Making Proposals Fundable: Clarity, Credibility, and Fit

Have your funding proposals been rejected despite doing strong work on the ground?

Do you find it hard to understand why some proposals get funded while others—doing similar work—are ignored?

Are you unsure how to make your narrative more specific and credible without overwhelming funders with data?

If these questions resonate, this hands-on session is designed for you.

Most rejected proposals are not poorly written—they are vague or disconnected from what funders are really looking for. In this session, participants will learn how to diagnose the narrative gaps that weaken funding applications and apply practical techniques to fix them. The session will also help organisations assess their funding readiness and introduce a self-editing approach that can be applied before every submission to improve clarity, credibility, and alignment.

Key Takeaways for NGOs

1. Diagnose What’s Not Working in Your Proposals: Learn a clear diagnostic framework to identify why good work is not translating into fundable proposals and what funders struggle to see.

2. Strengthen Narrative Specificity and Evidence: Apply practical techniques to make proposals more specific and convincing—without turning them into data-heavy documents.

3. Prove Credibility Even Without Perfect Outcomes: Understand how to demonstrate credibility and learning when outcomes are still evolving or not fully documented.

4. Assess Your Funding Readiness: Identify gaps in your organisation’s funding preparedness that may be affecting proposal success.

5. Apply a Practical Self-Editing Process: Take away a structured self-editing workflow to refine and strengthen proposals before submission.

Who Should Attend

This session is best suited for fundraising coordinators, programme managers, nonprofit founders, and anyone who writes multiple funding proposals each year and wants to improve their success rate through stronger narratives and clearer positioning.

Before the session

1. Fundraising Assessment (Take IPN’s FR Assessment and understand your organisation’s current maturity level)

2. How to build a winning proposal

3. Structuring your proposal for a CSR donor

This session will be delivered by Nalanda Joglekar.

About Nalanda Joglekar

Nalanda is a Grant Proposal Writer and Educator who helps nonprofits secure funding through clear, compelling proposals and funder research.

She runs Grant Writing Essentials and conducts practical workshops, having trained 50+ nonprofit professionals to build affordable, effective grant writing skills.