Today I was working on a foundation proposal submission and came across one of my favorite questions ever: “What are you requesting? Provide details (500 characters).”
Right. You, the funder, are going to get TONS of detail in. . . 500 characters. This post, up to the preceding sentence, is about 250 characters, or half the length of the possible answer. Twitter has recently shocked the media world by shifting from its 140-character standard to its 280-character long-form. So the applicant is to “provide details” in the space of two tweets.
I think whoever wrote that question wasn’t thinking about what they were writing or was thinking about it and decided, “Whatever, I’m going to have some fun with this.” It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen an Easter Egg in an RFP.