Proposal templates work best when they help you move fast without skipping the details a buyer, funder, or reviewer needs to see.
This guide gives you 12 free proposal templates, plus practical advice for adapting each one to the client, project, grant, sponsorship, or bid you want to win.
This is a guest post by Adam Hempenstall, who is the CEO and Founder of Better Proposals – simple proposal software for creating beautiful, high-impact proposals in minutes. Having helped his customers win $500,000,000 in the last 12 months alone, he’s launched the first Proposal University where he shares best practices on writing and designing proposals.
A great business proposal means the difference between an unsigned contract and a successful deal. A poorly written business proposal will get turned down, even if the offer is good.
Business proposals are considered to be an art form that only the extremely skilled can write.
However, after analyzing over 189,000 successful business proposals, I can tell you that there’s no secret to writing a great proposal.
Allow me to elaborate as I take you through our analysis findings, and run through the following topics, in this Process Street post:
Let’s get started.
I have a proposal for you.
I can build you a house, complete with walls, windows, doors, and a roof for $350,000.
Do we have a deal?
No. I didn’t think so!
To make a decision like this, you need cold hard facts. You need details, clarity, and proof! You need budgets, breakdowns, and solid guarantees.
That’s exactly how a project stakeholder feels when they receive your project proposal, and to further complicate things, calculating an average proposal win rate is next to impossible.
Project stakeholders will, on average, receive around 50 proposals a week. To choose you out of this huge pile, they need clarity, details, specifics, lateral thinking, and a whole heap of persuasion.
You need to learn the art of how to write a project proposal, to stand any chance of winning their investment, and increasing your proposal success rate.
So, join me in this Process Street post where we will take the following lessons in how to write a project proposal:
If you’re in a hurry, grab this Project Proposal Template Checklist, and catch up with the class later:
Click here to access the Project Proposal Template Checklist!
Now, butts on seats, no talking, and let the class begin!
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Healthcare providers are the backbone of humanity.
It’s through their hard work, diligence, and courageousness that we’re able to recover from injuries and illnesses alike. However, even before the novel coronavirus struck, those working in the healthcare sector were run off their feet – especially considering there are only 2.6 doctors per 1,000 patients in the United States.
Healthcare providers, then, need to strike the fine balance of providing each patient with adequate care but within an appropriate timeframe.
To help make this near-impossible task a reality, many healthcare providers turn to what’s known as a SOAP note.
Not sure what a SOAP note is?
I’ve got you covered. (Spoiler: It’s not related to the cleaning product.)
In this short yet informative post, I’ll explain what a SOAP note is, its interesting history, why it’s useful, and provide a visual example of what a SOAP note looks like. To boot, I’ll also show you how Process Street makes writing and implementing SOAP notes extremely easy.
Read through the below sections to get clued-up:
So what’s up, Doc? Ready to get reading?
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What’s the difference between a winning grant proposal and a losing one?
Grant writing.
Grant funding today is more difficult to obtain than ever before. A recent National Institute of Health (NIH) report showed that out of 50,000 grant applications, only 10,000 were given funding. That’s only 19%, which has fallen from 33% in the last 15 years.
Why?
A lack of Government funding, fierce competition, and poor grant writing skills.
We can’t do anything about the Government funds. We can do little about fierce competition. We can, however, do a lot about poor grant writing skills.
From completing complex grant applications to writing tip-top proposals, we’ve created the following eight templates to hone your grant writing skills.
If you’re in a hurry, go ahead! Click on the links below to jump straight in!
Curious about what these templates looks like? Check out the Proposal Template embedded below.
Scroll down for more information on each template of our grant writing template pack.
In addition to introducing our grant writing templates, I’ll be taking you behind the grant writing scenes, covering the following topics:
Ready? Let’s start with the basics…
Your attention span is shorter than a goldfish’s.
This isn’t meant to be a personal insult. All of our attention spans are now pretty ba-… wait, how was I going to finish this sentence?
