When you are planning an event in your organizations which would need funding, you’d have to know how to write a support letter in order for you to be able to successfully ask for funds from the right benefactors. A good letter of support or letter of support template can go a long way in helping out your cause.

When making a letter of financial support or a letter of support for the grant, you can consider adding some testimonials from a third party, as these can help out in the efficiency of your request. These third party testimonials will show your recipients that other companies, organizations or even key people believe in your cause and support it.

A support letter can come from a major partner in a company, a key benefactor, another similar foundation, a representative of congress or any of the main stakeholders in the company. It would give a convincing reason for why your potential benefactors should support your application or proposal for a grant.

Of course, having a good support letter won’t assure that your grant will be given to you but it will definitely make your application a lot more competitive. If the letter of support comes from high ranking people or businesses, potential donors will be more inclined to believe that your application has a good value. It may even give others the impression that your organization is reputable and that your work is supported by the community.

Letter of Support Templates

A great letter of support may come from the leaders of your community who have faith in the program you are proposing, other organizations who would like to work with you and the recipients of the services you are planning to give. The best letter of support templates would give a description on how an influential partner or company will support the project. This would augment the sense of enthusiasm for the project and would give a much-needed sense of credibility to the work you are planning to do. Before making your letter, though, you have to think about and make a list of all the people or organization which would benefit the most from the project you are about to propose.

You can then give them a call, send them an email or talk to them in person and ask them if they would be willing to write a letter of support for grant to support your project proposal. In doing this, be sure to explain all the details of your projects as well as how they will benefit from it. If they say yes, you can give them a template or a draft of the letter they can work with and request them to send it on a specific date. In doing this, you can add their support letter to your grant application.

This article is all about letters of financial support as well as how to write a support letter which would help you get the best possible results.

Tips for Financial Support or a Letter of Support for Grant

In writing a good letter of support, you’d have to think about and consider a few tips. These tips can help you make a good draft for a letter of support template, which you can use whenever you need to ask for funding or a grant for your projects.

Here are some tips for you to consider and to help you out:

  • Remember to keep your letter short. To ensure the quality of your letter, keep your statements and requests concise and to the point. One page would be enough but if it’s not, you should not go more than two pages.
  • Keep in mind that first impressions are very important, so remember to word your letter well so that it looks good. Format your letter well and you can even include a photo of your team or the organization which will benefit from your project.
  • Proofread your work before sending it to avoid any errors in spelling and grammar. You can also ask someone else to proofread your work in case you missed any of the mistakes.
  • Make the tone of your letter as interesting as you can. Be sure to include all details regarding your project and your proposal and present it in such a way that the reader will be encouraged to keep on reading. Most likely, a letter which contains too many unnecessary details can be dragging and the reader might not be too interested in reading all of the contents.
  • Personalize your letter according to who you are planning to send it to. Be positive and keep thinking that people want to support your cause. Sending out a general letter might give the impression that you are just interested in getting funds rather than involving people to your cause which you really care about. Throw in a few details about yourself and the team which is involved in the project you are proposing to make it more real.
  • Include all the pertinent and relevant details in your letter – but remember to keep your statements and sentences short. Aside from the details of your project or your cause, it would also be helpful to include the total amount of funds you are trying to raise so the readers are aware and can decide how much they would be willing to donate.
  • When writing your letter, don’t emphasize too much on the “fundraising” aspect of it. When you’re thinking about how to write a support letter, you should not only stress on the part where you’re asking for money but also on the part where you’re asking for support for your project, your team and your cause.
  • In writing your letter, make sure to be both humble and respectful. This would give a better impression to the readers and to your potential benefactors so that they will feel better and more generous towards your cause or proposal. Also remember to say thank you at the end of your letter. Express your gratitude to your readers in actually reading the whole letter and thanking them in advance would also add a nice touch.
  • State that your letter doesn’t actually obligate the readers to give financial support to your organization legally. Instead, it would be up to them whether they would be willing to give any kind of financial support to your cause.
  • The dates involved in your project and proposal is very important so that the readers would know when to give their contributions as well as when the project is to start and when it is expected to be completed. This would give them the opportunity to follow the progress of your project in case they are interested to.

These tips would help you out and guide you in making a good, if not great, letter of financial support for your organization or a good draft to share to the persons or businesses you have asked to make the letter. Now let’s take look at the most important things to include in your letter of support for grant.

Sample Letter of Support

What Should a Letter of Support Contain?

A great letter of support can either make or break your request for financial assistance or your proposal or application for a grant. Your letter should have all the important details of why your organization needs financial aid in order to complete a project. Funding may be requested for the completion of a project or services or to support a very important cause.

To be able to come up with a good letter of support, you must include the following basic elements:

  • In the first paragraph, you should write a short introduction as well as all the details regarding your proposal or your project. The reasons for why the letter of support is written should be indicated here, and stated briefly. Your first paragraph must be compelling and should catch the interest of the reader enough that he/she keeps on reading until the end.
  • The next paragraph should give details and explanations about your proposal, your project or the reason for your cause. You can also add in statements on why the reader should contribute to your cause or your project. This would encourage the potential benefactors to actually contribute, give a donation or approve your grant.
  • The next paragraph/s should include all other information such as dates, amounts and all other pertinent details which you think are essential to get your point across. Just remember to be direct and specific when writing your paragraphs. Long paragraphs may put people off and would cause them to start reading your letter. Also try to avoid making your letter sound too generic, which could make it less genuine.
  • Set a polite and humble tone when writing your letter. This tone would be the most ideal when trying to ask for financial aid from people, which can be a very sensitive issue. Your ideas should flow smoothly and all your paragraphs should have connections with one another. This would ensure that your whole letter gives just one impression – and that is that your project, proposal or cause is good enough that they should be encouraged to contribute funding to it.

