Most grant writing advice is written by grant writers for grant writers. This guide is written from the other side — by people who have read thousands of grant applications, and can tell you exactly what makes an application stand out or fall short.
When an assessor opens your application, they are asking three questions:
Everything in a strong application is designed to give clear, convincing answers to these three questions. Everything else is noise.
Assessors need to believe your organisation can actually deliver the proposed project. The signals they look for:
Track record. What has your organisation delivered before, and what did it achieve? Concrete examples with numbers (how many people served, what outcomes achieved) are more convincing than general statements about your mission and values.
Relevant expertise. Does your team have the specific skills, knowledge, and networks required for this project? Name the key people and describe their relevant experience — don't assume assessors know your organisation.
Financial stability. Does your organisation have the financial management capacity to receive and acquit grant funds responsibly? If you're a small organisation, this means demonstrating you have basic financial governance — a treasurer or bookkeeper, accounts reviewed by your board. You don't need to be large to be trusted with grant funds.
Governance. Is your organisation well-governed? A functional board with clear oversight, constituted as a legal entity, with appropriate financial controls, signals a trustworthy grantee.
Community relationships. For community-based projects, evidence that your organisation has genuine relationships with the community it serves is often decisive. Assessors are wary of organisations that propose to work "with" communities they have no existing relationship with.
State the problem clearly. Before describing your project, describe the problem it addresses. Assessors who understand why the problem matters will be more motivated to fund your solution. Use local data where you have it — numbers that are specific to your community are more compelling than national statistics.
Be specific about what you will do. "We will deliver health promotion workshops" is weaker than "We will deliver 12 workshops for 150 Pacific women aged 35-60 in South Auckland, focusing on diabetes prevention, using a culturally appropriate curriculum co-designed with participants." Specificity demonstrates planning and enables assessment.
Explain why your approach will work. What evidence or experience supports the approach you're proposing? Have others used this approach successfully? If your approach is new, why do you believe it will work?
Define your outcomes. What will be different as a result of your project — and for whom? Outcomes describe changes in people's knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, or circumstances. Activities describe what you'll do. Assessors want to fund outcomes, not activities.
Connect to the funder's priorities. Read the funder's guidelines carefully and connect your project explicitly to their stated priorities. Assessors are more likely to fund projects that clearly serve the funder's goals than projects that may be worthy but don't clearly connect.
A grant budget has two jobs: it needs to be reasonable, and it needs to explain itself.
Reasonable rates. Staff costs should reflect actual salary rates, not aspirational ones. Overpriced budgets signal either poor planning or opportunistic grant-seeking. Underpriced budgets signal that you haven't thought through what the work actually costs, and the project will likely be under-resourced.
Full cost recovery. Include a realistic proportion of your organisation's overhead — management time, administration, facilities, insurance. "No overhead" budgets that present the project as costing only direct costs are not credible; every project consumes some organisational overhead.
Explanatory notes. Budget line items with brief explanatory notes (e.g., "Facilitator: 2 days × $800/day = $1,600") are much clearer than bare numbers. Assessors who have to guess what a budget line represents will worry about what else they're not understanding.
Match funding and leverage. If your project is co-funded by other sources, show that clearly. Funders who see that their grant is enabling or complementing other investment feel better about their contribution.
Too long. Assessors read many applications. Applications that take twice as long to say half as much get lower marks for clarity. Stay within word limits; if there's no limit, be concise.
Vague outcomes. "Build community capacity" and "improve wellbeing" are not outcomes — they're aspirations. Tell assessors specifically what will be different for specific people as a result of your work.
Assuming the funder knows your organisation. Many organisations write applications that assume the reader knows who they are and what they do. Write as if the assessor has never heard of you, because they may not have.
Ignoring the assessment criteria. Many funders publish their assessment criteria. Applications that don't address those criteria directly leave assessors searching for the evidence they need to score your application well.
Budget doesn't match narrative. If your narrative describes one project but your budget funds a different one, assessors will notice and will question your planning quality.
Tahua supports funders to create application forms, guidance, and assessment processes that help applicants put forward their strongest work.