Blake 1

LANG 120- Genre Analysis

Mary Grace Blake

Audience Awareness within Grant Proposals for the arts

The arts are underappreciated. Because of this fact, many individuals/organizations turn

towards grants to receive vital funding for their projects and initiatives. These grants play an

integral part towards creating and supporting arts, but they aren't just given- grant proposals

must be written. This genre of writing is a constant learning and growing process. There are

courses offered to help create a general knowledge, but to truly master the genre, the writer has

to seek feedback from other successful writers in the field. Grant proposals are used within

many discourse communities. Within my genre analysis, grant proposals within the arts will be

the focus. While researching and observing various real-life examples of art grant proposals I

began to notice while all of them had similarities, there were clear differences within each of

them. Seeing this confused me because under my understanding of different genres was that

they all were formatted the same; naturally, this confusion led me to question “ why do different

proposals for various grants look different?”.

The audience, being the people giving the grants, play a massive role in how these are

written. Unlike most genres, writers of these specific texts do not have to guess what the

audience wants to see because there are usually very specific guidelines and topics that they

want to be covered within the proposal. This is not to say that sometimes there are broader,

general, guidelines that leave more wiggle room for interpretation within a grant, but it’s more

common for them to be specific. ​Because of these specific differing guidelines that are given by

the grant giver how each grant looks usually varies from grant to grant. ​Within my three

analyzed samples the three different things I noticed involved placement choice of money

details, choice of supporting details, and choice of appeals used.

 Blake 2

In order to start looking into the genre of grant proposals and writing, in general, I

looked into three different grant proposals; The first being a proposal done by a student for

support in a Shakespear production, the second being a proposal done by a faculty member at

Northern Dakota State University to receive monetary support for a week-long choral

symposium, and the final third one I looked into was done by a CEO of a non-profit youth choir

organization wanting monetary support for everyday operations. At first glance, it may be

difficult to see the differences between any of them because of the way the way that they look.

On the contrary, though, each one of these grants, while similar in their request for grants are

all uniquely different within the details.

Money is something of extreme importance in life, but especially within grant proposals

because it’s the very reason that they're written. Because of this, I found it interesting that in two

of three proposals money wasn't mentioned until the very end. Within the first proposal, done by

a student, the biggest thing that stood out in this proposal is that in the beginning the amount

requested is shown, and then is later expanded on. This varies from the two other proposals

because in the money isn't mentioned until the end, and is done in great detail. Along with this,

the two that did include money at the end were requesting much larger amounts of money than

the first. A debate could be raised as to whether having money included in the beginning, end,

or both is more effective. In the end, no true broad conclusion about how money should be

presented within proposals can really be made from analyzing just three samples, but by looking

at them the idea can be brought up that when more money is involved, it's placed more

strategically and towards the end.

Another thing within these three samples was that each of them presented different

kinds of supporting information to appeal/ appease the reader (that being the person giving the
 Blake 3

grant). Each proposal had something distinctively unique to the piece, likely due to what was

requested of them from the audience. In Bill Law’s (the collegiate faculty members proposal), he

included a powerpoint-style presentation at the end that outlined everything written out. The

presentation includes several photographs that help the audience put a face to a name. Quite

possibly the best example of distinctiveness is within the proposal written by Beth Clark, CEO of

the non-profit youth organization. This specific proposal was written within an application, which

is common for some proposals to be formatted through; within this specific application, lots of

information is requested. Some kinds of the specific information requested within this include,

detailed numbers for impact, descriptions of accessibility, and more. These differences within

each proposal speak to the importance of the audience, being the people giving/offering the

grants when it comes to writing a proposal.

The biggest difference between each of these grants and arguably the most important is

within the appeals used. Rhetorical Appeals are at the core of creating an effective, persuasive

argument, and the same can be said for grant proposals. Proposals, in a way, are a form of an

argument in that they have a clear bias/position towards their project that they want to complete.

WIthin Appeals, there are three categories, ethos or “ethical appeal”, pathos or “pathetic

appeal”, and logos or “logical appeal”. Each and every grant must use some sort of appeal in

order for the audience (grant giver) to care. In looking at my three samples each use appeals in

different ways to truly grasp their audience, within the first grant, intrinsic ethos is used. Being

that the writer of this proposal is a college student it may be assumed that they do not have the

credibility or experience to put on a Shakespeare production. By including both detailed bios of

each person involved with information pertinent to the subject, and having a reference they're

able to better justify themselves. The second grant differently utilized all three forms of appeals,

ethos in an extrinsic way through being a recognized collegiate dept, pathos in that they detail
 Blake 4

how the event will gain the school more recognition and thus more students, and finally logos by

way of the fact that they’ve “become an important regional leader, attracting students from a

wide range of regional/national and international locations”. Lastly, the third proposal distinctly

uses pathos heavily. Although this proposal is the most information packed, its use of pathos is

notable. Being that it is written for a nonprofit impacting children's life naturally it is going to have

some pathos, but this is deepened when they outline just exactly how many people and

counties within Florida will benefit. Through looking at these three samples it’s easy to see that

having some sort of appeal is essential for an effective proposal. Each one of these proposals

had one, some even more, and they went about doing it completely differently due to the nature

of whom was going to read it.

Essentially, grant proposals can all seem similar in idea since they all fall under the

same category, but when taking into consideration the audience (the ones giving the grant),

they are all very different. Without the specific requirements that the audience requests, they

would indeed all be the same, but without the audience that there is, there would be no need for

this genre. This is made very apparent through all of the differences outlined in the previous

paragraphs. What I am getting at is that grant proposals are almost exclusively read by grant

givers because they're the ones who have the money that the writers want. The decisions each

writer makes within their proposal is completely with the audience in mind. With all this said you

may be asking yourself why does all this matter to me if I am not going to be writing any kind of

art grant proposals? Well, to that I will say that someday you may find yourself writing some kind

of proposal despite thinking you never would. Regardless, no matter what area/genre you will

be writing within, knowing your audience and writing for them is essential. Audiences play a key

role in grant proposals and assuredly do as well in other genres. ​A role so key that if you do not

have awareness of whom you're writing to, your message may be lost or misunderstood.
 Blake 5

Works Cited

Thonney, Teresa Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse. Teaching English in the
Two-Year College, vol. 38, no. 4, 2011

Blake, Mary g. “Professor Bond Interview.” 13 Sept. 2018

Law, Bill SU Impact Fund Grant Program

Clark, Beth Young singers of the palm beaches

Golub-Sass, Zoe Twelfth Night