Remember the basic definition: a proposal is an offer or bid to complete a project for someone. Proposals may contain several important elements—technical description of the proposed project, budgets, management, recommendations letters, resumes of those who would work on the project, results of surveys and literature reviews, feasibility, and so on.  Often, especially with government agencies, clients may publish a Requests for Proposals (RFP), inviting companies to compete for a contract. RFPs usually specify what a proposal should include, often in great detail.  But the purpose of a proposal is always the same. lt asks the audience to approve, fund, or grant permission to do the proposed project.

A proposal often functions in a difficult rhetorical situation, since the proposer is competing with others who want the same thing you do.  Hence your main task is often not only to persuade the audience that you can accomplish the proposed project, but that you can do so better than competitors. To write a successful proposal, put yourself in the place of your audience—the recipient of the proposal—and think about what sorts of information that person would need in order to feel confident having you complete the project.

It is easy to confuse proposals with other kinds of documents in technical writing. Imagine that you have a terrific idea for installing some new technology where you work, and you write up a document explaining how it work, showing the benefits, and then urging management to install it. Is that a proposal? All by itself, this would not be a complete proposal. It would be more like a feasibility report, which studies the practicality of a project and then recommends for or against it. A proposal would add elements that persuade your audience to approve your taking on the project.