In this chapter you will build your project timeline. The timeline helps you develop realistic expectations for yourself and your project partners and allows grant committees to evaluate how thoroughly you have conceptualized your project.

This can feel overwhelming at first. Keep in mind that these documents simply tell the story of your project from a different perspective. Along with providing clarity to the fiscal needs and requirements of your project, funders want to understand how you will go about developing your project over the course of the grant period or grant cycle. Your project timeline is the tool that provides a 30,000-foot view of your logistical plans to the reader of your project description–from the moment funding arrives to the moment you share your work with the world. The timeline is an opportunity to outline the necessary steps of your project and convince the granting organization that your project has a viable execution plan.

Creating a Project Timeline

At this point you’ve developed your budget and the ability to tell the story of your project through numbers. Now it’s time to share with the grant panel how you plan to make your project happen by creating a project timeline.

Every large project needs a detailed plan for you to know if it is on track. In less organized instances, this can look like a pile of sticky notes or scribbles in notebooks and scraps of paper. We’ve all been there, and sometimes a little disorganized brainstorming can be the first step in ideating what your project will look like. But as you seek funding, you need to translate that data into an organized and informative format to convince a granting organization of project success. Let’s talk about a different approach that helps you organize your project into manageable steps and increase the likelihood that your funder says “yes” to the proposal.

Most grants have a grant cycle or grant period in which the funds they award must be used. A project timeline creates a structure for you to outline and break down the necessary tasks for your project to be successful within that time frame. Timelines also help you develop realistic expectations for yourself and your project partners, including those who are responsible for different pieces in a collaborative project.

Last, the timeline helps grant committees evaluate how thoroughly you have conceived of your project and whether you have the critical thinking and planning skills to execute it successfully. Have you ever used the “I just wing it” approach? Let’s map things out a bit more concretely.

The Key Components

As mentioned above, a timeline is a task list that helps you stay on track. There are four important items to consider as you craft the timeline for your project. They include major events, dependent or minor events, reporting requirements, and internal deadlines.

To clarify this process, let’s look at an example of a New Collaborative Work for one dancer and one musician.

Major Events

Major events are the important milestones for your project. If you are launching a product, this would be your launch date. If you are putting together concerts, these would be the concert dates.

Examples for the New Collaborative Work application include the following major events:

• Soft premiere
• Final concert

Dependent or Minor Events

Minor events are smaller events that are required for the major events to move forward. If you are performing new commissioned works, this could be the date you need to receive the completed scores. If you are creating a product, a date for finishing an initial prototype or receiving basic materials.

Examples for the New Collaborative Work application include the following minor events:

• Confirmation of venue, audio engineer, and videographer
• Final score deadline
• Final choreography deadline

Reporting Requirements

Some grants include reporting requirements while the project is in progress and after it has concluded. You will want to make sure you build time into your schedule to capture the required data points that your grant requires.

Examples for the New Collaborative Work application include the following reporting requirements:

• Mid-project budget and progress report
• Final project report including performance attendance, recordings, and career impacts

Internal Deadlines

Attach internal deadlines to the major tasks required for your project. Building these checkpoints for your project shows detailed planning, and helps reviewers check your estimates for how long the project will take.

Examples for the New Collaborative Work application include the following internal deadlines:

• First draft of score and choreography
• Workshopping and rehearsal of music and dance
• Marketing strategies

Break Down Large Tasks or Events

When large tasks or events feel overwhelming (and they will), break them into smaller parts in your timeline to show the funder that you understand the necessary steps to complete your project.

Using the example from the New Collaborative Work application, the task “final score deadline” has several subtasks:

• Determine project parameters (e.g., use of media, electronics, etc.).
• Deliver first draft.
• Workshop score with musicians.
• Revise score.

There won’t always be space for this much detail on one page, so you will need to be thoughtful regarding where you include more details. Consider approaching the more self-explanatory aspects of the project with less text so you can focus on the details that may be most relevant for you, your project partners, or the grant committee.

Estimating Your Project Timeline

First, determine the amount of time you have for your project. Be sure to work within the grant parameters or grant cycle for your specific grant. Keep in mind any explicit deadlines the granting organization specifies within the grant period.

For instance, many projects take less than a year, so using months to divide the timeline works well. For longer projects, instead consider using three-month quarters for your timeline. Below are some best practices to consider.

• Include Margin for Error. The first 1–3 months may require meetings with partners to re-establish activities and responsibilities, so it is important to have a buffer for scheduling and conversation. Something will go wrong—plan for it in your timeline.
• Leave Time for Delivery. Not everything arrives in two days or less! If your project includes ordering equipment or commissioning new work, make sure you build those estimates into your timeline. Reach out to vendors and partners to get estimates about how long you should expect to wait.
• Build In Wiggle Room. Funders know that you can’t anticipate every issue that might delay your project. Be conservative in your estimates and build in time for correction. This shows forethought and garners confidence that the project goals are realistic and can be accomplished.
• Make Time to Assess Project. Make time along the continuum to “assess the state of the project.” Every grant project runs into challenges and not everything goes as planned, so demonstrate that you will be monitoring the progress to address issues efficiently. The future you will thank you and so will the funders.

