If you're proud of your prose, this article is for you. The metaphor in your opening paragraph, the carefully built sentence, the phrase you spent twenty minutes choosing: a reviewer will probably skim past all of it. They're not reading for pleasure. They're looking for answers to scoring questions.
Clear proposals are easier to score than clever ones, because clarity makes the reviewer's job easy. This article explains what clarity looks like in a grant application, what cleverness costs you and how to edit a draft toward clarity without losing your organization's voice.
Why clarity matters to reviewers
Reviewers read under constraints. At the National Institutes of Health, for example, each application is assigned to at least three reviewers, who each write a critique, score every review criterion and give a preliminary overall score before the panel meets. That's a lot of material per application, and it's repeated across many applications.
You may not be applying to NIH, but the pattern is typical: someone with limited time reading against a form. If they have to work to find your answer, they'll score what they could find.
Federal policy recognizes this. The Uniform Guidance says that, to the extent possible, agencies should communicate funding opportunities in plain language, and it asks them to limit the length and complexity of announcements. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal content for the public to be written for its audience. A funder that asks for plain language is telling you what it wants to read in return.
What clear writing looks like
Federal plain-language guidance is a good starting point because it was written for readers who don't have time to decode. Digital.gov notes that active voice makes it clear who should do what, and that passive voice obscures who handles what. It also recommends the present tense as the simplest and strongest form of a verb, and direct, strong verbs rather than nouns made from verbs.
In a proposal, that translates into a few habits:
- Answer first. Start each section with the answer to the question the reviewer is scoring, then give the support.
- Use plain words. "Use" instead of "utilize." "Help" instead of "facilitate."
- Keep sentences short. One idea each, most of the time.
- Name who does what. "Our case managers will contact each family within five days," not "Contact will be made."
- Match the notice's language. If the criterion says "organizational capacity," use those words in the heading. Decoding the scoring criteria shows how to build that mapping.
What cleverness costs
Cleverness isn't wrong in itself. It becomes a problem when it costs the reviewer effort or hides the answer.
Metaphors
A metaphor in a need statement, such as "our community is a garden that has run dry," makes a reviewer translate before they can score. Replace it with the fact: how many households, what resource, since when.
Jargon and acronyms
Every field has shorthand that insiders stop noticing. Reviewers may be from a different field, or from a panel assembled for breadth. Spell out each acronym on first use, and cut any term you'd have to explain to a neighbor. Under 2 CFR 200.204, the executive summary of a federal notice must itself be written in plain language, which is a good standard for yours.
Buried answers
If the reviewer has to read three paragraphs of background to learn what you plan to do, the answer is buried. Background belongs after the answer, not before it.
A worked example
Say a hypothetical rural housing nonprofit is describing its repair program. Here's a before and after of one paragraph.
Before: "Like a lighthouse in a storm, our holistic, wraparound housing stabilization framework leverages cross-sector synergies to ensure that vulnerable households experience transformational outcomes."
After: "We repair roofs, furnaces and plumbing for low-income homeowners. In the first year we will complete 40 repairs, and each household will receive a follow-up visit within 30 days."
The first version is longer on style and shorter on content: nothing in it can be scored. The second gives two things to check, what the work is and how much of it there will be. The numbers in an example like this are for illustration only; use your own.
Edit for clarity
You can edit most drafts for clarity in three passes.
Read it aloud
Awkward sentences, repeated words and long tangles show up when you hear them. Mark every place you run out of breath or stumble, and rewrite it.
Cut the first paragraph
Many drafts start with warm-up. Delete the first paragraph of each section and read the rest. If nothing is lost, leave it deleted. If the section now starts in the right place, you've found your real opening.
Define every acronym and test every claim
Search your document for capitalized abbreviations. Spell each one out the first time, or remove it if it appears once. Then check that every claim has a number, a name or a source. The final read-through goes into more detail on the last pass before you submit.
If you want a second reader, ask someone outside your field to summarize each section in one sentence. If their summary isn't yours, the section isn't clear yet.
Keep your voice
Clear doesn't mean flat. You can write warmly, with specifics that show real people and real places. The difference is that your voice carries the reader toward the answer instead of around it. A single vivid, true detail, such as the specific winter when the furnace failed at a home you serve, does more than a paragraph of metaphor.
Your next step
Take your next draft and cut the first paragraph of the main narrative. Read what's left and decide whether anything was lost. If the answer is no, you've just made the proposal shorter and clearer in one step. If something was lost, move it to where it's needed and make it shorter.
If a blank page is what slows you down, SoliContraX can start you from a draft built from your own materials, which you then edit until it sounds like your organization. See how to get started.