The importance of voice

Associated Press (AP Photo) / Howard Sochurek

I'll bet your heard the voice in your head as soon as you looked at the picture: The warm tone, the smooth cadences, the vibrant rhythm. It's indelible, powerful and inspirational.

Think of John Kennedy's speeches, or FDR's. No matter what you think of his policies, it's hard to argue that Ronald Reagan was a superb speaker—even his rival Jimmy Carter admitted that some years later. But great voice needn't be limited to speaking: Thomas Jefferson was a master of the pen and highly uncoordinated on the podium. And his voice helped make a country.

"Ten times a better writer..."

When Jefferson said he wanted John Adams to write the Declaration of Independence, the latter replied, "You must do it...You are ten times a better writer than I am."

Adams knew the importance of the right words, the right tone, the right rhetoric. And he, despite his outward modesty, was no slouch with the pen himself. But he knew Jefferson's prose was simply more memorable. It sure must be: We've been reciting it repeatedly since July 4th, 1776.

Which brings me to your grant proposal.

I see so many proposals, for wonderful programs that will change lives, reduced to a heap of limp words on the page, resembling broccoli that's been cooked for an hour.

Now, I get it. We're not writing fiction here (though I've done that too). Grant writing is, in many ways, an exercise in constraint. There are eligibility requirements to meet, character limits to respect, budgets to balance, outcomes to quantify, attachments to include, evaluation plans to explain and countless little boxes that must be checked before a proposal can even be considered. A grant writer has to understand the funder’s priorities, follow the application instructions precisely and make sure every claim can be supported.

In other words, grant writing is not exactly known for its creative freedom.

And yet, there is a danger in taking that too far. A grant proposal can be technically flawless and still fail to move anyone.

Because ultimately, a grant proposal is not being read by a spreadsheet. It is being read by a human being. That human being may have read dozens of proposals before yours. They may have encountered the same familiar language about underserved populations, community impact, measurable outcomes, stakeholder engagement and transformative change again and again. They may be perfectly capable of determining whether your program meets the eligibility requirements.

But the question is whether, after reading your proposal, they care.

That is where voice comes in.

Think About Martin Luther King Jr.

Back to Dr. King. (Because, really, can we ever get enough of that voice, of that speech that is music?)

Virtually everyone knows that sound. Instantly. That doesn't mean every sentence he wrote or spoke was poetic. It doesn't mean every speech was delivered at the same emotional pitch. And it certainly doesn't mean a grant proposal should sound like a civil rights sermon.

The point is something more fundamental: Dr. King had a voice that was unmistakably his. 

His language had rhythm. It had conviction. It had moral clarity. It knew when to build momentum and when to become quiet and direct. Most importantly, his voice was appropriate to his purpose. He wasn't using beautiful language merely to decorate an argument. The language served the argument.

You could remove his name from much of his most famous writing and still recognize the speaker.

That is the lesson worth borrowing for grant writing—not King's vocabulary, rhetorical flourishes or cadence, but his command of voice.

Your Grant Should Sound Like Your Organization

A nonprofit serving children should not sound exactly like a food bank. A community health organization should not sound like an arts organization. A workforce-development program should not sound like a university.

Yet grant proposals sometimes flatten those differences. They become exercises in "grant speak"—a strange dialect in which every organization is "leveraging community partnerships," every program is "transformative," every participant is "empowered," and every outcome is "measurable."

Some of those terms are useful. Many are necessary. But when every organization uses the same language, the organizations themselves begin to disappear.

A strong proposal should make the reader feel that there is a real organization behind the words. You should be able to sense what that organization cares about. You should understand the problem not simply as a statistic, but as something that matters to the people doing the work every day. And you should come away understanding why this organization, rather than another one, is particularly well equipped to do something about it.

That doesn't require purple prose. In fact, it usually requires the opposite.

It requires clarity.

Facts Are What Make the Case. Voice Makes It Matter.

None of this means abandoning the factual side of grant writing. Quite the opposite. Facts are the foundation. A compelling proposal still needs credible data, clearly defined objectives, realistic budgets, sound methodology and measurable outcomes. You cannot substitute eloquence for evidence.

But evidence alone doesn't necessarily create urgency.

Imagine writing: "Last year, 37 percent of students in the district experienced chronic absenteeism." That's an important fact. But what does that number actually mean? It means students are missing instruction, falling further behind, becoming disconnected from classmates and teachers, and potentially seeing their educational opportunities narrowed before they have even reached adulthood.

The data establishes the problem. The writing gives the problem meaning.

