Planning your project
From Our Toolkit
When applying for money all funders will want to see how you will bring your ideas to fruition. They will often ask you to demonstrate this process by writing a project plan.
It is good practice to develop a project plan whether your funder asks for it or not. In developing your project plan you can ensure that you have thought through each element of the project and make sure you have enough resource and capacity to deliver it.
Working together
If you are new to project planning it can help to work with someone or a small team to develop it so as to bring in other perspectives.
Making your plan SMART
You will need to take your initial idea and break it down into the individual tasks or activities needed to deliver it. When writing these individual steps it is best practice to ensure that each one is ‘SMART’
- S – specific
- M – measured
- A – achievable
- R – realistic
- T – time limited
Project planning templates
Once you have a list of your project tasks and activities you can feed them into a project plan template. Major funders often supply them for you to use although the level of detail required in each project plan can differ depending on the funding stream you are applying for.
Sample project planning templates:
