Many of you have to sell a project to somebody. If you work for a large company, it may be to your manager; if you are a technical services firm it may be to a prospective client. If you are a fundraiser, it may be to a foundation or prospective client.

I have worked actively as a fundraiser over the last 20 years. More often than not it has been as a volunteer in an organization that I believe in. One project involved a building renovation costing three quarters of a million; one was a tour to Europe for a youth group with a budget of $135,000. The most recent was a performing arts organization with a goal of $54,000 for a specific project. We have just heard that the proposal was successful. It's satisfying to know that one can deliver the goods and I'm often asked, "How did you write the proposal so fast?"

The reply sounds like a sales pitch, and it is. But how can I have any integrity if I don't use the products I promote in real situations and test their capability to the full.

VisiMap is a thought catcher. The task at hand was to capture and present thoughts in a specific format. The project proposal had to be based on firm guidelines from the foundation distributing the grants.  The guidelines are excellent because they actually help one focus and develop responses that are brief and to the point. You can see an outline among the models on this site.

I reduced the 24 questions to the briefest of phrases and put them into VisiMap format. Some questions had obvious answers, but the information was not at hand. I knew that it would be easy to obtain and would take very little effort. I colour coded them to indicate that the information was straightforward and available from other sources. I was now down to 12 questions.

I switched tools and looked at the questions from the perspective of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Model. Which questions required factual and analytical information? Which questions had to show a sequential order of activities? Which questions allowed the chance to inject some emotional color that the jurors of the granting body could connect with? (I know that most people make granting decisions on the basis of their feelings and rationalize the decision afterwards). What questions would allow me to present a wider vision?  These four areas were all going to be necessary to reach the jurors, because the preferred thinking styles are typically well balanced within any group. These hour areas of the questions were color coded as well.

VisiMap allows me to layer text under the various headings. I started writing copy. I was able to move it around easily when an answer seemed to relate to another question more appropriately.

Very quickly the document took shape. A quick phone call filled in the information blanks. It was now time to turn my map into document form. I copied and pasted the document version into my word processor and attached it to E-Mails to the other participants asking for feedback and input.

What I sent was a first draft put together in less than an hour. Interestingly enough, some of this copy survived the first draft - that was the section relating to the overall vision - my initial instinct here was correct. We refined other aspects of the proposal, omitted some parts and strengthened others. Budgets and supporting materials were added to the main proposal. The total working time for the participants now totaled about ten hours.

We then hit a snag after submission. The foundation was new to the performing arts.  The wanted several questions answered on short notice. Their questions indicated that they did not understand some aspects of the way the arts discipline worked. Our staff professional spent several hours in meetings and phone calls explaining and justifying our timetable for the project. Chock up another fifteen hours.

Several months passed and finally an answer came. A grant of $54,000 was ours pending the submission of an evaluation report.

Back to VisiMap. The letter of agreement was clear about the conditions.  What was required was a sequence of activities to comply. I created a quick map in VisiMap but decided that a map format would be inappropriate to send to a bunch of bureaucrats with no experience of this kind of graphic interface. A quick save into project management software was the answer. The resulting project plan had spaces to assign people and dates, which made the plan complete. Not only did we have a plan to comply with the proposal requirements but we also had our own marching orders.

Three people reviewed the evaluation document.  One person noted two typos and the other two approved it.  Total time for all participants - 2 hours.

The end result? -$54,000 for 27 hours of labour. The foundation stated that it was one of the better proposals they had received. It was hardly revolutionary in content but it was highly focused and successful. The credit belongs to the tools, VisiMap, Project KickStart, the Herrmann Model. One of our satisfied customers joins me in proclaiming - "This stuff works".