That distinction matters. Grantmakers aren't simply investing in activities. They are deciding whether they believe an organization can produce meaningful change. Your job as a writer is to help them see that change—not through exaggeration or manipulation, but through a compelling and credible narrative.

Inspiration Doesn't Mean Hype

There is another important distinction here: inspiring writing is not the same thing as hype.

A proposal doesn't become stronger because every program is "groundbreaking," every participant is "empowered," and every anticipated result is "transformational." In fact, excessive superlatives can have the opposite effect. Experienced grantmakers have seen them all before.

Real inspiration usually comes from specificity. Instead of telling a funder that your organization is "changing lives," show what changes. Instead of saying that your program "strengthens the community," explain how. Instead of describing your participants as "under-served," tell the reader what barrier they are facing and what your organization is doing to remove it.

The more concrete the writing becomes, the more powerful it often becomes.

And that is another quality worth noting in King's writing: beneath the rhetoric was an extraordinary ability to make an abstract idea understandable and immediate. Justice. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. Big concepts became something people could see, feel and act upon.

A grant proposal has its own version of that challenge. You may be asking a funder to support literacy, food security, youth development, environmental restoration or economic mobility. These are broad concepts. Your writing has to make the particular version of that problem—and the particular opportunity to address it—come alive.

The Technical Requirements Are Not the Enemy

There is a temptation among writers to think that technical requirements somehow get in the way of good writing.

They don't. They're simply part of the assignment.

A good grant writer can work within a 500-word limit and still produce something memorable. They can describe evaluation methodology without putting the reader to sleep.

They can explain a budget without making the proposal feel like an accounting document.

The trick is not to choose between precision and personality. It's to make them work together.

The best grant writing is precise enough to be credible and compelling enough to be remembered. It answers the funder's questions without sounding as though it was written solely to answer questions. It satisfies the application requirements while maintaining a sense of humanity. And it gives the reader a reason to keep reading.

Give the Grant a Voice

Every organization has a story to tell. The grant writer's job isn't to manufacture a voice that doesn't exist. It's to discover the organization's authentic voice and make it audible within the constraints of the application.

That voice may be warm. It may be urgent. It may be optimistic, determined, pragmatic, compassionate or fiercely focused. Whatever it is, it should belong to the organization.

Martin Luther King Jr. didn't become one of the most recognizable voices in history because he discovered a clever formula for sounding inspiring. He had something to say, he understood why it mattered, and he developed a voice capable of carrying that message to the universe.

Grant writers face a much smaller—and considerably less historic—task. But the principle is similar.

You still have facts to establish. Requirements to satisfy. Boxes to check. And a limited number of words in which to make your case.

So check the boxes. Follow the rules. Get the numbers right.

Then do something more:

Make the reader believe that what happens next—saying yes—really matters.

Doing philanthropy proud

With so many billionaires hoarding their bananas these days while spending every waking moment trying to accumulate more, it's refreshing to see one of the richest women in the world doing good—and Snap founder Evan Spiegel is paying attention. This article is from the Times of India.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Jeff Bezos ex-wife MacKenzie Scott who sold half of her Amazon stake helped write a 'donation playbook' that Snap founder Evan Spiegel is following

TOI Tech Desk

Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel and his wife, supermodel Miranda Kerr, recently made a multimillion-dollar donation that will wipe out $550 million in medical debt for over 261,000 Californians.

Interestingly, this sophisticated philanthropic model was pioneered by MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos ex-wife, who has donated more than $26 billion to over 2,700 non-profit organisations through her platform, Yield Giving. By leveraging a high-impact “donation playbook” to effective nonprofits, Spiegel is emulating the strategy that transformed Scott into the most prolific philanthropist of her generation.

Snap founder Evan Spiegel is following the Scott model. The donation was made to Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit organisation that gained national prominence largely through early, substantial investments from MacKenzie Scott. The massive debt relief effort will target vulnerable residents across the state, with San Diego and Los Angeles counties receiving the largest shares of assistance. Scott donated a combined $80 million to the organization between 2020 and 2022, helping the once-scrappy nonprofit abolish over $40 billion in medical debt across all 50 states.

