How to Write the Visibility and Communication Plan in a Grant Application

For a long time now I have worked as an independent evaluation expert for various funds and grant programmes. I have read hundreds of applications. And I can say this comfortably: the section of an application that receives the least effort is, almost always, the visibility and communication plan.

In most applications that section reads something like this:

"Project activities will be announced on our social media accounts, published as news on our website, and a press release will be sent."

Those three lines deserve no points at the evaluation table, because they answer no question. Who will you reach? Why that channel? How will you know it worked? Who will do it, with what money?

In this article I set out the six things an evaluator actually looks for in that section, and a template you can fill in.

First, let us separate two things

This is the most commonly confused point in applications.

Visibility is an obligation towards the donor. Who funded this, who will see that, under which rules? The answer is written in the contract and it is not open to negotiation.

Communication is a tool that serves your project's objective. Whose behaviour, knowledge or attitude needs to change, and how do you reach them?

Most applications mix the two in a single paragraph and end up doing neither. Separate them. The moment an evaluator sees the distinction, they know the person who wrote the application understands the work.

The six things an evaluator looks for

1. Audience: "the public" is not an audience

The most frequent mistake I see: "our target audience is the public, local residents and our stakeholders."

Instead, write segments and say why you are reaching each one:

Primary audience: girls aged 15 to 18 and their mothers in seasonal agricultural worker households in Mersin (approximately 400 households).

Secondary audience: the Provincial Directorate of National Education and district school principals (12 people). Sustainability after the project depends on this group taking ownership.

Writing the secondary audience matters. Most projects focus on direct beneficiaries and leave the people who make the decisions outside the communication plan.

2. Message: do not use the same sentence for every audience

You should be able to write three different sentences about the same project. To the beneficiary, "what do you gain"; to the decision maker, "how does this make your job easier"; to the donor, "what did this investment produce".

When a single message tries to address all three, what comes out is the kind of corporate text nobody reads.

3. Channel, and always the reasoning

Not "it will be shared on social media", but:

More than 60% of our primary audience own a smartphone but use limited data. Our main channel will therefore be a WhatsApp Community and field visits; Instagram will be used as a secondary channel.

One sentence with reasoning is stronger than five channels without it. Grounding it in national data (for example DataReportal's Digital 2026: Turkey) makes it stronger still. But if your audience is older people in rural areas, the national average will mislead you, and you should say so.

4. Indicators: separate outputs from outcomes

This is where an evaluator forms a judgement fastest.

The left column says "we worked". The right column says "it worked". Your application should contain both, but without outcome indicators the plan is incomplete.

Do not inflate the number of indicators. Four or five well chosen indicators look more serious than fifteen, because the evaluator also knows nobody will track fifteen.

5. Owner, timing and budget: proof that the plan is real

If these three questions have no answer, the plan is a statement of intent:

• Who will do it? If not a name, then a role: "project assistant, 4 hours a week".
• When? It must sit in the activity calendar. Communication is not a line item squeezed into the end of the project.
• With what money? Under EU funding, visibility costs are eligible expenses. When an evaluator sees no communication line in the budget, they assume the plan will not be implemented, and they are usually right.

6. Donor visibility obligations: creativity is not wanted here

This section is about compliance. For EU funds, the European Commission's Communicating and raising EU visibility: Guidance for external actions sets out what is mandatory. In short:

• The EU emblem and the funding statement ("Funded by the European Union" or "Co-funded by the European Union") are used together; neither is valid without the other.
• Visibility costs are budgeted and accepted as eligible expenditure.
• The EU is granted a royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable licence to use the communication materials produced.
• Depending on the programme there may be additional logo obligations, for example for projects under Global Gateway.
• A disclaimer is used in the wording and in the places the donor requires.

For EU funds in Turkey the contracting authority (for example the Central Finance and Contracts Unit) may have its own visibility rules on top. Read the visibility annex in the call file before you start writing. Where the general guidance and a call-specific rule conflict, the call-specific rule applies.

A template you can fill in

If your visibility and communication plan fits into this table, it is a plan that can actually be implemented:

Three rows are enough. When an evaluator sees this table, they read the rest of the text more generously.

Five common mistakes

1. Putting visibility at the end of the project. Communication is part of the activities, not their by-product.
2. Listing channels without reasoning. Naming five channels does not look strong, it looks unfocused.
3. Using only output indicators. "10 posts published" proves nothing.
4. No communication line in the budget. If the plan and the budget contradict each other, the plan is not believed.
5. Leaving visibility rules until after the contract. If emblem use and the evidence required for reporting are not planned from the start, problems appear at the payment stage.

Today

• Open the visibility annex in the call file and list the mandatory items.
• Fill in the table above as three rows. The cell you cannot fill is exactly where your plan is genuinely missing something.
• Add a communication and visibility line to your budget: design, printing, translation, advertising, photography and video included.
• Cut your indicators down to four. Two outputs, two outcomes.

Sources

• European Commission, Communicating and raising EU visibility: Guidance for external actions, July 2022, FAQ supplement January 2023
• European Commission, Communicating and raising EU visibility, project management page
• EEAS, Requirements for Communication and Visibility in EU-financed external actions
• DataReportal, Digital 2026: Turkey, national data for channel reasoning

If you would like me to review the communication section of your grant application before you submit it, write to me here.