How To Use Data Visualization To Strengthen Your Grant Proposal
Data supports the messaging you convey in your grant application. In fact, there are many studies showing that there is an 80% sales increase when people use data visualization. This could be because the average human can process an image in 13 milliseconds, illustrating just how impactful taking your relevant grant proposal data and utilizing non-profit data visualization techniques.
It can be difficult determining how to utilize data and overwhelming when trying to decide what data is the most relevant to the proposal. There is often multiple spreadsheets and potential ways to analyze or sort the spreadsheets in order to find that perfect metric. Once you have the metrics calculated and chosen, it can be difficult to know what the best data visualization method to use is, and yes there is a wrong answer when it comes to choosing the non-profit data visualization tool. To help you achieve success in your grant writing proposal strategy and obtain engaging data visualization in your grant proposal, follow these steps.
Compare the data you have with your goals.
Utilize clear statistics that relate to what you are trying to tell the reader.
Use data visualization to capture the attention of the reader.
Compare The Data You Have With Your Goals:
Not all data is important. The last thing we want to do is overwhelm the person reviewing the application with data that does not support the story we are telling them. So, we can start by creating our story and goals, before reviewing the data and finding supporting points to include. Check out our last blog post to see the elements of a story and how they can be applied to grant writing best practices.
Once you have your story and goals in place, read through the goals and story carefully to determine what metrics and statistics could help support them. Next, re-read the grant proposal requirements and further narrow down the best goals and figures to highlight. For instance, if the grant proposal wants to know the percentage of funding that will go to different projects, narrow down how much of the money will be needed for each project and then apply non-profit data visualization techniques.
Utilize Clear Statistics:
Statistics are a quick way for the grant reader to get an idea of your needs without having to comb through pages of data. Statistics can be found all over the web and even by using AI resources. This is a great way of looking past your organization and presenting the bigger picture that impacts your organization. These figures can also cover a wider range of subjects than your company data. For instance, you can include a statistic showing the number of homeless women in Erie County to illustrate why you need funding for a women’s shelter.
Statistical metrics need to be chosen based on your goals and how they can enhance the data from your organization. They should not be the entire presentation because they are not directly related to your numbers. Using about 3 statistics per section of your grant writing proposal to enhance your grant writing strategy is a way to support the numbers and needs of your non-profit. Therefore, you can structure your sections by first showing the statistics of the country, county, and town before showing how this has impacted your income, or clientele. For example, if you owned a women’s shelter, you could say 50% of the US population is female, 51% of the Erie County population is female, and 51% of Millcreek residents are female. Then, you could support with another statistic saying 90% of domestic violence victims are women, and our organization is created to service over half the population if they run into these types of issues.
Utilize Data Visualization:
People are becoming more visual learners than ever before. They are absorbing data through images after being raised on social media and having entertainment at their finger tips. We want to appeal to this trend and utilize non-profit data visualization to capture the readers attention.
Some ways we can use data visualization is by showing our data in charts, graphs, & trend lines. The most common ways to organize data include bar charts, histograms, line graphs, scatterplots, etc. It is important to know the best way to utilize the different charts.
Scatterplots can be used to correlate data and if two metrics are trending in the same direction. This is a great way to show the impact of a specific program.
Line charts are famous for showing trends in data and how data connects over a length of time. For instance, a line chart could show the residents at your housing facility over 5 years.
Bar charts are created to visually show differences in data points. To illustrate, this could encompass the differences in donations to your organization over 3 years.
Pie charts illustrate the different percentages of a whole. For example, percentage of funding going to different organizational divisions.
Overall, choosing the chart depends on the data you are showing in your grant writing proposal. However, the chart should be based on your figures more than the statistics, as these are just supporting points to your company data.
In conclusion, data visualization is crucial to an impactful grant funding strategy. Data visualization is what shows the story that you are writing. To start the process, look at the data you have, compare it with your goals and analyze further if needed. Then, take these new metrics and see what statistics could be added to the proposal to help show the bigger picture of your goals, or the reasoning behind them. Finally, create grant proposal charts and graphs that illustrate your organization’s figures so that the reader can quickly understand why you need their help. This will enhance your story and allow you to expand upon your written thoughts.
If you ever have any questions or need assistance in creating your proposal, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always here to help in any way that I can.
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