Beware of the Planning Fallacy!

All humans—yes, all humans—struggle to estimate how long it will take to do something. We are good at creating projects for ourselves. We are not as good at factoring in the difficulties we may encounter along the way (Yudkowsky, 2015). Most people refer to those difficulties as problems. But you can also look at these unexpected hiccups as unexpected surprises (or, better yet, happy accidents or opportunities!).

Consider this common example.

Artist: I booked the venue two months ago, and the manager just contacted me to say they cannot honor our agreement. They are double booked.

Timeline: Surprise! You must book a new space. Do not worry, you have built in enough slack into your timeline to find a new venue. Besides, the original space had a terrible parking lot for guests. Now you can find a venue with more accessibility.

It is also important to break your project down into small enough parts so that you can effectively estimate the time each task will take. One strategy that can be helpful is to check your estimates with people who have done similar projects. Your colleagues can be an incredible resource and help you identify gaps in your planning.

Different formats work best for different types of projects. For some, a narrative form will work well. For others, a linear, time-based structure will be the clearest. For a collaborative project, you may want to organize your timeline based on the different collaborators.

Regardless, it can be helpful to try out a number of designs to see which best captures and reflects your project. This section illustrates three different styles of timelines for you to consider as a starting place: linear format, table format, and graphical format. Examples for the sample project New Collaborative Work for Dancer and Musician showcase these different styles.

Linear Format

At its most basic, you can create a timeline linearly in a simple word processing document. This format works well for citations with a lot of detailed information about each item.

Table Format

Using tables, or multiple columns, you can create a more complex timeline covering several focus areas or partner activities. This is a helpful format to consider if you have a complex project with multiple different pieces or people contributing at the same time.

Graphical Format

Using a graphical format allows you not only to explain the necessary tasks for your project, but also to show the time they will take. Because you can show duration, this format works well for situations where there are ongoing, long-term tasks as part of your project.

It can also show the progression and dependencies of your project visually. Simple versions can be built in slideshow or spreadsheet software applications, or you could explore web-based apps.

Your Name – New Collaborative Work for Dancer and Musician

Timeline

• Which format gives confidence that there is adequate time allotted for each step and the clearest picture of how the project would come together?
• Which examples provide enough detail to connect the dots between significant project tasks?

ZF: Once you had that success, you’ve popped the door open, you’ve climbed in, you’re there and now you’re pitching ideas. If you could go back in a time machine and look at yourself, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself or what advice would you give yourself about how you’re pitching a project?

LP: I feel like once I got in that door, I think still, just basically what I said that there has to be a clarity of idea. There has to be a timeline, there has to be evidence that you know how to do what it is that you’re saying you’re going to do, and I think that’s really what people are looking for. I would say the same in the grant environment.

In the clarity of that language, as a writer, that’s something that I know how to do, and I think a lot of artists have to learn how to do maybe more than I had to do because that’s part of the craft of what I do. It’s not “I play the oboe and I’ve had to learn how to write a grant proposal.” I’m a writer, so I write things and I make things.  I would say in terms of the kinds of pitches that the students are doing, when I look back, I would say there’s a lot of advice I could give on the pitching and on the proposals. But maybe just first to acknowledge that, especially for grant language, I would say when I’ve had to write grant language, it is the hardest writing to do.

It’s the hardest kind of writing for me to do because it has to be so super specific, and it has to be so clear and there can’t be any room for any misunderstanding. You have to say what everything is about in a paragraph. It’s just that little nut. It’s really hard, even when you know what the project is, even when you have super clarity. To be able to put it down, it takes a long time. I’ve helped others do that.

Occasionally, when it’s a friend or someone that I work closely with, there are a few people I’ve worked closely with over the years who have asked me, “I have this grant proposal due, can you help fix the proposal? I’ve done a draft of the proposal,” and it can still take days to do the proposal summary of just looking at the language, really asking yourself, just to say what it needs to say.

Are there any extra words, is it clear? Is there a logical progression from sentence to sentence? It’s like playing phrases when you get out the Etude Book. That’s what it is that you’re doing in the grant summary. It’s like an etude exercise, that you have to make this thing and it has to be really perfect.

They’re not always perfect the first time that you hand something in that you need to get a grant. It might not be perfect; it might be less than perfect. It might be a B or a B- even but it’s the best that you can do. Then you’ll get feedback and you’ll put it away. And you’ll take it out again in a week or a month or a year. You’ll look at it with fresh eyes and it’ll be easier to fix.

You’ll know more than you did, you’ll be outside of it and able to maybe tinker with the language. Maybe you will throw it away and start again. Those are all things that we do. That kind of writing, it’s just really challenging, it is really hard. It’s really hard work because everything has to be exactly where it’s supposed to be.

References

Asana. (2020, July 29). How to create a project timeline in 7 simple steps. https://asana.com/resources/create-project-management-timeline-template

Yudkowsky, E. (2015). “Planning fallacy.” In Rationality: From AI to zombies. Machine Intelligence Research Institute.