Spiegel’s strategy mimics Scott’s signature approach: identify scalable organisations, provide massive, unrestricted capital, and leverage unique market opportunities for maximum impact. “The scale of this gift to Californians is truly astonishing, unburdening over a quarter million families of over half a billion dollars of un-payable medical debt,” said Allison Sesso, president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt. The unique way of abolishing medical debt. The mechanism that enables this exponential impact lies at the intersection of distressed debt markets and American healthcare dysfunction. Hospitals routinely sell uncollectible patient debt to collectors in bulk portfolios for pennies on the dollar. Undue Medical Debt enters this market as a bulk buyer, acquiring these portfolios at the same steep discounts. However, instead of trying to collect the money, the organisation permanently abolishes the debt. Starting in mid-July, eligible Californians began receiving letters informing them that their medical debt has been erased. The relief is targeted toward residents whose medical debt threatens access to essential care and economic stability.

Read the full article here.

The Metric System

If there's one thing everyone is obsessed with today it's data. Big data. Small data. Data with a side of fries. This both helps grantees and limits them at the same time. Here's why.

The Age of Measurement

Spend any amount of time writing grant proposals today and you'll quickly notice a pattern. Nearly every application asks the same questions:

• How many people will you serve?

• What measurable outcomes will you achieve?

• How will you evaluate success?

• What data will you collect?

• What percentage improvement do you expect?

  
  

These aren't unreasonable questions. Foundations have a responsibility to ensure that charitable dollars are spent wisely. Donors deserve accountability. Nonprofits should be able to demonstrate that their programs are making a difference.

But somewhere over the past two decades, something subtle has happened. Measurement has evolved from a useful management tool into an end in itself.

Increasingly, organizations are expected to prove their worth not simply through stories of transformed lives, but through spreadsheets, dashboards, and statistically significant outcomes.

In the process, philanthropy may be undervaluing some of the very things it was created to support.

Not Everything That Matters Can Be Counted

It's easy to measure meals served.

It's harder to measure dignity restored.

A food pantry can report that it distributed 250,000 pounds of food this year. That's valuable information. But suppose volunteers also learned every client's name, treated them with warmth, and created an atmosphere where people felt respected instead of ashamed. How do you assign a numerical value to that?

Likewise, a mentoring program can count the number of mentor-mentee meetings. But what metric captures the moment a lonely teenager finally realizes that one trustworthy adult genuinely believes in them?

The numbers tell part of the story. Often they don't tell the most important part.

The Pressure to Quantify Everything

Many grantmakers now ask applicants to develop logic models, theories of change, SMART objectives, outcome matrices, and evaluation plans before funding is even considered.

These tools can be extremely helpful when used appropriately. They encourage organizations to think carefully about what they're trying to accomplish and how they'll know if they're succeeding.

Problems arise when these frameworks become rigid expectations rather than flexible guides.

Some nonprofit work simply resists precise quantification.

A symphony orchestra doesn't merely produce concerts. It inspires wonder.

A museum doesn't simply record attendance. It preserves civilization's memory.

A community theater doesn't just entertain audiences. It creates belonging, confidence, and imagination.

An after-school art program may never produce dramatic test-score gains. Yet twenty years later, one participant may become a teacher, another an architect, another simply an adult who believes life contains beauty worth preserving.

Which spreadsheet captures that?

The Long Horizon of Human Change

Funders understandably like outcomes that can be measured within a grant period—often twelve months.

Human development rarely follows such convenient timelines.

A child introduced to reading today may not discover a lifelong passion until college.

A neighborhood beautification project may slowly reduce crime, increase civic pride, and encourage local investment over many years.

A counseling program may plant seeds that don't fully bloom until someone faces a personal crisis years later.

The most meaningful changes in human lives often unfold gradually, unpredictably, and invisibly.

Yet grant reporting cycles tend to reward what can be counted immediately.

The Risk of Funding What's Easy to Measure

An old management saying warns:

"What gets measured gets managed."

An unfortunate corollary may also be true:

What gets measured gets funded.

Organizations whose work naturally produces numerical outputs often enjoy an advantage. Medical screenings. Job placements. Meals served. Vaccinations administered. Housing units built.

It goes without saying these are all vitally important, and generate readily reportable statistics.

Meanwhile, organizations devoted to strengthening community, nurturing creativity, preserving history, fostering empathy, or enriching civic life often struggle to describe their impact using the same language.

The irony is that these less measurable efforts frequently help create healthier, more resilient communities in ways that become obvious only over time.

So many pundits are wondering why, while being relatively well-off by historical metrics, we are so unhappy and feeling hopeless lately.

Perhaps they are only looking at what can be quantified. Perhaps if they got away from their computer data and out into the difficult-to-measure, fuzzy real world, they might understand.

The Seduction of Calculated Precision

Numbers feel objective. A report stating that "87.3% of participants demonstrated improved outcomes" carries an aura of scientific certainty.

