Effective communication is essential to your nonprofit organization’s success. A writing style guide can help your team craft seamless grant proposals that consistently reflect your organization, no matter the character count. A consistent and clear writing style is crucial for grant writers to effectively convey their proposals. Without this unified approach, it may be challenging to maintain consistency and clarity across different proposals. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through what a style guide is, how it can benefit your organization, and how to begin developing your very own.
What is a Style Guide?
A style guide provides a foundation for how your organization communicates. A writing style guide, or content style guide as it is sometimes referred to, is often an extension of your brand guide that outlines how your organization communicates visually. A style guide serves as a writing rulebook, helping your team represent the organization seamlessly throughout written communications, whether composing a winning grant proposal or posting on social media.
Why Use a Style Guide?
A style guide offers many benefits by helping to unify your team with a common language. This can empower team and board members with key language to describe your organization’s important work.
A style guide helps grant writers maintain consistency, clarity, and professionalism in all grant proposals and documents submitted to funders. Although not a requirement, whether a full-time, in-house grant writer or contracted grant writer, a style guide can help simplify the grant writing process. It can be especially helpful during the initial phase of grant writing when having predefined terms and language can streamline the process of gathering and presenting information. For organizations considering contracting a grant writer, a style guide can provide important information in the discovery phase, such as mission, vision, places, programs, and projects.
How to Develop a Style Guide
Now that you understand what a style guide is and its benefits, we’ll review what is typically included in a style guide. This can be used as a framework to develop one for your nonprofit. Plus, we’ll cover steps to implement this style guide across your organization.
What is included in a style guide:
Established Style Guide
Many organizations' writing style guides are based on established ones, such as the Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Style. Designate an established style guide to develop a strong foundation to build upon. Your style guide will add rules specific to your organization and field of work.
Mission
What is your organization’s mission statement?
Vision
What is your organization's vision statement?
Values
What are your organization’s values?
Voice and Tone
Describe your organization’s personality in written communication and the tone of your communications. This may change based on the audience you’re writing.
Audience
Who are you engaging with through written communication? As noted above, voice and tone may change depending on the audience you are engaging with.
Common Mistakes
These may be spelling, grammatical, or brand language errors that regularly occur. These mistakes could be made internally by members of your organization or externally by members, funders, or journalists.
Brand and Industry-Specific Language
This could include brand-specific language, commonly used statements or phrases, or industry-specific jargon.
Definitions
Your organization may use unique terminology, including industry-specific jargon. Define these terms so that your team has a clear understanding and can appropriately explain this terminology to others.
Punctuation
Outline stylistic punctuation choices. Em dashes and commas are often up for debate in organizational communication.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Clearly outline commonly used acronyms and abbreviations.
Capitalization
Provide an overview of special capitalization rules.
Numbers
How do you describe numbers in writing?
Places, Programs, and Projects
Define the names and titles of places, programs, and projects. Organizations operate in many locations and execute uniquely named programs and projects. This section could also include brief place, program, and project descriptions.
Platform or Channel-Specific Guidelines
Social media and blog posts have a different structure than grant applications but share the same voice, tone, and vocabulary. Your style guide should reflect these differences.
Examples
Provide examples throughout your style guide to ensure understanding.
How to Develop a Style Guide
Document your organization’s writing style.
Use this list of what is typically included in a style guide to begin to develop your style guide.
Engage your team in developing your organization’s style guide.
You’re creating a shared language, so make sure others share your vocabulary by requesting feedback.
How to Use Your Style Guide
Present your finalized style guide to your team.
Provide the style guide to team members as an essential unifying standard. Ensure that the guide is available and easily accessible for use in all written communication.
In addition to staff, board members will benefit from a common language for describing the organization’s mission, vision, and programs, increasing brand consistency at all levels.
Consider tools to increase adoption. For example, you can upload your nonprofit’s style guide, including brand tone, on Grammarly to ensure consistency across team members.
Use your style guide when writing and editing.
Keep your style guide available for reference when writing and editing. When writing a grant, you can use your style guide to complete common proposal requests, such as your mission and vision statements.
In conclusion, a style guide helps your organization’s writing to flourish by empowering your team with the vocabulary to describe the importance of the organization’s work. A style guide establishes the foundation for a strong grant writing portfolio that is clear, concise, and connects with funders.
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