How to write a proposal essay

How To Write A Proposal Essay/Paper
What is a Proposal Essay?
A proposal essay is exactly what it sounds like: it proposes an idea and provides evidence intended
to convince the reader why that idea is a good or bad one.
Although proposals are generally a significant part of business and economic transactions, they are
not limited to those two areas. Proposals may be written for any college classes, scientific fields, as
well as personal and other professional areas. As such, knowing how to write one is a very valuable
skill.
This article will go over how to write an effective proposal essay and provide a sample one that was
actually submitted and implemented.

Before You Start: Pre-Writing Strategies
Most people think that to write an essay you sit down at a computer and start typing. But much of
the work is done before you even type a single sentence. Before sitting down to write your proposal
you’ll want to spend some time on each of the following.

1.

Get to Know Your Audience. Remember, a proposal essay is an effort to convince a
reader that your idea is worth pursuing - or that another idea is not worth pursuing. To that
end, you have to know who you’ll be writing for. Are they business people? Academics?
Government officials? If your audience is primarily business people you’ll want to justify your
proposal by pointing to possible financial benefits. If they’re government officials, you may
want to emphasize how popular a certain proposal is.

2.

Do Your Research. Having secondary sources who can support your claims will go a long
way to persuading others of your proposal. Spend some time talking to experts or reading
their research.

3.

Pre-Write. Before starting the actual essay, spend some time ferreting and brainstorming
and let the excellent ideas just pour out of your brain. Once you have a bunch of good ideas,
spend some time thinking about how you’d like to organize them.

4.

Revise, Revise, Revise. Never turn in a first draft! Have a trusted peer or colleague read
your paper and give you feedback. Then take some time to incorporate that feedback into a
second draft.


Main Parts of a Proposal Essay
The main parts of a proposal essay are summarized here. It is important to keep in mind that
depending on your proposal parts may need to be added or taken out. The parts below (with
the exception of the introduction and conclusion) may be rearranged to suit individual proposals.
•

Introduction

•

Proposal

•

Plan of action

•

Desired outcomes

•

Resources needed

•

Conclusion

1. Introduction
The introduction serves to inform your reader of the history of the proposal (if applicable) or to
introduce a subject to an informed/uninformed audience.
This is the most important part of your paper in some respects. You need to both introduce the topic
and show the audience why they should care about this topic. It’s often helpful to begin with an
interesting fact, statistic, or anecdote to grab the reader’s attention.

2. Problem
Typically, people only make proposal to solve a problem. As such, you’ll want to highlight a
particular problem that you think your proposal would solve. Again, it’s helpful here to know your
audience so that you can emphasize the problems and benefits that they would be would find
compelling. If there's not an immediate, actionable problem to solve, you can skip this section and
discuss the benefits later on - the sample below does exactly that.

3. Statement of Purpose
This section should be brief and discuss what your proposal is.

4. Benefits
In other words, what current problem would your proposal solve? Or what future benefit would it

produce. Again, it’s helpful here to know your audience so that you can emphasize the problems
and benefits that they would be would find compelling.

5. Plan of Action
How will you go about achieving your proposal? What will you do to show your audience that you
are prepared? This is where you go into detail about how your proposal will be implemented. A
couple things to keep in mind:


1.

Why You? You may need to convince your audience not only that your proposal is a good
idea but also that you’re the person who needs to carry it out. Highlighting your qualifications
or expertise or any relevant information about why you’re particularly equipped for the task
would be helpful.

2.

Strike a Balance of Detail. In discussing the implementation, you’ll want to give enough
detail to show your audience that you’ve thought about how the process will work. That said,
you don’t want to bore them with overly-technical or boring minutiae.

3.

Anticipate Obstacles. Pre-emptively anticipating potential implementation problems is
both good practice and communicates to your audience that you’ve thought carefully about
your proposal and that you’ve been proactive about thinking about potential stumbling blocks

6. Will it work?
Focus this area on why the proposal will work. Quite simply, is it a viable proposal? You can draw

on similar past experiences to show why this proposal will work just like previous ones. If you do
not have this "past experience" option, focus on what you think your audience wants to hear. For
example, if your manager really likes getting things done on time, then perhaps you might mention
how your proposal can speed up productivity. Think logically here.

7. Desired outcomes
Simple. State what the goals of your proposal are. It might seem repetitive with the sections where
you mentioned the benefits, but it serves to really "drill" home the point.
Tip: Do not structure this section the same way as your "Benefits of..." section.

8. Necessary Resources
Another simple part. What is needed to complete your proposal? Include tangible (paper, money,
computers, etc.)and intangible items such as time.

9. Preparations Made
Show the audience that you know what you are doing. The more prepared you look the better your
chances are to get the proposal passed (or get a better grade if it is for a class).

10. Conclusion
Do NOT restate your introduction here if you choose to mention the "history" of a certain proposal.
However if you did not introduce your proposal with some historical background information, here is
the part where you can quickly restate each section above: Proposal, plan of action, all the "why's"
of the paper and so on.

11. Works Cited/Consulted
As in any essay or paper, cite your sources as appropriate. If you actually cite quote from a
resource in you essay then title this section "Works Cited". If you do not cite anything word for
word, use "Works Consulted".

More Help
•

Writing Your Proposal for an Essay or Project
More details about what to include in each step along the way. Notice the difference between
the number of sections. There is no right or wrong amount, just keep it organized and to the
point.