Be sure to include all these crucial information before you start writing your letter of support. Remember that a great letter of support template must have all these things. Now let’s move on to actually writing your letter of financial support or letter of support for grant. 

How to Write a Great Letter of Financial Support

A letter of support is a document which can serve as verification that funding will be raised for a person, organization or cause. When you are planning to apply for a grant or make a proposal in order to obtain financial aid, you have to know how to write a support letter well to be able to convince potential benefactors to support you.

Here are some simple steps to follow in making your letter:

  1. First off, type in your heading at the left side of your page. This would include the name of the institution or organization, the person you are addressing as well as the address of the person or the organization.
  2. You can then place a formal opening statement, addressing the person you are writing the letter to. If you don’t know the name of the specific person in the organization, you can write a more generic opening statement such as “To Whom It May Concern.”
  3. Now it’s time for the content of your letter. Remember to be formal and to the point while still keeping your tone interesting.
  4. Write down all the important details, including names of people or organizations, dates and specific financial amounts.
  5. For individuals writing a letter of support, you may want to attach some other documents to assure the readers that you are part of a bigger organization which would complete the project, proposal or the cause.
  6. For your final paragraph, include some sort of statement or declaration of gratitude to further enhance the positive vibe of your letter.
  7. Finally, write your name, your title and the name of your organization. Print out your letter, sign and date it once you’ve proofread it several times.

Now you have your letter! But in reality, what makes a good letter of support? Read on and find out the different factors which actually make a letter good enough.

Letter of Financial Support

What Makes a Good Letter of Support? 

A good letter of support is easily made, especially if you’ve been around long enough that you’ve written a lot of letters asking for approval of a grant or some form of financial aid. But when you’re new to the whole concept and it would be your first time to actually write a letter, you would benefit a lot from reading the following factors. Then you can start making great templates which would encourage your recipients to actually approve your request or be generous in giving financial aid.

  • You should have ample knowledge regarding everything about the project, the organization and the cause. Before you make a letter, learn everything you need to know so that you will be able to write a comprehensive and genuine letter.
  • If you are not actually part of the team which will carry out the project or one of the beneficiaries of the financial aid, make a note about your connections to the project or how you know the beneficiaries.
  • The reasons for asking for support are very crucial, so be sure to write down all of them. This would help the readers to decide on whether they will give a donation and how much they would be willing to donate to your cause or to your project.
  • Also list down all the benefits of your project or your cause. This is especially helpful if you are targeting people who you know are committed to a specific cause or who would be more inclined to support a certain project or organization.
  • Give evaluative statements whenever possible to add depth to your letter.
  • Be as honest as you possibly can and avoid giving vague or unspecific statements which may come across as unclear or doubtful to the readers.

Keep all these in mind and soon enough you’ll be making effective letters which readers would be reading all the way to the end. Now that you are well equipped with enough knowledge about letters of support, let’s take a look at some helpful hints in sending out your letters.

 

Helpful Hints in Sending Your Letter of Support 

Knowing all the useful information regarding letters of support and how to make them would guide you when you would need to make one for your organization or for a cause which you truly believe in. Now that you’ve made your letter and your proofread it more than once, you can start thinking about sending your letter. Before you do though, let’s take a look at some helpful hints to guide you in sending your letter:

  • First you would have to think about when you are going to send your letter. The most ideal time to send your letter of support is about 3-4 months before you start your project. This would be early enough to give your potential benefactors time to prepare to send funds and enough time for you to gather the actual amount you need from all the people you’re asking financial aid from. It’s also not too early that your recipients will forget to give support since the project is still too far away.
  • Put a lot of thought into who you will be sending your letter to. Different projects and different causes would call for different target people. Don’t go sending your letter to everyone you know as it might give a negative impression or impact. Instead, think about specific people who would most likely be willing to approve your grant or contribute financial aid to your cause. Be smart in making your decision so you don’t waste any effort trying to convince people who you know won’t be interested at all.
  • Coordinate with everyone in your organization and discuss who to send letters to. It would be better for you to actually come together and make a decision about who you will be sending letters to. In doing this, you will avoid sending the same letter about the same project or cause to just one person. This would overload that person and might put him/her off from making a contribution as it may give the impression that you are too needy. Make sure that if different people are sending letters of support, those different people aren’t sending letters to the same recipients.
  • Go for the traditional method and send your letter via snail mail. In these modern times where social media platforms and emails are used all too frequently when a person receives a letter in the mail, it becomes more memorable and would give a more lasting impression to the recipient.

These hints in sending your letter would add an extra push in ensuring the success of your request for financial aid.

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Tagged:Letter of SupportLetters
TemplateLab April 29th, 2021