Guides → Grant writing when you have no outcomes data

Grant writing when you have no outcomes data

Written for organizations doing this without a development department.

Nearly every grant application asks for outcomes. Nearly every small nonprofit does not have them, because measurement costs money that no one funds. Here is what to do instead of panicking or inventing something.

Do not fabricate. Ever.

The temptation is to round an impression up into a statistic — "we reduced emergency room visits by 30%" when nobody measured that. Reviewers who work in your field can smell an unsourced number, and one fabricated figure invalidates everything else you wrote. It can also end a funder relationship permanently.

You have more evidence than you think

Output data is still data, and most organizations are sitting on it without realizing:

• How many people you served last year, and the year before
• How many were new versus returning — retention is a real signal
• Waitlist length, or how quickly slots fill
• Referral sources, especially when other agencies send people to you
• Volunteer hours and volunteer retention
• Partnerships that renewed

None of that proves impact. All of it demonstrates that the work is real and that other people trust it.

Qualitative evidence, described honestly

Staff observation is legitimate evidence when it is labeled as such. "Clinic staff report fewer patients arriving in crisis than two years ago, though we have not measured this formally" is credible. The same sentence without the caveat is not.

Client stories work the same way. One specific, permissioned story is worth more than three vague ones.

Turn the gap into an ask

If you cannot measure because you cannot afford to, say so — and consider asking for the capacity to fix it. Funders are increasingly aware that they created this problem by never funding evaluation. An application that names the gap and proposes a modest step toward closing it reads as self-aware rather than underprepared.

The sentence that works

A pattern worth reusing: describe what you observe, state how you know it, and note the limits of that knowledge. It costs you one clause and buys you the reviewer's trust for the rest of the document.