Can you use AI for grant writing? What you need to know
Artificial intelligence is changing the game by streamlining work and improving outputs in all kinds of industries—nonprofits included. In fact, the nonprofit sector has seen especially high adoption of AI tech in recent years, with 90% of surveyed nonprofits in one report using AI for one or more engagement or marketing purposes.
Find the right way or point in your workflow to use AI safely and reliably, and you can make a huge impact on your organization’s efficiency.
Grant writing is the perfect example of a high-impact task where AI stands to drive massive improvements for nonprofits.
Nonprofits of all sizes struggle to consistently apply for and win grant funding because the process is so time-consuming. Research, budgeting, planning, grant writing, proofreading, and follow-up are all critical pieces of the grant seeking puzzle but require time and resources that many organizations simply can’t spare. Sound familiar?
Today’s AI systems can (and already do) help nonprofits apply for and win more grants. But how? Is it safe? What tools are available?
We’ll answer these questions and more—but first, the most pressing question:
Can you use AI for grant writing?
Yes, you can use a variety of AI tools to improve or speed up your nonprofit’s grant writing efforts.
However, AI tools require careful attention and work on your end, both in providing well-contextualized inputs and closely reviewing and improving the outputs.
Simply put, you need to collaborate with AI when writing grant proposals, not fully outsource your work to it. After all, grant writing is a complex undertaking. Creating a winning grant proposal involves combining data and stories in compelling, logical, and highly tailored ways—a deeply human task. You’ll always be in the best position to put together the best possible representation of what your nonprofit can accomplish with extra funding.
That said, the amount of work required for you to effectively use AI for writing grant proposals can still be much less than what you’d need to commit otherwise. Master AI grant writing, and you can dramatically speed up your grant workflows while reducing overhead.
For example, Grant Assistant users report completing proposals in one-third of the usual time, with tasks normally taking 10+ hours of work reduced to minutes. The right tools can essentially do the work of one or more full-time employees.
What kinds of AI grant writing tools are available?
Now that we’re a few years into the era of accessible AI tech, nonprofits have several options when looking for new tools to incorporate into their grant writing workflows.
We can roughly separate AI tools used by nonprofits for grant writing into two categories:
- Comprehensive, purpose-built platforms. These tools are specifically designed and trained to support the many tasks of writing a nonprofit grant proposal. They include distinct features that nonprofits can experiment with when researching grants and writing proposals. Grant Assistant is an example of this type of platform.
- All-purpose, generative AI tools. ChatGPT and Google Gemini are the most well-known examples of generative AI systems that can help you tackle parts of the grant writing process. However, they’re not purpose-built for nonprofits or grant writing. They’re also more likely to hallucinate or generate incorrect or unhelpful responses, and they generally require much more time and oversight to use responsibly.
So, which type of AI tool should you use? That depends.
A purpose-built platform will be a larger investment but will likely yield much better long-term results through saved time, increased output, and improved proposals. Investing in the right AI technology can quickly pay for itself as you begin securing more funding. Just be mindful of what’s still needed from you—time to learn how to use the tool effectively, attentive inputs and contextualization, and close reviews and refinements of the tool’s outputs.
Generic AI tools have one significant benefit—they’re free or relatively inexpensive to use. However, they require extensive hand-holding, meaning they won’t save you as much time in the big picture as you might imagine if you’ve never used one of these tools before. They’re most reliable in very specific or limited use cases, such as summarizing documents or analyzing datasets.
Note that all generative AI tech (both purpose-built and generic) brings some level of risk. We’ll discuss these risks and how to look for reputable AI tools below.
How do nonprofits use AI for grant writing?
We mentioned above that different types of AI grant writing tools can be used for various parts of the grant writing process. Where exactly do they fit in, and how are nonprofits using them to research and draft proposals?
Generative AI tools can be used throughout the entire grant writing workflow, helping you:
- Research funders and analyze their giving patterns
- Quickly draft basic language about your nonprofit’s history and background
- Generate document summaries and outlines
- Draft larger sections of your proposals using input notes and documents
- Organize your proposal’s content into a coherent whole
- Generate visuals to illustrate your data and support claims
- Analyze your internal and external data to find trends and insights
Some of these outputs, such as boilerplate language for background sections of a proposal, can be used as-is. Others, such as data analyses and summaries, can guide your planning and narrative as you work. By combining these functionalities and providing the technology with plenty of context, you’ll knock out significant portions of the entire workflow in just an hour or two instead of an entire workday or more.
Essential pointers for using AI in grant proposals
Even the best generative AI isn’t perfect—remember, it’s an efficiency partner to collaborate with and help speed up rote tasks, not a replacement for human thought and judgment. Follow these best practices to ensure you make the most of your tools while minimizing risk:
- Master the art of AI prompting. some text
- Especially when using all-purpose tools like ChatGPT, you must provide thoughtful, explicit, step-by-step instructions for what you want it to generate.
- Think of it this way: Generative AI works by making logical connections between concepts. If you ask a human to provide an answer to a complex question, they can work through multiple logical steps to reach it. An AI tool will attempt to do the same but can very easily skip some of those logical steps or get mixed up along the way, leading to incorrect or inaccurate responses. Deliberate, step-by-step prompting helps to combat this challenge.
- Purpose-built grant writing AI tools reduce this challenge because they’re trained on more nonprofit-specific information and context. However, never take for granted that an AI tool fully “understands” what you ask of it when you need a complex output.
