How a reviewer actually reads your proposal
How do grant reviewers actually read proposals?
Quickly, tired, and with a scoring rubric open beside them. A reviewer may have a dozen proposals to score in an evening, and yours arrives after four others. The first pass is a skim to form an impression and locate where each criterion is answered. If the skim cannot find your answer to a criterion, the score for that criterion suffers no matter how well you argued it three pages later. Write so that the skim succeeds, and the careful reading takes care of itself.
Last reviewed 6 August 2026.
What survives a skim
- Headings that use the funder's own words
- If the review criteria say "organizational capacity" then your heading says organizational capacity, not "about us". A reviewer scoring a rubric should never have to work out which of your sections corresponds to which criterion.
- The answer in the first sentence of each section
- State the conclusion, then support it. A paragraph that builds to its point over five sentences loses the point entirely to someone scanning first lines.
- Numbers with units and comparisons
- "We served 400 families, up from 250, and 60% remained housed at twelve months" is skimmable. "We have served a significant number of families" is not, and it is also weaker.
- Short paragraphs and real white space
- A dense page reads as harder before a word of it is read. This is not a fairness argument, it is what happens.
- One idea per paragraph
- Paragraphs carrying three ideas lose two of them under speed.
The structural decision that matters most
Follow the order of the review criteria. Not the order that tells your story best, not the order the announcement describes the program in, and not chronological order. The scoring order.
This feels wrong to good writers, because it produces a document with less narrative flow. It scores better anyway, and scoring better is the only thing the document is for. You can keep the narrative inside each section.
Spend effort in proportion to the points
The criteria are published with weights. A section worth 40 points deserves roughly four times the words and four times the evidence of one worth 10.
Proposals routinely do the opposite, because the low-weight sections are frequently the ones the organization finds easiest and most enjoyable to write about. Check your allocation against the rubric before you edit anything, and be prepared to cut something you like.
How we grade it
Quillify's evaluator scores a draft against the announcement the way a reviewer would, including a skim test, and returns a prioritized list of weaknesses, not a general assessment. It also scores against four reviewer perspectives: the data, the credibility, the emotional case and the impact.
It is a coaching tool, not a verdict, and you decide what to accept. A score is a prompt to look at something, not a fact about whether you will win.
Who asks this most
The answer above is the same whoever you are. What Quillify does about it is not.
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