WRITING for REAL:
Rhetorics of the Service-Learning Contact Zone

The Assignment:

Last spring, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric was awared a grant from the Haas Center to fund service-learning initiatives in this spring's PWR 2 pilot class "Writing for Real." One of these initiatives is that that $1,000 of this money will be awarded to one of the five community agencies with which you are are working, to fund a project at that agency.

As the final project for this course, each group of students working with each of our five participating agencies will research and write a grant proposal, in the form of a grant letter, requesting funding for a specific project at its agency. The winning proposal will be selected by a panel, consisting of the Director and Associate Director of PWR, the Community Writing Coordinator, a staff member at the Haas Center for Public Service, and two community agency mentors (neither of whom are mentorts with our class) and will be selected on its merit. In other words, the winning proposal will have convinced the panel most effectively that the project is coherent, feasible, and worth funding.

Due:

Deadline for grant letters: 5 p.m., electronically via email attachment (Word Document or PDF file) to cbross@stanford.edu .

The General Idea and the Specific Point:

All members of each agency group should work with the agency mentor to select a meritorious project for which to request funding. Discuss with your mentor the specific nature of the project for which you will propose funding -- how exactly the project will work, how it will be implemented, and whom it will benefit -- as well as in what specific ways the grant money will be bugeted. Conduct necessary research pertaining to the need for this specific project in the communinty and the ability of your agency to undertake and carry this project out successfully, Discuss with your mentor how the success of this project, if it is funded, might be evaluated. Your agency mentor may and should help you plan your proposal, but the students in your agency group will compose it -- collaboratively.

The general specifications for the grant proposals that you write on behalf of your agency are as follows:

€ Your proposal should be presented in the form of a grant letter, 2 to 3 pages in length, single-spaced, typed.

€ The letter should be addressed to "Community Writing Grant Selection Committee"; this is your audience to be convinced

€ Your grant letter should be signed with your own names and "on behalf of [your agency]."

€ Your proposal should request funding for a specific project , either new or ongoing, or a specific aspect of a broader project or initiative at your agency, not for ongoing operating funds. The proposal should be of appropriate scope in relation to the amount of funding offered ($1,000).

For a template of grant guidelines, please refer to page 185 in "Chapter 10: Mapping, Organizing, and Drafting" in Writing for Real. Share this template of guidelines with your agency mentor; if your mentor suggests certain additions or amendments to these guidelines based on his or her experience and/or the specific project for which you are requesting funding, please feel free to add them.

I will distribute some examples of grant letters that you all can refer to in crafting your own. A Grant Writing Workshop for Comuujnity Writing studentswill be offered by Leslie Minot, a professional grant writer, on Tuesday evening, May 12, from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at the Stanford Writing Center. I hope that you can all attend. The workshop will be videotaped, so if you cannot attend, you will be able to view the tape of it.

Please share all of this information with your agency mentors. Your mentors are aware of the availability of this grant money and that applying for it on behalf of your agencies is part of the work in this particular class. Begin an active dialogue with your mentor early about what project you will propose funding for and begin gathering the information necessary for you to write the most thorough and convincing grant letter that you possibly can.

How much more real can writing get than this?