Organising the process of writing a proposal

less a grant ready for any project with a legitimate common good purpose:

”If the aim of a research project has substantial quality and the project is creating sustainable changes, then money will be somewhere in the system”. Some foundations only support follow-up research and others like to be part of the defining process.

Impact that makes a difference for the end-user

“The foundations have become much more professional and are not concerned with "feel good" – they are concerned with and focus on impact.” The legislation for general foundations, foundation-like associations, and commercial foundations in Denmark prescribes, because of tax benefits, that grants offered should not distort competition. The charity or knowledge created based on the grants should be for the benefit of the public good. Having that in mind, publicly available research results are therefore considered as a common good. Besides that, the newest trend is that foundations have a very focused eye for the sustainability aspect of concepts, knowledge, products, and services established based on the grants offered. Foundations look very carefully into and focus on the impact and the value elements in the applications reviewed. This trend is a shift from foundations expecting feel-good projects, towards impact-based projects. The focus is on the common good and the value for people. A clear message in the writing process of a proposal is therefore:

“Turn the project/project description into a recipient perspective – rather than seeing it from your own assumptions – what the recipient gets out of participating and what is expected of the other party.” It is of great importance to have a clear value driven purpose in the project being applied for, and that the project makes a difference for people – the enduser. Negotiating this between project partners may be of great importance and may in some cases be a long-lasting process requiring a lot of energy and many iterations. To ensure the common good, the foundations believe nowadays in cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration, and with this have several collaborating partners. The common good could also be the development of methods. If that is an aim, the foundation looks closely into how the methods ensure usability in future practice for end users.

Organising the process of writing a proposal

As mentioned above, the applicant's mindset is to be totally open-minded and explicit about the changes the project makes and describe what activities cause the changes. Those descriptions lead to an estimate of the budget, and in relation to that, describe and estimate what your own contribution is and how you will proceed after the project period has ended. The last element is to be explicit about the sustainability of the project. The application will have to state clearly what extra benefit is offered via the project activities – what is gained from the project. Because football is not an explicit focus of any of the foundations, there needs to be a more general human theme that benefits the general public in an application. The Bevika foundation shows nice examples of this approach:

“They changed to focus on research that ensures inclusion and integration, and thus accessibility – including research at the School of Architecture, rather than giving money for ramps, etc. At the School of Architecture, there is a professorship in accessibility. Movement disabilities thus share interests with those who have broken legs, or people with a pram, which is a broader and more general human theme – they have thereby cracked the code for the broad perspective.” Because more than half of all money given to the common good is grants offered to research, it is likely to be a productive strategy to seek collaboration with research. Foundations expect that re-