01/Blog
Playbooks, insights, and field notes.
How African organizations are unlocking funding — practical lessons from grants offices, corporate CSR teams, and NGO leaders.
How to Write a Concept Note for Funding (with a Free Template)
A concept note decides whether a funder ever asks for your full proposal. Here is how to write one in a page: the seven questions it must answer, how to handle the budget, a self-check, and a free Word template, drawn from Dr. James Njagu's books.
How to Write a Resource Mobilization Strategy (Step-by-Step, with a Free Template)
Resource mobilization should be planned, not ad hoc. Here is an eight-step walkthrough based on Nuts and Bolts of Mobilizing Resources: a readiness check, a scoring matrix for choosing strategies, the document structure, and a free Word template.
How to Do Donor Mapping: The 80% of Resource Mobilization That Happens Before the Proposal
Most organizations lose the grant before they write a word of the proposal. Donor mapping, not proposal writing, is where fundraising is won. Here is the six-step method, with a scoring matrix you can copy.
How to Get Donors to Fund Your Project: Build the Relationship Before You Need the Money
Most organizations meet a funder and pitch in the same conversation. It rarely works. Resource mobilization is friendsraising: here is the cultivation cycle that turns a contact into a funder.
Bid Writing for African NGOs: How to Write a Bid That Actually Wins
Competitive requests for proposals are judged in two rounds, and more than 40% of proposals never reach the second. Here is how bid writing differs from grant writing, and the process that gets a bid through.
Grant, Bid, Tender or EOI? What African NGOs Are Actually Responding To
Teams routinely respond to a tender as though it were a grant call, and lose on mechanics rather than merit. Here is what each funding instrument is, and how to tell them apart before you start writing.
Why grant proposals get rejected: the list, in the order it kills applications
Most proposals are eliminated on compliance before anyone reads the programme design. The full rejection list from 25 years of reviewing, stage by stage.
Bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell 26.3% in 2025. Here's what the headline misses
OECD-DAC put the 2025 contraction at 23.1% overall and 26.3% for sub-Saharan Africa. Three funding pools sit outside those statistics entirely.
The 7-Step Donor Pipeline Framework
A repeatable pipeline that turns cold donor lists into warm, committed partnerships — with benchmarks at every stage.
The #1 grant-proposal mistake costing African organizations millions
After reviewing 200+ proposals across East Africa, one pattern keeps costing NGOs funding — and it's not what most teams think.
Unpopular opinion: you don't have a funding problem, you have a strategy problem
The teams that raise the most aren't the ones that write the most proposals. They're the ones with the clearest strategy.