Sample Proposal Paper
Collage Proposal
Introduction
In 1912, Pablo Picasso, an avid painter of nature and still life, tore part of a makeshift tablecloth
and glued it to his painting, Still Life with Chair Caning, and thus, by adding different items to aid his
painting, he began the art of collage making. (Pablo Picasso – Still Life with Chair Canning). A
collage is simply a group of objects arranged together to create a complete image of an idea,
theme, or memory. For example, David Modler created a collage called “Big Bug” to represent the
irony that is the importance of insects to our natural world in comparison to their size. The bug in
the image is the smallest feature of the collage yet it is to be viewed as the most important aspect
(Modler, David). All these parts of a collage collaborate together to create a unifying theme or
message and can be used as a helpful tool in education.
Statement of Purpose
I propose that each student make an artistic collage to be presented to the class that will symbolize
the context, audience, setting, structure or any key ideas found in one of the readings this
semester. Students who make a collage will be able to drop the lowest quiz grade.
Plan of Action
The students will have one week from the announcement of the project to complete the collage and
prepare a presentation for it. Each student must choose one reading that we have done so far or
will read in the future, and no two students may choose the same work. Conflict with students
wanting to present the same work will be resolved by a first come first serve basis. The students
will be given a rubric with the exact requirements of the project and what the purpose of the project

is.
I will make the rubric myself and submit it for approval, or we can use the rubric that I have
attached.
Benefits of Collage Proposal

1.

Making a collage would allow the students to think and inspect the readings and ideas
visually (Rodrigo, “Collage”), thus giving them another perspective, or possibly clearing up any
misconceptions and confusions they had about a work when we were just discussing it in
class verbally.


2.

A collage provides the opportunity for revision of a certain work and would certainly help to
clear up any topics in the readings that might come up on the final exam or a future test, via a
visual and more creative method.

3.

If a student received a bad grade on a quiz because they did not understand the reading,
the collage would give the student an opportunity to go back to the reading and understand it,
or to read ahead and grasp concepts that might be useful to present to the class before the
class does the reading. A collage would allow the student to become familiar with the work in a
visual way and give them an opportunity to understand the main themes, topics, and ideas of
a work, even one we might not have read yet.

Viability of Collage Proposal
Since a collage would be like giving the student an opportunity to go back and review a subject and

at the same time would resemble preparation for a presentation, the time and effort required to go
back and re-read a work as well as prepare the collage creatively would be sufficient to justify
replacing the lowest quiz grade.
Our course mentor said that this project would be a nice addition to the class because, just like any
play is better seen than read, the collage will allow students to get the visual aspect behind a work
and help them to grasp the ideas better.
Past visuals that we have used in class to describe scenes from our readings such as The
Tempest and The Odyssey have greatly helped me to understand some of the ideas of the stories.
For example, I always pictured the cyclops as a nasty, vile creature, but after some of the “fuzzy”
drawings on the board done by some of my peers, I imagined and understood that he could in fact
be a gentle creature that was just angered by Ulysses trespassing and blinding him. I could not
have seen that perspective of the story had it not been for some of the more innocent visuals on
the board.
Finally, I have discussed with the students in our class about the idea of a collage replacing the
lowest quiz grade and the overwhelming majority approved of the idea. Since a collage will
substitute for a quiz grade, the assignment will be optional. Just as a quiz is almost always optional
based on class initiation of discussion, the collage will also be optional based on similar student
effort parameters. The students who do not want to do a collage can choose “door number 2” and
take a quiz that would be created by the teachers and/or myself. This quiz can be used to make the
total number of assignments for each student in the class even, and may or may not be graded
based on the professor's discretion.
Desired Outcomes
The first goal of my collage proposal is to give students a chance to be creative and step outside
the boundaries of classroom discussion. They can use their imaginations to find a way to creatively
put together a collage that will help the class as well as themselves to better understand the course
reading.


A second goal of my proposal is that the time and effort put into making the collage and presenting
it in front of the class will equal the worth of dropping the lowest quiz grade. Because this collage

requires the creator to examine the context, audience, setting, structure of any one of the readings,
it is essentially like a quiz itself, which includes questions on similar topics.
Necessary Resources
The literary work that a student chooses to create a collage on will determine how much time is
necessary to fully complete the project. One week to create a collage should give each student—no
matter what reading they choose to do—ample time to create a presentable and educational
collage for the class.
In terms of tangible resources, this project is not very demanding. A simple poster or a series of
photographs or drawings assembled neatly together by the student will be about as resourcefully
demanding as this project gets.
In addition, a few hours of class time will need to be allocated in order to present the collages. If
each student takes at least five minutes to present the total time needed for the presentations will
be 1 hour and 15 minutes. The presentation day(s) and time(s) can be decided by the class as a
whole.
The rest of the resources needed are already available:
•

The readings are all published online if a student needs to refer back to them

•

Craft supplies are readily available

Skills for Successful Completion
•

As a good planner and organizer I made a rubric that is specific enough to give the
students a good idea of what they should be doing for the collage. The rubric can be made
available upon your request.

•

In addition I can also come up with a quiz if there are students who want to opt out of the
collage project.

•

I can talk to the class and come up with a good presentation time and date for everybody.

•

I would volunteer myself to hold an early presentation session a few days before the due
date so the others can get an idea of what their collage could look like and why they can
benefit from the project.

•

I will make myself available to the class if they have any questions about the proposed
project.

Conclusion
A collage will allow students to understand visually a reading or topic in a reading that they may
have been confused about. The project is a fun and creative way to get students to think about a


reading more in depth as well as review for future exams. As a result of the effort and time put into
the collages, the students should be allowed to drop their lowest quiz grade in the semester.