APPENDIX: A GRANT WRITER'S GLOSSARY

This glossary covers the terms you are most likely to meet in funding announcements, funder conversations, and this book. Where the field uses several names for one thing, entries point to the plain term the book uses. Terms taught at length in a chapter carry a habit reference.

Abstract. A short summary of your proposal, often the first and sometimes the only section a busy reviewer reads carefully. Write it last, from your finished goals.

Allowable costs. The categories of spending a funder permits. Listed in the announcement; part of the fine print Habit 5 sends you hunting for.

Applicant call. A call or webinar where the funder answers applicants' questions. Attend even without questions of your own (Habit 5).

Award. The funding granted to a successful applicant, along with everything attached to it: the budget as promised, the reporting, the terms and conditions.

Biosketch. A structured professional biography required in many research applications. Formats change, sometimes mid cycle; keep yours alive continuously (Habit 6) and format it per the current announcement.

Budget justification (narrative budget). The written explanation accompanying your numerical budget, connecting every cost to project activities.

Capacity. Your organization's demonstrated ability to deliver: people served, years operating, staff, systems, track record. Funders buy capacity as much as ideas (Habit 6).

Capacity building. Funding or activities aimed at strengthening the organization itself rather than delivering a program.

Coalition. Organizations in a shared space cooperating, formally or loosely. Funders in crowded fields look for it (Habit 9).

Contractor (vendor). An outside party paid to deliver a defined service, as distinct from a subaward recipient who conducts part of the project itself. Announcements may cap the combined share of both (Habit 5's forty percent lesson).

Cost sharing (matching funds). A requirement that the grantee contribute funds or resources alongside the grantor's. Check for it on the first read; it can quietly disqualify a small organization.

Deliverables. The products, reports, and results you commit to produce. In a grant, promises with dates.

Direct costs. Costs attributable to the project itself: project staff, supplies, participant costs.

Eligibility criteria. Who may apply and who may lead. Read as written, not as hoped (Habit 5).

Evaluation. How you will show that you did what you said you would do. The whole subject, demystified, is Habit 7.

Fiscal sponsor (fiscal agent). An established organization that receives and manages funds on behalf of a group that lacks its own tax exempt status or financial infrastructure.

Funding announcement. The document describing what a funder will support, who may ask, and how applications are judged. This book's plain term for what funders variously call a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), funding opportunity announcement (FOA), request for applications (RFA), request for proposals (RFP), program announcement, or solicitation. Whatever the name, Habit 5 applies: read all of it, yourself.

Funding cycle. The recurring schedule of announcement, submission, review, and award. Announcements evolve between cycles; every cycle is a new document.

General operating support. Flexible funding for the organization's mission as a whole rather than a specific project. The counterpart to a grant's fixed promises (Habit 7).

Grantee. The recipient of an award. Grantor: the funder making it.

Indirect costs (overhead). General organizational costs, administration, facilities, that support the project without belonging to it. Funders cap these at stated rates; small organizations often under-recover them.

In-kind contribution. A donation of goods, services, or time rather than money. Can sometimes count toward cost sharing.

Institutional Review Board (IRB). The committee that reviews research involving human subjects before it may begin. IRB approval time is part of why year one is never free (Habit 7's container rule).

Letter of inquiry. A short pitch asking a foundation, outside any open announcement, whether a full proposal would be welcome. Shares an abbreviation with the letter of intent; Tool 14 covers both.

Letter of intent (LOI). A brief notice to a funder that you plan to apply to a specific announcement. Submit whenever invited, even if optional; occasionally it is a required gate (Habit 5).

Letter of support. A partner's written commitment to or endorsement of your project. Strong ones are specific, which requires that the signer knows the plan (Habit 8).

Leverage. Sector jargon for using one resource to attract more, as in "leveraging this grant to secure matching donors." You will meet the word constantly; this book leaves it to others.

Logic model. A diagram linking a program's resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes. Required by some funders, out of fashion with others; the question underneath it is always Habit 7's.

