Personnel

Resumes of all key people named in the proposal either individually or by office should be included in an appendix. If people are to be specifically hired to accomplish some of the tasks, a job description can be included in lieu of a vitae (resume).

If volunteers are to be used, the role of the volunteer and the process of recruiting, training and supervising should be specified.

Equipment

Equipment needs should be specified, for example, configuration of computers, description of multimedia equipment, and the like. If the descriptions are detailed, they might better be placed in an appendix with reference to a more generic (and brief) description in the body of the proposal.

Timelines (Gantt/PERT charts)

A project is a one-time set of activities that ends with a specific accomplishment. It has the following characteristics:

• -- a set of nonroutine tasks performed in a certain sequence leading to a goal
• -- a distinct start and finish date
• -- a limited set of resources that may be used on more than one project.

A project is not an ongoing process. Your proposal should be considered a project, something not a part of the everyday business of your organization.

Project management defines, plans, schedules and controls the tasks that must be completed to reach your goal and the allocation of the resources to perform those tasks. The timeline of your project should follow the defining and planning stage. Project management involves scheduling activities and making adjustments throughout the life of the project for those activities that do not occur on schedule.

The critical path method (CPM) is the scheduling method used by most project management software today. Calculations are based on the duration of the tasks and the relationships between the tasks. The schedule is calculated twice -- first from the earliest start date forward and then from the latest finish date backward. The difference between these two parts of start and finish dates is float or slack time (the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying the project completion date). The critical path is that sequence of tasks which represent the longest total time required to complete the project. A delay in any task on the critical path causes a delay in the completion of the project.

A Gantt Chart shows a list of your tasks on the left side of the screen and a bar chart on the right side of the screen. The bar chart shows graphically the duration and schedule information for each task. At the top of the bar chart is a timescale which can be set for the time periods you want (from minutes to years).

A PERT Chart contains the same information as that in the Gantt Chart but shows more graphically the dependencies between the tasks in your project. It shows each task as a box or node, with lines between the nodes indicated a relationship exists between the tasks. These boxes can also contain duration and scheduled start and finish dates if desired.

If all of the above seems too complicated, a simple time chart showing a list of activities and the dates when they are scheduled to begin and end is also satisfactory.