Stage 2: Submitting Your Full Proposal Online

Deadline: November 10, 2010 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Applicants selected for the second stage of review will be invited to submit full proposals. At that time, reviewers will seek additional information regarding measurable objectives, roles and responsibilities of partners, plans for evaluation, anticipated impact and expectations for long-term financial and programmatic sustainability.

Members of the LFP National Advisory Committee, Local Funding Partnerships staff and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ( RWJF) staff will review all full proposals. After this review, projects still under consideration for LFP grants will receive site visits. By the time of the site visit there must be clear evidence that matching funds will be in place for the first year and that local funding sources for subsequent years have been identified.

RWJF does not provide individual critiques of proposals submitted.

All full proposals and requested documents must be submitted through the Local Funding Partnerships secure user website which is accessible through the Login link at the upper-right corner of each page of our website. User Name and Password will be same as created during Brief Proposal stage.

All of your required documents must be uploaded according to specific instructions. You will find details below. We urge you to familiarize yourself with the instructions before you prepare your proposal documents.

On September 23, 2009, the LFP office held a webinar discussing the requirements of Stage 2. A recording of this session with accompanying PowerPoint slides is available.

The following items are required:

• Executive Summary of the Proposed Project (one page)
• Proposal Narrative (15-page maximum, double-spaced)
• Letter of Nomination
• Letters from Additional Funding Partners
• Project Timeline
• Project Budget
• Budget Narrative
• Letters of Community Partnership and Support
• Resume of Project Director (no more than two pages)
• Match Confirmation
• Outline of Objectives
  

The Executive Summary
The local applicant for grant funds, in consultation with the nominating funder, must write an executive summary (no more than one page) and a proposal narrative (no more than 15 pages). Each document will be uploaded separately with its own template (a form for you to insert your text).

This abstract should be able to stand alone as a one-page summary of the proposal.  Describe the project plan and its specific activities to be undertaken.  Describe the project deliverables or objectives for this grant.  In other words, what will you do?  Include a list of expected measurable outcomes and plans for sustaining the program after the proposed grant period ends. Please list the funding partners in the final paragraph.

The executive summary may be single-spaced. It should have at least one-inch margins on all four sides. This one page does not count as part of the 15-page proposal narrative.

The executive summary must be uploaded at the Local Funding Partnerships secure user website. We strongly suggest you review the executive summary template and save it to your computer before you prepare to upload this document.

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The Proposal Narrative
The narrative may not exceed 15 pages.  Double-spacing and at least 12-point font size are required. (Choice of font is up to you.) The narrative should be able to stand alone: assume that the reviewer has not read the executive summary.

Begin with an overview that explicitly describes the project: what is the intervention that you are proposing?

Then describe it more fully including these important details:

• What is the need for this project related to the health or health care of a vulnerable population in your community?
  Describe the population to be served (who, what, where, when, why, how many). Please be brief and focus on health data from your region. Do not reference national trends or data. One page should be sufficient to explain the need but feel free to use more if necessary.
  
  
• What are the quantifiable objectives of the project and how will the outcomes be measured?
  Describe what the proposed project will accomplish in your community. In what ways will the health of your community be improved? How does it address the problem you are trying to solve?
  How will you measure the project’s effectiveness? What are the quantitative outcomes you expect to achieve? Are there qualitative outcomes being measured or documented? If yes, please list. What will be the impact of the program on individual recipients, the community and/or the state? Is an evaluation planned? Include a list of specific, measurable objectives. What are the deliverables for this grant?
  
  
• Who is involved in the project? 
  Is it a collaborative approach?  How did the partners come together?  Have local grantmakers participated in the project formation? How will responsibilities be shared and decision-making be executed?
  
  
• Capacity and Sustainability    
  How does this program reflect the interests of the applicant organization? How will adding this project impact the applicant organization? What resources are within the organization to sustain the project? What is the long-term plan for sustaining this work?
  
  
• Innovation
  How does the project differ from existing programs addressing the same issue? Is this an adaptation or replication of an existing model or the development of a new approach? Why do you think this approach will succeed in improving health or health care for vulnerable people in your specific community?

The proposal narrative must be uploaded at the Local Funding Partnerships secure user website. The instructions are embedded in a template form that you must use. We strongly suggest you review the full proposal narrative template and save it to your computer before you prepare to upload the narrative.

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Letter of Nomination
A letter of nomination was submitted as part of the Brief Proposal stage. At Full Proposal stage you must upload an updated letter. The letter of nomination should affirm the grantmaker’s endorsement of the initiative and intention to work with the applicant and all potential funding partners to obtain the funding necessary to match RWJF funds. We also welcome information regarding the nominating funder’s involvement with the development of this initiative, with the applicant agency, with other local coalition partners and with other interested local funders.

