The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Strategies for Presentations

One of the things that program officers find daunting about presentations is that they often feel as though they are standing alone before the world. Indeed, one program officer clutching a sheaf of note cards does make for a rather solitary spectacle in a board room. Therefore, an excellent way to calm the jitters is to go beyond the usual “talking head” presentation. There are a number of ways to do this, each of which offers both great advantages and some risk of backfiring.

If the funding document under consideration describes a project that creates something tangible, and if a sample is available, it makes sense to bring it to the meeting for “show and tell.” Museum professionals have long recognized that physical ...