- Have patience.some text
- AI tools can produce outputs and rough drafts quickly, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to ship straight to a funder for consideration—far from it. You should expect that AI outputs for your grant proposals will require multiple rounds of refinement. It’s part of the process and shouldn’t be skipped over.
- Also, remember that AI doesn’t understand your nonprofit, mission, community, or project plans the same way you do. It can easily miss nuances that are critical for crafting the best possible grant proposal. Don’t rush to immediately use what your technology generates without reviewing it.
- Actively collaborate with AI tech.some text
- To echo a key theme of this guide, remember that you should collaborate with AI, not outsource to it. Engage it like a teammate by providing context, asking follow-up questions about its answers, calling attention to mistakes, and giving feedback.
- Add your unique insights and nonprofit’s voice to your proposal by prompting the AI to do so and manually refining the outputs yourself. After all, you have invaluable expertise and context to contribute—which funders will be looking for!
Most importantly, don’t let the efficiency of your AI grant writing workflows overshadow the critically important big picture:
Winning grant proposals are carefully curated documents. They’re tailored to the specifics of the proposed project, the funder, and your organization. You can’t expect to win funding with vague proposals that could have come from any organization—they should clearly come from yours.
Remember this rule, understand that you need to patiently collaborate with AI, and learn as you go. You’ll be steadily improving your grant writing output and speed in no time.
What are the risks of using AI when writing grants?
Now, what are the drawbacks and risks to understand when using AI to help write grant proposals?
The most immediate risks to look out for include:
- Incorrect or inaccurate responses. AI systems can and do “hallucinate” to produce unhelpful responses. In other cases, they may “misunderstand” your prompts or simply get things wrong. Carefully reviewing and refining AI outputs is essential, especially when your donors and funders will see them!
- Privacy and security concerns. Generative AI tools that are broadly available are often trained on massive sets of public data and pooled user interactions. Mixing your nonprofit’s, constituent’s, and/or funder’s data into this pool may be a serious privacy concern. Avoid inputting sensitive or personally identifying information in a large-scale, publicly available large language model (LLM) system. Many nonprofits today also develop specific AI policies to define their usage protocols and notify stakeholders of them.
- Inadvertent bias. Biases may exist within the datasets that AI tools are trained with. As a result, AI-generated content can unintentionally reinforce stereotypes, exclude diverse perspectives, or misrepresent marginalized groups. Carefully review AI outputs to ensure they align with your organizational values. Take an active role in identifying and mitigating bias to maintain trust and equity with your stakeholders.
These problems aren’t entirely avoidable. It’s always possible that an AI system will misunderstand your instructions or make assumptions that clash with your values and goals.
To mitigate these risks, follow a few best practices. First, develop concrete workflows that ensure your team will always review, refine, and approve AI-generated outputs before they’re used in any externally-facing ways. Create AI usage and privacy policies to establish guardrails and reassure stakeholders that you’re thinking responsibly and proactively.
In addition, the easiest way to reduce these risks is to use high-quality AI tools in the first place.
Identifying high-quality AI tools for grant writing
What should you look for in a high-quality AI tool to support your grant writing efforts?
First and foremost, seek out AI tools purpose-built for nonprofits.
These tools are designed with your specific needs in mind and often come preloaded with templates, prompts, and functionality that align with nonprofit goals and grant applications. They’ll also have been trained using more focused data sets and context to help them “understand” your needs more quickly. Because of this, and unlike general-purpose AI systems, these tools reduce the need for excessive prompting or oversight, helping your team save time while delivering relevant outputs.
Additionally, look out for these features and characteristics:
- Published privacy and security protocols and/or credentials
- Closed training systems, meaning your interactions won’t be used to train a broader AI model accessible to all users
- Adaptability to your specific needs and voice
- User-friendliness, including features that simplify collaboration with team members
Top purpose-built AI grant writing tools can check all these boxes.
That said, general AI tools can still be very helpful if approached correctly, and they’re often the most accessible way for small organizations to get started with AI. For example, ChatGPT can help generate brainstorming ideas, develop first drafts, or suggest ways to structure a proposal. Just stay aware of their limitations and take steps to reduce risk, for example, by never inputting sensitive information and only using them for limited use cases.
Pairing general AI tools with specific workflows or additional tools is often the most effective approach for AI newcomers. By using multiple tools, each specialized for a particular task, you can cover gaps in functionality and reduce the risks of relying on a single solution until you find the right comprehensive solution to support your grant writing program.
Leveling up your nonprofit’s AI toolkit
We’re venturing into a new frontier for nonprofits these days—get excited! Between AI grant writing technology, increasing awareness of the impact of non-cash giving, the rise of diverse giving methods, and more, there are more ways than ever for organizations to unlock efficiency and build new revenue streams.
In particular, improving your grant writing process with AI can drive significant impact. Overcome your biggest hurdles—time and capacity—to get more proposals out the door and more funding coming in.
To see a purpose-built AI grant writing platform in action, we recommend exploring Grant Assistant.
FreeWill has partnered with Grant Assistant to bring transformational, industry-leading AI tools to more nonprofits. We truly believe it can transform how organizations of all sizes find and secure crucial funding for their programs and constituents.
Grant Assistant offers a comprehensive, human-first generative AI experience designed specifically to support all aspects of grant writing. Learn more and consider how its features might improve your grant writing process.
Or, keep exploring with these additional resources about the future of nonprofit funding and development:
- How to accept crypto donations: Complete nonprofit guide
- How to accept stock donations: Easy steps for nonprofits
- How to start a planned giving program: Step-by-step guide
- DAFs 101: Introduction and how-to guide for nonprofits
