Meet our Writing Consultant, Charles Schrager:
Charles has over eight years of success as a writer and editor. He has
crafted congressional testimony, op-eds, media alerts, public remarks,
partnership proposals, and numerous other materials for both the public
and private sector. Charles has worked with non-profits such as The
Creative Coalition, the nation’s leading non-profit servicing the
entertainment industry, in addition to magazines, and business and
entertainment industry leaders. His strengths in grant writing, internal and
external communications and speechwriting have proven to be invaluable
resources for clients.
The Importance of Strong Writing:
The memo or proposal that you write will be an ambassador for your
organization. The speech you write serves to introduce your cause to the
general public. If the writing or your delivery gives your audience pause
then the odds of them trusting you with their money, their resources, or
their time in the future, dwindles. You have to know your audience, be
confident in your knowledge of the topic and deliver it with passion, promote
a project or sell an idea.
The Rules of Writing:
The first rule of writing is to know your audience. Already I know that you’re
thinking, “shouldn’t knowledge of the topic come first?” Knowledge of your
topic is important, but have you ever sat through a meeting with a really
smart person who knew the topic dead to rights but just bored you to tears.
Bored you to the point that you didn’t really hear or comprehend the
presentation at all? That person did not know how to capture your
attention, did not know how to make the topic compelling to his audience
and thus their knowledge was wasted. If you are representing an arts
advocacy organization and you are writing a grant proposal, why would you
apply for a grant that generally goes to organizations that specialize in
improving the health care for children in Africa?
The second rule, you have to come across in your writing as an expert, a
relatable, passionate expert. You have to make people believe that your
cause is more important than any other cause that comes to their door. You
have to convey to people that they want to invest with you; that they
want to work with you and what’s more that they will reap rewards in both
the short and long term. To do this you need to know your topic cold. You
need to answer their questions before they are asked and leave the person
reading your memo or listening to your speech with a working knowledge of
your organization that they can then convey to their superiors.
The final tip I can suggest to you is that if you don’t feel confident in your
writing for whatever reason, ask for help. Don’t struggle through it yourself
and create a poorly written document that does not get the job done. It will
only result in you second-guessing yourself in the future on top of producing
less than superior work. Being handed a hammer does not make you a
carpenter any more than being handed a pen makes you a writer. But
you can become a proficient writer with time, a little work, and most
importantly the confidence to believe you can do it