Memorandum of understanding (MOU). A signed agreement between organizations describing roles and expectations, often required for formal partnerships.

Milestone. A dated marker of project progress, used in work plans and progress reports.

Needs assessment. The documented process of establishing what a community requires, ideally from the community itself (Habit 4's first question).

Objective. A specific, measurable step toward a goal. Funders read objectives as the promises they will hold you to; see Tool 6 for the distinction and the three questions.

Other support. Your existing and pending funding, which many applications require you to report, often as effort per award. Track it continuously (Habit 6).

Outcome. The change your project produces in the world. Output: the countable products and activities along the way. Two hundred people trained is an output; five people in sustained employment is an outcome. Funders care most about outcomes.

Peer review. Evaluation of applications by people with relevant expertise, working from the announcement's criteria. Your letter of intent helps match the right reviewers to your proposal (Habit 5).

Person years (person months). The unit federal funders use to report effort: one person year is one person's full time for one year. The bookkeeping behind the rule that no one may be committed beyond one hundred percent (Habit 6).

Pilot project. A small, short version of a program run to learn whether the full version will work. Pilot results are among the strongest evidence a proposal can cite.

Principal investigator (PI). The person responsible for a research project's conduct and administration. Announcements increasingly attach eligibility requirements to the PI specifically (Habit 5).

Program officer. The funder's staff member responsible for a program: answering applicant questions, shepherding review, working with grantees. A person you are allowed to contact, and to know (Habits 5 and 10).

Progress report. The periodic account grantees owe funders of activities, spending, and results against promises. Written for the funder to show its own people (Habit 7).

Project narrative. The core prose of your application: the need, the plan, the team, the evaluation. Organize it around the review rubric.

Responsiveness criteria. The announcement's conditions that, unmet, cause rejection before review, no scoring, no second look. Find every one on the first read and put them at the top of your notes (Habit 5).

Review rubric (review criteria). The published standards and point values reviewers must score against. The single most useful section of any announcement; build your outline from it (Habit 5).

SAM.gov and the Unique Entity ID (UEI). SAM.gov is the federal registration system organizations must complete before receiving federal awards, and the UEI is the identifier it issues. The UEI replaced the older DUNS number in 2022; if a guide still says DUNS, it is out of date. Registration can take weeks, so start on day one or earlier (Habit 5).

Seed money. Early funding to start something new, often expected to attract later, larger support.

Site visit. The funder's in-person review of your organization or project, before or during an award. Everything in Habit 6 is what a site visit sees.

SMART. The common name for goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Tool 6 builds them from three plain questions: how many, what counts, by when.

Sponsored programs office (research administration, grants office). The institutional office that reviews, approves, and submits applications on an organization's behalf. Its internal deadline, not the funder's, is your real deadline (Habit 8).

Stakeholder. Anyone with a stake in the work: the people served, partners, funders, staff, the community. Habit 4 asks that the people served be engaged continuously, not performed at application time.

Subaward (subcontract, subrecipient). An arrangement in which a portion of the funded project is carried out by another organization under the lead applicant. Comes with its own budgets, letters, and institutional lead times (Habit 8), and sometimes with announcement caps (Habit 5).

Sustainability. What continues after the funding ends. Reviewers hunt for it; tell them in every proposal (Habit 7).

Target population. The specific people a project is designed to serve, defined tightly enough to count and to enroll realistically (Habit 3).

Technical assistance. Expert help provided to organizations, sometimes by funders to their grantees, sometimes by consultants. See Habit 8 for how to earn that help.

Terms and conditions. The rules governing an award, in the grant agreement you sign. Read them the way you read the announcement: all of them, yourself.

Unsolicited proposal. A proposal submitted without an open announcement. Some foundations welcome them (usually via a letter of inquiry first); most government funders do not.

Work plan (timeline). The dated breakdown of activities and responsibilities that shows the project fitting inside the grant period, startup time included (Habits 7 and 8).