Winning a competitive grant such as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Mountains ADAPT Small Grant requires more than simply meeting the eligibility requirements. A strong application should clearly demonstrate the relevance of your project, its potential impact, feasibility, and alignment with the grant’s objectives.
Below are practical tips to help you prepare a compelling and competitive application.
1. Understand the Grant Objectives
Before writing your application, carefully study the objectives, priorities, eligibility requirements, and assessment criteria of the UNEP Mountains ADAPT Small Grant. Your proposal should clearly demonstrate how your project contributes to the programme’s goals, particularly in addressing climate change adaptation and building resilience in mountain communities.
Avoid submitting a generic environmental project. Make the connection between your proposed activities and the specific priorities of the funding opportunity clear from the beginning.
2. Start With a Clearly Defined Problem
A strong proposal begins with a well-defined problem. Explain the specific climate-related challenge affecting the mountain community, ecosystem, or target population you intend to support.
Where possible, use credible data, local evidence, and real examples to demonstrate the scale and urgency of the problem. Instead of simply stating that climate change is affecting a community, explain how it is affecting them and why immediate action is necessary.
3. Present a Practical and Innovative Solution
Grant reviewers want to understand exactly what your project will do to address the identified problem.
Describe your proposed solution clearly and demonstrate why it is appropriate for the local context. Highlight innovative approaches where relevant, but remember that innovation does not necessarily mean using expensive technology. A community-led, locally appropriate, low-cost, and scalable adaptation approach can be highly valuable.
4. Demonstrate Community Involvement
Community participation can significantly strengthen an environmental and climate adaptation proposal.
Explain how local communities, particularly vulnerable groups, will participate in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the project. Show that the project responds to locally identified needs rather than imposing an external solution.
Where relevant, demonstrate how women, young people, Indigenous or local communities, and other vulnerable groups will be meaningfully included.
5. Clearly Explain Your Expected Impact
Don't simply list activities. Explain what will change because of your project.
For example, instead of saying:
"We will train 100 farmers on climate adaptation."
Explain the expected result:
"The project will equip 100 smallholder farmers with practical climate-resilient farming techniques, helping them reduce climate-related production losses and improve household resilience."
Where possible, include measurable targets and indicators.
6. Make Your Project Feasible
A brilliant idea will not be competitive if it appears impossible to implement within the available timeframe and resources.
Provide a realistic implementation plan showing:
- What activities will be undertaken
- When each activity will take place
- Who will be responsible
- What resources are required
- What outputs will be delivered
- How progress will be measured
Ensure that your proposed activities, timeline, and budget are consistent with one another.
7. Prepare a Realistic and Justifiable Budget
Your budget should demonstrate careful financial planning.
Every major expense should have a clear connection to a project activity. Avoid unnecessary or excessive costs, and explain important budget items where appropriate.
A strong budget tells the reviewer that you understand what it takes to implement the project and that you can manage grant resources responsibly.
8. Demonstrate Your Organisation's Capacity
Grant providers need confidence that applicants can successfully deliver the proposed project.
Use your application to highlight relevant experience, previous environmental or climate projects, community engagement, technical expertise, partnerships, and successful outcomes.
If your organisation is relatively new, demonstrate the experience and expertise of your team and explain how partnerships or technical advisers will strengthen implementation.
9. Include a Strong Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Show how you will know whether the project has succeeded.
Identify clear indicators that can be measured during and after implementation. These might include the number of people reached, hectares restored, adaptation practices adopted, training outcomes, changes in community knowledge, or improvements in resilience.
Your monitoring approach should be simple, realistic, and directly connected to the project's objectives.
10. Think About Sustainability
Reviewers want to know what will happen after the grant ends.
Explain how the project's benefits will continue beyond the funding period. This could involve community ownership, local capacity building, partnerships with government institutions, integration into existing programmes, income-generating mechanisms, or the adoption of successful practices by other communities.
A project that creates lasting benefits is generally stronger than one that ends when the grant period ends.
11. Show Potential for Replication and Scaling
If your project succeeds, could the approach be used in other mountain communities?
Explain how the lessons, tools, methods, or results from your project could be documented and shared. Demonstrating potential for replication can strengthen the broader significance of a small grant.
12. Use Evidence, Not Empty Claims
Avoid statements such as:
"Our project will completely solve climate change in the community."
Instead, use realistic and evidence-based claims.
Strong applications demonstrate an understanding of the problem, acknowledge limitations, and explain how the proposed intervention can make a measurable contribution.
13. Make Climate Adaptation Central to the Proposal
Ensure that climate change adaptation is not simply mentioned throughout the application but is genuinely central to the project.
Clearly explain:
Climate risk → Community vulnerability → Proposed adaptation measure → Expected resilience outcome
This logical connection makes it easier for reviewers to understand why the project deserves support.
14. Highlight Partnerships
Strategic partnerships can strengthen the credibility and reach of a project.
Where appropriate, identify potential partners such as local authorities, universities, research institutions, community organisations, NGOs, environmental experts, or local businesses.
Explain what each partner will contribute rather than simply listing their names.
15. Write Clearly and Avoid Unnecessary Jargon
Your application should be professional but easy to understand.
Use short paragraphs, clear headings, specific examples, and straightforward language. Avoid filling the proposal with technical terms simply to make it sound sophisticated.
A reviewer should be able to understand your problem, solution, activities, expected impact, and budget without having to interpret complicated language.
16. Tell a Compelling Story
A competitive grant proposal should have a logical narrative:
The Problem → Why It Matters → The Solution → Who Will Benefit → How It Will Be Implemented → Expected Results → Long-Term Impact
Make the reviewer understand why your project matters and why your organisation is well positioned to deliver it.
17. Proofread Before Submission
Small errors can weaken an otherwise strong proposal.
Before submitting, check your application carefully for:
- Spelling and grammatical errors
- Inconsistent figures
- Missing information
- Incorrect dates
- Budget inconsistencies
- Unclear objectives
- Unsupported claims
- Missing attachments
- Compliance with word or character limits
It is also helpful to have someone unfamiliar with the project read the proposal. If they cannot easily understand what you are proposing, the application may need further clarification.