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The Structure of the Proposal 16 451

essary background and provide the justification for your proposed pro-
gram. For instance:

Carruthers (2009), Harding (2010), and Vega (2010) have demonstrated the relation-
ship between global warming and groundwater contamination. None of these stud-
ies, however, included an analysis of the long-term contamination of the aquifer. The
current study will consist of . . .
You might include only a few references to recent research. However, if your in this book
topic is complex, you might devote several paragraphs or even several pages For more about researching a
to recent scholarship. subject, see Ch. 6.
Whether your project calls for primary research, secondary research, or
both, the proposal will be unpersuasive if you haven’t already done a sub-
stantial amount of the research. For instance, say you are writing a proposal
to do research on industrial-grade lawn mowers. You are not being persua-
sive if you write that you are going to visit Walmart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot
to see what kinds of lawn mowers they carry. This statement is unpersuasive
for two reasons:
• You need to justify why you are going to visit those three retailers rather
than others. Anticipate your readers’ questions: Why did you choose
these three retailers? Why didn’t you choose specialized dealers?
• You should already have visited the appropriate stores and completed
any other preliminary research. If you haven’t done the homework,
readers have no assurance that you will in fact do it or that it will pay
off. If your supervisor authorizes the project and then learns that none
of the lawn mowers on the market meets your organization’s needs,
you will have to go back and submit a different proposal — an embar-
rassing move.
Unless you can show in your proposed program that you have done the
research — and that the research indicates that the project is likely to succeed —
the reader has no reason to authorize the project.

Qualifications and experience
After you have described how you would carry out the project, show that you
can do it. The more elaborate the proposal, the more substantial the discus-
sion of your qualifications and experience has to be. For a small project, in-
clude a few paragraphs describing your technical credentials and those of
your co-workers. For larger projects, include the résumés of the project
leader, often called the principal investigator, and the other important
participants.
External proposals should also discuss the qualifications of the supplier’s
organization, describing similar projects the supplier has completed success-
fully. For example, a company bidding on a contract to build a large suspen-

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