Proposal writers’ knowledge management practices within nonprofit organizations.
Abstract
Proposal writers may be the most central individuals in the knowledge management process in nonprofit organizations. Theirwork requires the reconfiguration of information on past organizational outcomes to fund future projects. This study presentsthe results of six interviews with proposal writers about their information seeking, storage, and sharing processes whendeveloping grant proposals in nonprofit organizations. The study describes the context of proposal writers’ knowledgemanagement procedures, such as consulting files, co-workers, the internet, databases, reports, previous grants—anyinformation that might be used to facilitate the grant writing process.Experienced proposal writers reported a variety of innovative knowledge management techniques such as blog tagging,visual diagrams, and online document sharing for collaborative writing. “Searchable” knowledge was the most frequentlyreported request, and several writers adapted existing technologies to meet their needs. However, the adaptations may bringup new questions about password protected content and privacy of information storage.