The letter of nomination should be signed and written on the grantmaking (nominating) organization’s letterhead. It should include the name and address of the local applicant and the name, telephone number and e-mail address of the contact person at the grantmaking (nominating) organization.

The letter of nomination must be uploaded at the Local Funding Partnerships secure user website. Refer to the instructions included in the letter of nomination instructions.

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Letters from Additional Funding Partners
Letters from other funding partners should explain how they may have been involved in helping to develop this project and why they endorse the project. They should also describe the grantmaker’s history of engagement with the applicant organization if they have supported the agency previously.

Each letter of endorsement should reflect the intent of the funding partner to help provide a dollar-for-dollar match with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) if the project is selected for funding. Together, local funding partners are expected to raise the full match.

Your funding partners are not required to approve their grants prior to the final review by RWJF.Once the project is selected for a site visit, the project will be expected to have firm funding commitments to match Budget Year 01 and to have identified sources of matching dollars for the subsequent years of the grant. RWJF funds for the first budget year cannot be released until the match for that year is committed and in place.

The letters from additional funders must be scanned and uploaded at the Local Funding Partnerships secure user website. The instructions are embedded in template forms that you must use. We strongly suggest you review the additional funder letters template, and save it to your computer before you prepare to upload these letters.

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Project Timeline

Project Timeline
The timeline may be done as a chart and should reflect the major milestones of project activity throughout the three or four years of the grant. Some activities may encompass an entire year, and some may be one-time-only activities. The projected timeline should also indicate when you expect goals or outcomes would be achieved.

The project timeline is not included in the 15-page limit of the Project Narrative. It may be one or two 8.5x11 pages or one piece of legal-size paper. It must be uploaded as a separate document at the LFP secure user website. Although a template is not provided for this document, we suggest you review the project timeline instructions.

Click here to see a sample project timeline.

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Budget

The budget section is not included in the 15-page limit of the Project Narrative.

The Project Budget includes:

• one page consolidated budget worksheet overview for the entire three or four years of the grant, and
• an additional budget worksheet for each year, estimating that year’s budget.

Please refer to the budget guidelines from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. You are asked to use a columnar format and include the funds anticipated from RWJF, matching grants and any other revenues. However, not all prospective grantees will need to use all line items, and the degree of detail will vary according to the proposal. Additional line items may be added.

Click here to see a sample budget The preliminary budget must be uploaded as a separate document at the LFP secure user website. A blank budget document is available here in Word and Excel, but all multi-worksheet budgets should be converted to a pdf format before uploading. Please insure all worksheets are included in this one file.

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Budget Narrative
The narrative should be one document that explains the entire consolidated budget for the three or four years of the grant. We do not need a separate narrative for each year. Please refer to the budget guidelines before preparing this narrative. We prefer this document not be submitted as an Excel document.

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Letters of Community Partnerhips and Support
These letters should be from all collaborating public and private community partners and referral agencies. They should indicate why they are interested in the project, how they have been involved in the development of the project and how they will participate in the collaboration. Form letters, petitions, and general praise for your organization are not useful to the reviewers.

The instructions are embedded in a template form that you must use. We suggest you review the template for letters of community partnership & support, and save it to your computer before you prepare to upload these letters.

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Resume of Project Director (no more than two pages)
We are seeking the resume of the person who will direct the project if it is funded. However, we recognize that agencies often wait to identify this individual until a grant is awarded. If the project director has not yet been identified, provide a job description. 

The instructions are embedded in a template form that you must use. We suggest you review the template for resume of project directort, and save it to your computer before you prepare to upload the resume.

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Match Confirmation
Please provide your anticipated sources of matching support for the project. Indicate whether the funding is expected in Budget Year 01 and/or for additional years of the grant.

If your project is selected for an award, no funds will be released to support your Year 01 budget (July 1, 2010) until you have received written funding commitments from your funding partners that match the amount shown in your Year 01 budget.

Each year of an LFP grant, projects are required to complete match confirmation forms to confirm that local match funds are in place for that budget year.

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List of Objectives
At Full Proposal stage you may edit, delete or add to the project objectives stated at Brief Proposal stage. We understand that your proposal will have several goals. The online application includes a place for you to describe three-to-five specific, measurable objectives against which we can assess the progress of your project.  These objectives should be the same as those expressed in your narrative, but simply puts them in a different format.

The space is limited and thus your descriptions should be kept short and concise. If you list fewer than five objectives, simply put NA in the empty boxes and the system will consider your objectives “completed.” 

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Questions and Conference Calls

Questions may be directed at any time to the LFP staff at 609-275-4128. Two dates have been set aside for LFP-led webinars on "How to Prepare Your Full Proposal." All applicants invited to submit a full proposal will receive call details via e-mail. There will be two identical calls. Each project should plan on attending one session only. Call dates are:

• Tuesday, September 28, 2010
• Thursday, September 30, 2010

Both calls will take place 2:00-3:30 pm Eastern Time.