Essentials in Application Writing (March 2025)

This course explores the key skills needed to write strong applications and effectively communicate about your work to successfully achieve funding from Trusts and Foundations. As we see increased competition in fundraising from Trusts and Foundations, there has never been a more important time to learn how to communicate your story to funders and stand out from the crowd.

This course will give you the foundational skills and knowledge to approach Trusts and Foundations, with useful guidance on how to ‘make the case’ and generate ideas that maximise the potential of the support. We’ll examine useful language tips to strengthen proposals, how to budget your work, the potential of AI in developing proposals, and how to incorporate effective evaluation that produces impact assessment. We’ll also cover how Trusts and Foundations assess proposals and methods to research potential funders – please note that this course will not cover applications to Arts Council England or other statutory bodies.

The sessions will use practical exercises to help reinforce your learning and you are asked to come prepared with a project in mind that requires funds.

This course will be delivered virtually via Zoom in two 3-hour sessions, taking place on Wednesday 12 March 2025 from 10am-1pm and Wednesday 19 March 2025 from 10am-1pm. It is necessary to attend both sessions to complete the full training.