What are some best practices and examples of effective abstracts and executive summaries in grant writing?

It is also sometimes the only thing read. It should be a clear picture of the entire grant with a paragraph on each grant section. I usually use 5 paragraphs

Brains can retain information better in sets of 3s. We like to think about with the Executive Summary about if there are only going to be 3 takeaways that they remember-- what do we want them to be. And really emphasize those. Also make sure every word in your Executive Summary is useful. This is not the place to use a lot of jargon, buzz words or word salad. Be clear, concise and simple.

Write your executive summary after you've written your proposal, or at least an outline of what the proposal will contain. Doing this leads to a summary that truly reflects the story you're telling in your proposal.

Make sure that your objectives are well-written for a public audience. We often have internal metrics that we use within the organization that have industry specific terms. Depending on the audience- make sure that your objectives are written so that a 5th grader could understand them.

This is how you write a killer executive summary in 4 steps: 1. Describe the problem and explain its negative consequences: "1 in 10 adults globally lives with diabetes, costing our society $966 in health expenditure" 2. Explain in what way the problem is being solved and the shortcomings of that. "Current diabetes monitoring treatments are expensive, complex, and not accessible for everyone" 3. Present and describe your product as the logical solution: "[What your product does] [New things your customers can do now they couldn't before] [New gains/savings your customers enjoy]" 4. Describe what you will do with the grant and its impacts. "This project will develop and test XYZ, helping X people get better, saving X money etc"

The timeline included here should be more general and not the detailed project/workplan timeline. This is where you would highlight the key phases of the project and what the deliverables will be in each of those stages.

If you are having difficulty defining the problem statement-- we often use the design thinking method of phrasing it as a question first-- "How might we...." this typically gets you to think about what your end outcome really is, or the north star, which will help you to align and draft a really solid problem statement.

We find that presenting OKRs as the framework for outcomes and objectives or a logic model is really helpful for funders to be able to see what you are planning to accomplish. Also be sure to align the funding directly with the outcomes so that they can see that with this funding-- you will be able to sustain, scale or innovate existing success metrics.

Have someone proof read and make sure the abstract adequately summarizes what you are saying but also is not too repetitive. This is a good place to showcase the key outcomes and how they may lead to future impacts as well.