1. Writing a Grant Project Proposal
Speaker: Margarit MARUKYAN, PMP®
Armenian State University of Economics

2. About Myself
Current workplace: Armenian State University of Economics,
5 years in project management and in education sphere,
Main research interests: education economics, information economics, education policies
Education:
Bachelor and Master studies at ASUE,
Studies at CERGE-EI (Prague), University of Miskolc (Hungary), many online courses,
PMP certified since, July 18, 2017!!!

3. Outline Introduction How and When to Start? Technical Part
Content Part
Financial Part
Practical examples
DOs and DON‘Ts
Questions & Answers

4. Introduction

5. How and When to Start? (1/2)
If your are new in the field, try to find the descriptions and results of the previous calls!
Monitor them closely to discover any trends, it will help you to judge your project idea and find out the priorities!
If you have a chance to read a funded proposal, that‘s a brilliant opportunity! Go for it!

6. How and When to Start? (2/2)
Start developing your project idea as soon as possible!
As the call opens, read the call and look up the documents again before going ahead to technical things.
If there is a certain application template, allocate enough time to make yourself familiar with the questions you should answer and try to understand WHY are these questions asked? Any connections between questions (e.g. Dissemination strategy & impact).

7. Technical Part
Read the Guideline!!!! Even if you know the Guideline by heart, please, take your time to review it, since minor things with major impact may change!
Read the Call carefully!!!! Changes may happen in application process as well, so be sure you are aware of it!
Look up the priorities (if there are any)! The more matches, the better!
Choose the priorities you are going to address and think about the justification!
Judge if your project idea will lead to something sustainable!

9. Content Part (1/6) Clearly define your project goals!
In the best case, your project objectives should be in line with documents of different level:
Organization‘s strategy,
Country‘s strategic documents, plans, etc...
National priorities,
Regional priorities or international regulatory documents.
So, which of the issues your project will solve!
In PMBOK Guide terms, you should have something similar to „Project Statement of Work“ where we need to justify the relevance with strategy.

10. Content Part (2/6)
Analyze your project stakeholders! The impact of your project depends on this step!
Power/Influence Grid,
Power/Interest Grid,
Influence/Impact Grid,
Salience Model (urgency, power, legitimacy)

11. Content Part (3/6)

12. Content Part (4/6) Classification of stakeholders:
We need to have supportive stakeholders for project success!
Stakeholder
Unaware
Resistant
Neutral
Supportive
Leading
e.g. students of Finance Master course X
Professors ….

13. Content Part (5/6)
ATTENTION! The bad news is that during these first steps you may find out that your project is useless! The good news is that, it‘s better to know about this at an early stage!
When you find out that your project is a demanded one, CONGRATS, elaborate it further!
Divide your aim (goal, wider objective) into smaller objectives which are called specific objetives

14. Content Part (6/6)
Think how each specific objective can be reached? What are your activities? How will you measure whether you have achieved your project objectives? Make a structure of work - in short, write the Logical Framework Matrix (LFM)!
Choose your project partners (if applicable) based on their relevance, profile and added value to the project! Assign activities to them in a logical manner!
Think about the project‘s quality control strategy, tools and how you will measure the results
Think about your dissemination strategy, what will be the means of communication, how often, etc.
Think about the management structure, reporting and feedback scheme.

15. Financial Part
Developing the budget should be left after all content is clearly described
Your budget should be balanced! It means no extremes!
Your budget should be in line with the content! E.g. If a partner is leading a WP, they should naturally have more staff days for management of that particular WP, than other partners.
Draw your timetable and places of events in advance, before filling in the budget
Be a perfectionist and a „cost-averse“ person when writing the budget!

16. Practical Examples (1/2)
Case 1: Priorities
We developed a project proposal with a team of 12 people for months, spending time and financial resources on it and when the call was announced...Ooops...
We found out that the project is not in line with the announced priorities...
Case 2: Stakeholders
Poor stakeholder analysis is a hidden bomb in a project that will explode some day. It‘s important to have a devoted team and verified stakeholders and their requirements. Otherwise, the project is worthless.
Case 3: Budget
This requires a really-really accurate planning. Take your time to do it in a „perfectionistic“ level, in order not to collapse the project one day.

17. Practical Examples (2/2)
Case 4: Workplan Your activities should be feasible, not too simple and not too ambitous. It‘s good to write ambitous things, your evaluators will note it, but remember that you need to implement it one day. Case 5: Risk Analysis Actually, many projects fails because of poor risk analysis, this is an underestimated (hidden) part of many projects. Take your time to think what can hinder your project activities and outcomes. Case 6: Proper Communication This is especially the most important thing for international teams. Poor communication, misinformation can lead your projects to failure.

18. DOs and DON‘Ts (1/2) Give your proposal to someone else to review!
Develop it in a collaborative manner and do not be afraid to delegate tasks!
Your project partners and stakeholders should know in advance how your project will affect them!
Don’t ignore any notice of the call!
Don’t underestimate the evaluators that they won’t notice your mistakes! They are professional and they will notice!
Don’t be careless on your sentence structures (word limit?),
Don’t write in passive voice,

19. DOs and DON‘Ts (2/2)
Your project partners should have added value to the project and you should be able to answer the question WHY are they in the project?
Be clear in your goals!
Be realistic in judgments and do your best to avoid Optimism Bias!
Ask questions to the sponsor, if you need clarifications!
Don’t be casual in choosing partners, you are going to work with them throughout the project,
Don’t write any number you’d like to have in the budget, always ask yourself: WHY?,
Don’t keep the application in a secret, it should be the result of a teamwork
Don’t submit the project on the last minute!

20. Questions & Answers
Margarit Marukyan