Organizational History

by Cynthia M. Adams, CEO, GrantStation.com

The organizational history is a concise overview of your organization that establishes its credibility and its qualifications for funding. There is a small amount of writing for this section, but much of this you can pull from other documents your organization has created in the past (brochures, websites, fund raising materials, grant requests, etc.).
This section is a narrative that focuses on two specific events:

1. How the organization got started, and, most importantly, why?
2. The organization’s recent set of critical episodes.

You want to begin with a “story” about how the organization was founded, and why. Storytelling is a powerful tool that you can use to your advantage. A well told story inherently provides credibility to the organization, and always engages the reader.

Here is a example of the beginning paragraph of a fictional organization’s history:

“In the mid-1900s four women who had each recently lost a son in WWII came together to share their grief, to provide support, and to help each other through an emotional crisis. From those...