| Report
on Three Workshops on Proposal Writing in South Africa for Cultural
Heritage and Academic Grants
By:
Christine Root and David Wiley
We facilitated three workshops on proposal writing sponsored by
the South Africa Cultural Heritage Training Project, following on
a request for this training at the January 2002 meeting of SANC
in Johannesburg.
Details
of the workshops are as follows:
- Durban
– July 17, 2002 at Govan Mbeki Technology Center, University
of Durban-Westville
Organized by Mwelela Cele, SANCH Coordinator, Documentation Centre,
UDW
Introduction by Dhiru Soni, Pro-Vice Chancellor, UDW
32
participants
-
Cape Town – July 25, 2002 at the Mandela
Robben Island Gateway Center
Hosted by the Robben Island Training Program (RITP)
Organized by Zulaiga Rossouw, RITP; Invitations and outreach by
Deirdre Prins
Introduced by Paul Langa, Interim Co-Director, Robben Island Museum
43
participants
-
Pretoria – July 29, 2002 at National Archives
of South Africa (NASA)
Organized by Mandy Gilder (NASA)
Introduced by Graham Dominy, Director, NASA
40
participants
We
provided practical suggestions for how to identify and research
funders, the various purposes served by a proposal, techniques for
writing successful proposals, and perspectives about how reviewers
evaluate proposals. We stressed three themes:
- (1)
Have a fresh creative idea to present and use “hooks”
to catch the readers’ attention,
- (2)
Learn what are the funder’s interests and communicate about
your mutual interests, and
-
(3) Follow the funder’s directions about how to write the
proposal.
We
investigated the possibility of including in the workshop a South
African representing a granting agency. We did not know appropriate
people who fit this description in either Durban or Cape Town, so
we conducted those workshops by ourselves. In Pretoria, Beverley
Damonse of the National Research Foundation (NRF) joined us and
presented a closing section of the workshop on how her agency’s
grant-making procedures operate. This was an effective addition
to the workshop because she presented in specific terms many of
the same basic messages that we had conveyed. (Thanks to Ruen Govender
for helping to communicate with Beverley Damonse as we scrambled
to leave MSU and for assisting with the list of funding agencies.)
We
received positive feedback and thanks from participants at all three
workshops.
Staff
from quite a number of cultural heritage institutions participated
in the workshops. We were very pleased with the representation,
most especially in Cape Town, where Deirdre Prins made a serious
effort to include many local cultural organizations. The one disappointment
was that 18 post-graduate students in the cultural heritage management
training program at RIM who had planned to attend could not boat
to Cape Town from Robben Island because of high winds. Zulaiga Rossouw
agreed to share with them the contents of the workshop, and we left
ample handouts for them.
Handouts
provided at all the workshops:
- “Foundations
and Government Agencies Making Grants in South Africa” (5
pages)
A thoroughly-updated, annotated list of U.S. foundations and selected
U.S. government programs that provide funding for projects in
South Africa. Also includes on-line directories of U.S. foundations,
those with international activities, and those that make grants
in Africa.
(by Christine Root, Ruendree Govender, and David Wiley)
- “The
12 generic elements of funding proposals” (1 page)
(by David Wiley)
- “Some
Helpful URLs with Advice about Proposal Writing” (1 page)
(by Christine Root and David Wiley)
- “The
Art of Writing Proposals: Some Candid Suggestions for Applicants
to Social Science Research Council Competitions” (5 pages)
(From SSRC)
- “Some
WWWeb Addresses for On-Line Writing Centers (OWLs)” (2 pages)
(by David Wiley, updated with some annotations taken from “Self-Help
Documents on the
Writing Process.”)
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