Have Something In Writing That You Can Leave With Those You Meet

You need to prepare three basic documents when organizing a meeting with donor officials.

1. The original letter asking for a meeting should introduce your organization, provide a very general overview of the subjects you will want to raise and the request for the meeting.
2. You need to prepare an outline of the details of the topics that you want to raise during the meeting and action that you would like the donor to take. You can also provide background information.
3. After the meeting is over, you need to send a report of the meeting as you perceived it to the donor agency.

Remember that busy officials will not necessarily read long documents. The nature of the intervention you are asking for should appear in the first couple of paragraphs of all documents, either as an executive summary or as an introductory paragraph.