Writing Project 1--Grant Writing

Working Class Site Preservation Grant Writing

For this assignment you will be writing a mock grant proposal for a working class historical site that you select. The grant will be in an effort to procure funds (cold hard cash…or check) for the preservation of the chosen working class site.

In this writing assignment you will use a shortened format for the grant application. You will not be completing an entire grant application, but if you are interested you can view the guidelines for a full grant application at: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/IAHP_Implementation.html#howto.

Most grant applications differ substantially in form, length, and content from one another, but have similar elements or guidelines needed to complete the form or document.

For the purposes of this assignment, we will substantially alter the grant application guidelines. You will be addressing the historic preservation grant writing in the following five sections (make sure to clearly title and label these sections in your grant application writing):

Section 1: Your name and/or name of the group applying for the grant
Section 2: Statement of your site’s significance to working class history
Section 3: Site description, including 3 photos, following the text
Section 4: Project description, what are you identifying as the need for the grant monies
Section 5: Proposed outcomes, what will you do with the money granted to you or the organization

How this writing assignment should be formatted, an example:

Section 1: John MTU Student and the Society for the Preservation of Bob’s Iron Foundry

Section 2: Statement of Site Significance to Working Class History or Studies
This site is significant because…

Section 3: Site Description
Bob’s Iron Foundry is comprised of five buildings…

Section 4: Project Description
Since 1980 the site has stood silent, now we are hoping to open the site to tourism by…

Section 5: Proposed Outcomes
With this grant money, in Project Phase 1 we will renovate the former furnace building…

At the end be sure to include a short, but proper Works Sited Section

Remember, for this assignment key concepts from class will heavily influence the grading you earn for this writing assignment. Be sure to 1) identify the audience; 2) clearly state your argument; 3) work into the grant writing your argument, ethos, logos, and pathos; and 4) use proper citation (you may use APA, IEEE, MLA, or Chicago-Turabian) and evaluation of resources. For this writing assignment you will need to use at least 3 different resources. In this assignment, alone, all three of these may come from reputable on-line resources…key to that statement is “reputable.”

You may not use Wikipedia or another tertiary source though.

Also, make sure that your argument for preservation of your working class historic site has the four “Cs.” It must be clear, concise, concrete, and have a current or flow. This writing assignment will be a bit of a departure from our other ones in that it is not a formal essay, so to speak, in that you will not have to organize it with a thesis statement, body, and conclusion.

However, a thesis statement of sorts should be included in “Section 2: Statement of your site’s significance to working class history.” This section will outline the reason or your argument for preservation of the site, so here is a good place to start with a one to two sentence statement that guides or sets the tone for your entire argument.

Due to the hopefully varied nature of your sites and resources available to you, I will let you determine how long each individual section should be, but total length of the grant application should be two pages… a full two pages or longer. Longer, of course, does not always mean better, so again the 4 Cs.

A final note: as with the tests, you need to earn a 3.0 on this assignment (and all other writing assignments) to pass the unit. If you do not receive a 3.0, you will have to edit or re-write your returned writing assignment until it receives a 3.0. As with the test, you also may not move onto another unit until you have passed a unit. Standard margins and 12 pt Times New Roman font should be used.

Best of luck, I’m very interested to see which sites are selected, and your arguments for their preservation. Put some thought into these grant applications and be creative with your solutions.