10 Most Common Grant Mistakes

Below is a list of the top ten most common grant mistakes.
- The writing in the proposal isn’t succinct or intelligible, resulting in a proposal that doesn’t make sense.
- The costs for technology items are inaccurate or, in the worst-case scenario, are inflated. Never guess at the cost of an item.
- No one proofreads the proposal before it is submitted, and the proposal contains typographical or grammatical errors.
- The budget doesn’t match the narrative, and the reviewer sees costs on the budget pages that are not mentioned or explained in the narrative.
- The objectives cannot be measured, because they are too vague and open to individual interpretation in terms of success or failure
- A reasonable amount of time is not allotted to develop a project idea and to write the proposal, resulting in a sloppy, incomplete document.
- An assumption is made that the reviewers are experts in the subject area and that they understand jargon and acronyms without explanation.
- The proposal is full of “buzzwords” and offers little or no substance.
- The writer ignores the instruction in the request for proposals and violates the rules and directions it specifies.
- Funders are selected because they have money, not because there is a close fit between the project idea and the funders’ interest.
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