How to write about your project
How to write about your project
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin
Whether you’re writing about your project for a funder, your supporters, on your website or in your marketing, it can be tricky to know what to include and how much detail to share. If you’re working on a project that you’re really passionate about, or you know there is a huge need for, it’s easy to get lost in the detail and to confuse people when trying to describe what you’re doing to someone who may not have heard of you before.
Common questions you’ll come across in funding applications may include:
Can you write an outline of your project?
What is the aim of your project?
What are you trying to achieve with your project?
Or they may simply say: Tell us more about your project.
You may also find that these same answers can be used as part of your business plan or fundraising strategy.
You can download a fillable PDF worksheet below, and watch me completing it in this video.
Answer the following questions, in whatever order you like.
Combine them all into one longer answer, using up to 1000 words.
Edit it down so you have a version under 500 words and one under 250 words. This way, you’ll have a version suitable for most funding applications.
Top tip: Write from the perspective that the person reading your application has never heard of your group and has no idea what you do.
At the end, I’ll give you an example of a project description.
You might find the following free online courses useful:
Who?
Who is your project for?
Can you describe your target beneficiaries? Are they people of a specific gender, age or background? Are they people who share a particular issue, challenge or concern? Do they all live in the same town, village or neighbourhood?
Who do you want to help?
Who are the people who most need the support or service you are offering? Think about how they would describe themselves, or their need for support. You can also add in here how many people you’re planning to support through the project.
What?
What are you hoping your project will achieve?
Imagine your project was a huge success – what would that look like? What would it mean to your community? What would be the ideal result of the delivery of your project?
What exactly does that look like?
Give the funder a clear picture of what a successful project would look like. How do people feel? What are they saying to you? What difference has it made to real people?
When?
When and how often will it happen?
Be really clear about when your project and/or the sessions/activities will take place. How many sessions/activities and how often will they be run?
What are your project timescales?
Be clear about the project’s start and finish dates (check the guidance for when your project can start and how long it can run for). Within that, can you list any key events or milestones, like when you’ll start sharing details of your project online, when the first session will be, when you plan to ask people for feedback.
Where?
Where will it take place?
Mention the name of the venue or location you’ll be using. You might want to say why you’ve chosen to deliver there – is it easy to access on foot or on public transport? Is it somewhere your target beneficiaries feel safe and welcome?
Where are you needed?
Another way to think about this is to ask where there is the most need for the type of support you offer. Can you go there rather than asking them to come to you? Is your project designed to remove any barriers to people being able to participate?
Why?
Why is it needed?
Have you noticed or been told that something is missing in your community? What is not happening or not working that you want to fix?
Why is your organisation the one to make a difference?
Is there a reason for this need? Why isn’t another organisation doing this, and if they are, are they seeing more demand than they can cater for? Or perhaps what you plan to do is different, complementary to that, for a slightly different demographic.
How?
How will your project be delivered?
What are the first steps in turning your idea into action? How will you get started? You could talk about the people you’d need to get together or the room you’d need to book.
How will it work?
Give some details of each session or activity. How many staff or volunteers will be there and what will their responsibilities be? How will people hear about the sessions and how do they show an interest or attend?
Example of a project description in under 1000 words.
The Maple Community Hub drop-in sessions are specifically targeted at older people who live in our village and the surrounding neighbourhoods. We expect the people who will most benefit from these sessions to be over the age of 65 and live alone.
Our village is in a beautiful part of the country, with direct access to coastal paths and popular tourist attractions, but without a car it is largely inaccessible. Our younger residents and families make use of the main roads into larger towns and cities, but we know that many of our older residents become more and more isolated, especially in the winter months, when they don’t feel safe going out in the evening, and that many can go weeks and months without visitors. An infrequent bus service makes it difficult for many residents to get into town or access other areas where there are suitable activities.
We have been fortunate to have had other organisations from outside our village, book the village hall and other venues for theatre productions and summer fayres, but there isn’t anything running on a regular basis, offering something stable and reliable for our residents to depend on, and know that at least once a week they will have some company.
As a trusted hub in our rural community, we feel it is important to address this issue and bring people together, of all ages, to encourage friendship, shared activities and community spirit.
Our plan is to host weekly drop-in sessions on a Thursday afternoon. Each week we will run a different activity, run by our volunteers. These activities will include art, craft, baking, games and movement. It’s important to us that the sessions are seen to be accessible to all, and therefore anyone wishing to attend will have the option to just pop in for a coffee and cake, or to join in with the activity. We want people to leave the sessions feeling like they are part of a community, that they have people they can turn to and ask for help, and crucially, that they are not alone.
Running a weekly drop-in session would enable us to reach up to 30 residents each week. The sessions will run for three hours, between 1pm-4pm every Thursday. We are applying for funding to run an initial 12 sessions over a three-month period.
The sessions will be run out of our community centre, which has recently been updated with a ramp, now offering wheelchair access and we have designed our activities to suit all abilities. The centre is in the heart of our village, within a short walking distance for most of our residents. Our small team of staff and volunteers have undergone extensive training in workshop delivery, with many also qualified in First Aid. They are also insured to collect those people who live in the more rural outskirts of our neighbourhood.
If we are successful with this application, our project will start in April 2024 and run through to mid-July 2024. The first two weeks we will prioritise promoting the event through local Facebook groups, with flyers through letterboxes in the local area, and through the GP surgery, chemist, and local shops.
Once the sessions are being advertised, we will get together and finalise the timetable. There will be a minimum of two paid members of staff per session, plus between 3-8 volunteers to support the activities. Materials will be ordered in advance, and each session will follow a similar order, with hot drinks available on arrival for half an hour, a managed activity for one hour, some informal games and discussions, finishing with free time for people to chat and socialise.
We will encourage people to let us know they are planning to attend, but still allow people to just decide on the day to drop-in. The capacity of our hall, our insurance and our staffing levels allow for many more participants than we would expect, and if the sessions prove to be more popular than we can cater for, we will address this in our weekly planning group which is booked in to follow each participant session.
We’d see our project as a success if people told us they felt happy by the end of the session, and that they looked forward to the next one.
I hope you found these prompts and the example useful.
Rachel