Evidence first. Document second.
Proposals are rarely rejected on ambition. They are rejected because the climate rationale rests on assertion, the results framework does not follow from the problem, or the evidence was assembled after the narrative rather than before it.
Diagnose
Test fund fit, institutional readiness, evidence gaps and the issues most likely to stop a submission.
Evidence
Establish climate rationale, baseline, vulnerability, data quality and the supporting documentation behind each claim.
Structure
Build project logic, theory of change, components, results and the implementation architecture.
Finance
Connect activities, budget, financing structure, instrument and the requirements of the target mechanism.
Submit
Convert the agreed architecture into the concept note, proposal or supporting package the mechanism requires.
What this means for a live engagement.
The first two weeks usually produce no document.
That is deliberate. A client who needs a draft next week is better served by a readiness review that says honestly what the draft is missing than by a document that looks finished and is not.
Funds publish their review criteria. They are neither secret nor arbitrary. What defeats most submissions is that the document was written as advocacy and then fitted with evidence afterwards, so the reviewer finds a strong story resting on a thin base. Reviewers read a great many of these and recognise the shape immediately.
The order of work
- Problem, in measurable terms. Not the intervention — the problem. If it cannot be stated in units, the results framework will not hold and everything downstream inherits the weakness.
- Climate rationale. Hazard and vulnerability evidence, and attribution to climate drivers rather than to development deficits generally.
- Baseline. What happens without the project, evidenced. Without a defensible baseline there is no measurable change to claim.
- Theory of change. The causal chain with assumptions written down rather than implied. Implicit assumptions are the ones reviewers find.
- Results framework. Indicators that follow from the theory of change and can be collected by whoever will have to collect them.
- Narrative. Written last, from the material above. A document written in this order is shorter and survives questions.