Stories feel subjective.

Yet numbers can also create a false sense of precision.

Suppose an arts nonprofit reports that 96% of participants expressed increased self-confidence after attending workshops.

What does that actually mean?

Did their confidence endure?

Did it change future life choices?

Was the survey carefully designed?

Would another measurement have produced different results?

Quantitative evaluation is valuable, but it is rarely as exact as it appears.

Meanwhile, a single well-told story can sometimes illuminate truths that hundreds of survey responses cannot.

Humanitarian Work Is About Humans

Nonprofits exist because people are more than data points.

The elderly woman who receives companionship after losing her spouse.

The refugee who finally feels welcomed.

The child who discovers music.

The veteran who begins trusting people again.

These transformations involve emotion, identity, hope, confidence, belonging, and meaning.

Psychologists, philosophers, theologians, artists, and educators have spent centuries trying to understand these dimensions of human life because they are inherently difficult to measure.

Grant applications often ask nonprofits to compress them into percentages.

That tension deserves acknowledgment.

Accountability Without Reductionism

None of this argues against accountability.

Poorly managed nonprofits should not receive unlimited funding simply because their mission is inspiring.

Programs should be evaluated. Budgets should be scrutinized. Outcomes should be examined honestly.

The challenge is avoiding reductionism—the assumption that only measurable outcomes have value.

Good philanthropy recognizes that evidence comes in many forms.

Quantitative data matters.

Qualitative interviews matter.

Case studies matter.

Independent observations matter.

Professional judgment matters.

Community trust matters.

Sometimes decades of earned reputation tell us something that no spreadsheet can.

Toward a More Balanced Philanthropy

Perhaps the best grantmakers already understand this.

Many sophisticated foundations increasingly combine quantitative evaluation with narrative reporting, participant testimonials, site visits, photographs, interviews, and long-term relationships with grantees.

They understand that numbers explain how much.

Stories explain why it mattered.

Neither is sufficient alone.

The strongest evaluation often combines rigorous data with thoughtful human observation.

Remembering the Purpose

The charitable sector exists because society recognizes that not every important contribution can be justified by market forces alone.

Beauty rarely maximizes efficiency. There's a famous joke—you've probably heard it, but it bears repeating—

The CEO of a company fell ill on a day he had tickets to see a concert. As a gesture of kindness, he gave the tickets to the company’s efficiency expert to enjoy the show with his wife.

The next morning, the CEO found a formal memo on his desk, titled Performance Evaluation: Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, offering the following, albeit comical, professional insights:

• Violin Overstaffing: The 22 violinists playing the same notes represented reckless waste and should be drastically cut.

• Oboe Inactivity: The oboe players had too much downtime, suggesting their number should be reduced to eliminate peak inactivity.

• Redundant Notes: The 16th notes were an unnecessary refinement, and repeating passages with different instruments was wasteful.

• Efficiency Gains: The expert concluded the two-hour concert could be finished in just 20 minutes by eliminating these redundancies.

  
  

Final Assessment: The efficiency expert concluded that if Schubert had implemented these recommendations, he likely would have found time to finish the symphony.

But that's just the beginning. Compassion seldom optimizes productivity. Often it can be diametrically opposed, in fact, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Culture cannot always demonstrate return on investment. Was the Eiffel Tower "worth it"? Not originally.

Built as the extravagant, $1.5 million centerpiece for the 1889 World's Fair, it drew fierce criticism from 300 prominent artists who dubbed it a "useless and monstrous" "factory chimney" that would disfigure the city. 

Today, it is the world's most visited paid monument, drawing nearly seven million tourists annually. Its value to France simply as an object of promotion cannot be estimated.

Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings do not make sense "by the numbers." They are not the most efficient use of spaces or materials.

Yet these are among humanity's greatest achievements.

Perhaps the ultimate purpose of philanthropy is not merely to maximize measurable outputs, but to improve the human condition in all its complexity. That means embracing evidence while recognizing its limits. It means demanding accountability without confusing numbers for truth. And it means understanding the human condition—something you cannot learn from a computer screen, a PowerPoint deck or a spreadsheet.

It means remembering that the things most worth preserving—kindness, creativity, dignity, wonder, belonging, and hope—may never lend themselves to perfect metrics.

In the end, philanthropy should certainly ask nonprofits to measure what they can. But it should also have the wisdom to recognize that some of life's greatest gifts cannot be fully captured in a database.

After all, if everything that truly mattered could be reduced to numbers, we would have little need for art, music, literature, community—or charity itself.