Thank you, Dr. Ajayi and Desmond, for putting together such a comprehensive resource. Two slides in particular stopped me, not because they taught me something new in theory, but because they named something I have lived through in practice over recent months.
Slide 30, "Acknowledgement of Potential Problems," captures a lesson we learned the hard way at Purpose Rwanda. After an earlier funding rejection, our instinct was to resubmit the same proposal with minor edits. What we came to understand instead was that acknowledging risk honestly, including the risk that a project may simply not be the right fit for a particular funder's current priorities, is not a weakness to hide. It is precisely what distinguishes a proposal that reads as self-aware from one that reads as either naive or defensive. We rebuilt our next application around a smaller, more honestly scoped project rather than repeating the same pitch louder.
Slide 19's point on the Gates Foundation capping indirect costs at 15% resonated just as strongly, though from a different funder relationship. While preparing a recent budget for a research-preparation grant, we deliberately built in a realistic administrative allocation rather than maximizing it, and left genuine headroom below the funding ceiling rather than requesting the full amount available. I now understand this instinct as exactly the "realistic, transparent budget" this material describes, funders notice restraint as much as they notice ambition.
What ties these two lessons together, in my experience, is a broader shift I've had to make as an Executive Director: away from writing proposals to sound confident, and toward writing them to sound honest. Reviewers and program officers, in my limited but growing experience, seem to trust the second far more than the first.
Grateful for this material, and for a community where this kind of reflection is welcomed.
