

Next, write with a sense of urgency. And this is certainly appropriate for your organizations.

Third, persistence and plough will pay off eventually.

Fourth, mull over your first draft, sleep on it, and then the next day, edit out 50%.

Fifth, be a story teller so your humanity shows.

Next is write for those who cannot put it to paper. Use their words.

Be exact in the asking because fate and the gods will not assist you.

Next, know who you are asking from, and so you’ll know what to ask.

Next, photographs are powerful words.

And write a proposal that adds, not prolong to ending the problem.

Sorry, can I go back? And now, I will just, I will just, I will just, a few things on this, and then it’s over.

As I’ve said before, sending a proposal to a close friend or relative means that you have to explain it so simply, you’re not going to sound like a theologian or the scholar, you know, you’re going to sound very simple, which is what we want you to sound like.

Sense of urgency, we are in the business of trying to alleviate pain, and we are trying to find a cure, and we are trying to give hope to the people that we care for; and so, you want to make sure that it has a sense of urgency.

Mulling over your first draft is important and editing 50% because when you read it the next day, you’ll find out that much of it involves your own ego. It’s John Silva trying to write, and what you want to do, you want to eradicate the John Silva part and you want to focus on the problem – what is the problem.

Be a storyteller. As I always say, when you get into the draft of your executive summary and your narrative, that’s where you have to shine. Everything else is you have to just follow the rules, but you have to sound like a poet, you have to be the passionate person, you have to really go after the jugular, you have to make them cry at the very end, why your proposal is important.

Write for those who cannot put it to paper. We worked for the disadvantaged and for the poor, and for many of them, their language is not in the English language, and so we have, what I sometimes do to be more effective, is I actually remember the phraseology that was said by the poor person, and I take that, and I put that in my proposal, so that then there’s greater impact.

You have to be exact in the asking. You know who you’re asking from, if you know who the person is that they’re likely to be able to give to your cause, then it’s even better for you to ask.

And then, photographs are powerful words, and of course, write a proposal that adds.

Now, the last part importantly is we want to be able to be in the business of getting out of business, okay? That is to say that we all want to become unemployed eventually because we’d like to think we’d licked cancer one day. And I can say that in the area of AIDS, with the introduction of cocktails, we now treat AIDS at least in the development just like it was diabetes. So, hopefully, and I think it is happening in the areas of cancer and some parts of cancer, that we are actually treating the disease like as if it was diabetes.

And so, we want to make sure that our proposals don’t sound like as if “fund us forever and ever.” You want to make sure that the proposal says “You fund us now because we’re closer to the success, and eventually, we want to all be unemployed, and all we want to do is just go to the ballet.” All right? That’s how I would like to see your proposal, and that’s what I think is an effective proposal. And there, with that, I say thank you very much.