Further Reading — Chapter 7: The Executive Summary

Verify current formats in your funder's own guidelines; the best models are real summaries from funded proposals.

The Nonprofit Executive Summary

  • O'Neal-McElrath, Tori, et al. Winning Grants Step by Step. The clearest step-by-step treatment of the nonprofit proposal summary and its relationship to the rest of the proposal. The closest companion to this chapter for foundation applicants.
  • Karsh, Ellen, and Arlen Sue Fox. The Only Grant-Writing Book You'll Ever Need. Strong, practical guidance on the executive summary and on leading with need rather than organization.
  • Candid Learning, "Proposal Writing" course and sample documents (learning.candid.org). Free and low-cost training plus example summaries and full proposals — the best place to read real models.

Letters of Inquiry

  • Candid, "How do I write a letter of inquiry?" and sample LOIs. Practical templates and examples for the executive summary's shorter cousin. Pair with Chapter 18.
  • Many foundations' own websites publish LOI guidelines and sometimes examples. Reading the specific LOI instructions of a funder you're targeting is the single most useful preparation.

Government Summaries and Rubrics

  • Grants.gov "Grant Writing" resources and a target program's NOFO. Government summaries must mirror the rubric; reading the actual notice of funding opportunity, with its scored criteria and required performance measures, teaches the register Section 7.5 describes.
  • GPRA performance-measure guidance for your target agency/program. Understanding the specific outcome measures a program reports to Congress lets you speak its outcome vocabulary in the summary.

On Writing Concise, Persuasive Summaries

  • Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. The discipline of concision the two-page test demands; especially the chapters on simplicity and clutter.
  • Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Made to Stick. Why concrete, specific, credible messages (a quantified need; a named outcome) outperform vague, abstract ones — directly applicable to the summary's need and outcomes.
  • Harvard Business Review, articles on writing executive summaries (general business). The executive summary migrated from business; HBR's practical guidance on the form transfers usefully to the grant context (lead with the point; make it stand alone).