Unofficial Guide: How to apply for grants at NED

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) recently announced that it is accepting proposal applications from organizations around the world to provide grant support to them to work on projects related to human rights, an independent media, the rule of law and to advance other democratic goals.

We believe that this is an excellent opportunity for many NGOs (small and large) seeking support for their activities in the areas mentioned above. NED offers more than one thousand grants for projects around the world with preference to those countries facing “diverse situations, such as transitional countries where the goal is democratic consolidation, authoritarian countries where the goals are liberalization, and the protection of human rights.”

The areas of grant assistance are broad and previous grantee experiences show that this donor agency is extremely flexible with a highly supportive and flexible staff. It seeks funding requests every quarter of the year, prior to the meetings of the Board of Directors, so applicants need not feel deterred about meeting tight deadlines.

Taking into consideration these facts, we are encouraging NGOs to use this opportunity to apply for funding support from NED. But writing a proposal for a small or medium-sized organization in a developing country can be challenging despite the availability of all useful information at the donor website.

Here, we have undertaken some research and developed this information to help NGOs to develop a proper proposal application to submit it to NED for grant support.

But before, we move ahead, a very important disclaimer:

The information given here to write a proposal application to apply for NED Grants Program is very basic and completely unofficial. We are in no way affiliated to this agency or any of its partners or associates. Using this information does not guarantee any grant or funding from NED or any other grant-making agency. It will only provide some references and other support information only for organizations to write a good proposal. We strongly advise you to not to copy and paste the material here, but you can use it to research and build your own unique proposal for better possibilities.

Now, we move ahead to write the proposal for NED (Click on the links below)

1. NED’s Grantmaking Process

2. The Proposal Cover Sheet

3. The Proposal

4. The Proposal Summary

5. Example for Proposal Narrative

6. Project Background

7. Project Objectives

8. Project Activities

9. Monitoring & Evaluation Plan

10. Completing the Proposal