Blame it on what you will – the break-neck speed in which content is published on the internet, the various devices all vying for our attention, or a lifestyle that’s overly digitalized – but there’s no getting away from it. There’s only an 8-second window before concentration plummets.
For journalists, content marketers, and pretty much anyone who uses the written word to deliver information, this isn’t news you want to hear.
But with the inverted pyramid, you can quickly supply global audiences with the news they do want to hear – and quickly (read: before they move onto the next shiny, sparkly thing).
In this post from Process Street, you’re going to learn about the inverted pyramid, the benefits of using it, see examples of it in action, and discover how checklists can help you with getting the right information out there. Fast.
Read through these sections to get completely clued up:
Now, what was the topic again? Oh, right – the inverted pyramid!
This is a guest post by Travis Taborek. Travis is a content marketer and copywriter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a graduate of General Assembly’s Digital Marketing Bootcamp and has done SEO and content work for business ranging from small tech startups to corporations like TiVo. Read his work here.
Content marketers have their work cut out for them.
They’re tasked with generating fresh ideas for content that stimulates interest in a brand and demonstrates thought leadership consistently, frequently, and at scale.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of productivity apps out there to help keep your mind focused, your writing clear, your headlines eye-grabbing, and your calls-to-action compelling.
To help you do your best work possible, I’ll show you the 10 best productivity apps you need in your digital toolbox.
Specifically, after explaining what productivity apps are, I’ll break each app down into one of four categories – brainstorming, focus, creation, and general productivity – then highlight their features, use cases, and pricing plans.
Just read through the following sections in this guest post for Process Street:
Let’s get started!
This is a guest post by Ronita Mohan. Ronita is a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic and design platform. Ronita is interested in a variety of topics related to digital marketing, visual content, and online engagement, which she enjoys researching and writing about.
Content marketing has certainly become popular.
In fact, it’s become a lynchpin for marketing strategies.
Businesses of all sizes are employing content marketers left, right, and center to ensure that content is created and distributed on a regular schedule.
The purpose of content marketing may have started as a way for businesses to communicate with their audiences, but it has taken on another angle altogether. Content marketing is now seen as a primary driver of SEO and organic web traffic, and content needs to be tailored accordingly.
Unsurprisingly, content marketers are spending huge amounts of time developing blog post ideas that will gain them traction, incite visitors to their websites, and tempt users to use the businesses’ products or services. But without a solid content strategy, the content itself could be insubstantial and ineffective.
That’s why in this informative post I’ll be discussing content marketing in detail, and presenting you with an easy-to-understand, four-step content marketing framework you can follow straight away. Just read the following sections:
Ready to dive in?
This is a guest post by Nicole Cowart, an online marketing executive. She works at a cloud-based company that offers smart business solutions. She is currently studying for her Master’s degree in Web Development.
Digital marketing is the future of marketing and doing business. Most successful companies currently have their online websites and stores that generate more traffic.
Nevertheless, online marketing is also the right place for beginners who are taking their first steps in the business realm.
Even if you’re not a professional marketer, you can still design and execute a successful content strategy that helps you establish your status in the online world. All you need is a good process for it.
Data shows that creative design is reshaping products, portfolios, and industry standards at more than 70% of companies.
If creative design is so important, doesn’t it also make sense to invest time and money on writing a good creative brief?
Before the actual work of designing an infographic, launching a PPC campaign, or even beginning to pull ideas together in the early stages, you need to be sure that you have a solid creative brief.
The creative brief is the foundation upon which the work of any creative project will be done, but all too often projects fall short because of poorly written, bloated, non-actionable, ambiguous creative briefs.
And what’s arguably a bigger problem than a poorly written creative brief? The process (or lack thereof) that led to its creation.
In this Process Street article, I’ll try to address the elements that make up a good creative brief, but perhaps more importantly, I’ll look at how to build a process for creative brief writing; one that’s consistent, reliable, and gets the job done.
