Sample Activity Grant Proposal: Writing Workshops
Our chapter plans to hold a series of writing workshops for our chapter members (and prospective chapter members) in order to better their understanding of writing in various political professions. While our political science curriculum focuses on research and theory, we think that students could benefit from an introduction to policy writing, speech writing, legal writing, policy-memo writing, and other forms of political communication.
Writing skills often make up the backbone of entry-level jobs, and we want our chapter members to be prepared for their first job after graduation. Additionally, these writing workshops will serve as an introduction to different writing styles to which students have little exposure.
Each writing workshop will host a guest speaker whose occupation is relevant to the writing topic of the workshop. We plan to ask this speaker to prepare a mini lesson on their job and the writing they produce for it. Our writing workshops will not only be learning experiences, but could also facilitate networking for our chapter members.
We plan to encourage our guest speaker to create a handout that we as a chapter will print out for members in attendance. We will also encourage our members to take notes as needed. Additionally, we will suggest to our guest speakers to create an activity or case study for members. What this activity entails will be up to the discretion of the guest speaker. Our writing workshop will end with a question and answer portion.
Budget Details:
As our speakers’ time is valued, we plan to provide compensation for our speakers and the work that they put in to present to our chapter. We estimate the duration of our writing workshops to be about an hour and a half, but this will largely depend on the speaker’s time and what they have planned. We will pay each speaker $150.
Our plan is to host five writing workshops with five guest speakers. As each speaker will be compensated $150, this will cost a total of $750.
Additionally, we would like to allocate $100 for any printing expenses we may have. This $100 will also encompass any miscellaneous office supplies we may need at these workshops. This breaks down to $20 for printing and office expenses per workshop.
We estimate about 20 people to be in attendance at each workshop. In order to encourage member participation, we will offer pizza at each workshop. Using the given parameters of Pi Sigma Alpha, we will allocate $10 per each person at each workshop. This means that our food budget is estimated to be $1000 for all five workshops.
We will find our guest speakers by using member's current connections as well as reaching out to people in the Chicago area who work in writing heavy fields. While we want to secure the funds before reaching out to potential guest speakers, these are the fields which we hope to represent in our workshops:
The ultimate goal of these workshops is to expose members to different writing techniques and possibly introduce them to new fields, careers and connections. We hope that our members take advantage of the opportunity to learn new skills. Perhaps, members might even be able to craft new writing samples to present to future employers.
We will advertise these events to our chapter members via email and posters in the political science department. We will allocate $100 to marketing costs such as full color posters and additional signage, which breaks down into $20 per writing workshop. We may choose to run an ad in our university newspaper. Additionally, we want to generate a greater presence on our university campus, so we will be taking photos at workshops and submitting them to DePaul’s social media accounts. We also plan to create a compilation poster of our writing workshops so we can show future members the benefits of joining our chapter. These writing workshops will end up being a great marketing tool for our chapter in the years to come.
Lastly, we would like to provide members with a short survey after the writing workshop. As political science students, it’s important to track our progress and look for ways in which we can improve. These surveys will be distributed to those in attendance and will ask about the value of the writing workshop and if it sparked any interest in a future career. This will be valuable for planning future events and will allow us to look back at the ultimate success of our workshops in a holistic way.
- Expense Amount Total
- Guest speakers ($150 each X 5) $750
- Food at workshops ($200 each X 5) $1000
- Total : $1,750
We have reviewed the guidelines and agree to return to the national office any unused resources. Thank you for considering our proposal.