AI grant writing tools for nonprofits: The top 15 platforms

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Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has quickly created a new frontier of efficiency for nonprofits. 

And nonprofits have kept up—90% of surveyed organizations in one study have reported using AI tools for one or more purposes.

Incorporating AI into your grant writing efforts is an opportunity to drive exceptional impact and efficiency. When you can identify, research, and write grant applications at a higher quality and in less time, your organization can drastically ramp up its capacity to secure new revenue streams and fund new programs.

However, although AI has become an integral part of our work, remember that the field is still quite new. It can be difficult to navigate and compare all the AI tools for nonprofits available today, let alone know how to put them to work most effectively.

In this guide, we’ll round up the top AI grant writing tools your nonprofit can use to win more funding, ranging from platforms with comprehensive grant writing functionality to niche resources.

New to using AI for grant writing? Start with our introductory guide: 

Understanding the types of AI tools for grant writing

AI grant writing software can take a few different forms, so it’s important to understand their distinctions and purposes before investing in any addition to your grant writing toolkit.

First, there are purpose-built AI grant writing tools and general AI tools that can help with grant writing:

Purpose-built AI tools are specifically designed and trained to support one or more parts of the grant writing process. 

General or all-purpose AI tools (like ChatGPT) are the generative AI chatbots you’ve likely used before. These platforms can be extremely helpful but are not explicitly trained for grant writing or nonprofits. You should understand their limited use cases and potential risks when using them—for example, they’re more likely to produce unhelpful responses and require more intensive review of their outputs.

Within the category of purpose-built AI grant writing software, solutions span a spectrum of functionalities. Most tools on the market offer multiple features or can help with several aspects of the entire grant writing process.

There are also purpose-built AI tools to support other activities, like data analysis, proofreading, and transcription, that can streamline ancillary tasks related to grant writing. This is a much richer field, so there are many options available. We’ll review our top picks for various use cases below.

The best AI grant writing tools with comprehensive grant writing functionalities

If you’re looking for AI grant writing software, chances are you want something that can help you tackle the heftiest parts of your grant writing workflow—research, drafting, and finalizing your proposals.

While no tool can (or should!) fully replace your human judgment and reasoning when writing grants, a handful of solutions stand out as the most comprehensive and effective AI tools for researching and writing grant proposals. Here are our picks for the top options available today:

Grant Assistant

Grant Assistant, a part of the FreeWill suite of smart giving tools, is the leading AI grant writing tool that offers a full range of advanced but easy-to-use features for your grant writing workflow. Trained on over 7,000 winning grant proposals, our platform brings deep, nonprofit-specific knowledge that most other AI tools can’t yet match.

Grant Assistant can help nonprofits:

• Quickly understand and prioritize grant opportunities.
• Prepare, research, and draft grant proposals.
• Analyze RFPs and other documents to generate preliminary responses and summaries.
• Infuse their proposals with the correct tone and rich details.
• Adapt to diverse funder requirements, including federal and international development opportunities.

Grant Assistant’s founding team includes senior USAID leaders and other experienced professionals who understand the diverse grant funding landscape, from complex development proposals to smaller-scale foundation and community programs. The result is an expert-built, adaptive, and highly customizable platform to meet any nonprofit’s grant writing needs.

Users report researching, drafting, and completing new proposals in just one-third of the usual time using Grant Assistant’s advanced features. Plus, it’s entirely secure and private, with no AI models trained using user data.

Learn more about Grant Assistant’s cutting-edge features or contact the FreeWill team to set up your own demo to test the platform.

Grantable

Grantable is an AI grant writing platform that also stands out in the market for its ability to streamline several core points in the grant writing process. 

It offers a range of features to help nonprofits, institutions, and grant writing agencies quickly draft professional grant proposals that adapt to funder requirements and match their correct tones of voice. Upload files, generate sections, collaborate with the AI, and create a polished proposal in a fraction of the normal time.

Important to Note: Grantable offers fewer built-in research and analysis tools than similar platforms like Grant Assistant. Its website also does not discuss the material used to train the Grantable AI system, meaning it may require more hand-holding to generate consistent, context-specific responses.

Additional AI tools that support grant writing workflows

Want to compare more options? These honorable mentions all include innovative AI features that support multiple parts of the grant writing workflow. However, remember that this technology is rapidly evolving, so the full features and functionalities of any AI tool may change frequently.

Grant Orb

Grant Orb bills itself as a tool for quickly generating complete grant proposals in minutes. It offers upload and text generation features similar to those of Grantable, as discussed above. 

However, this platform's full utility and flexibility may be limited, and it’s unclear how its system is trained or whether it has deep nonprofit-specific knowledge. With these caveats in mind and an understanding that you’ll still need to carefully curate and refine your proposals, it may still be a viable way to streamline your grant writing work.

Grantboost

Grantboost offers the same functions as Grant Orb but at a more accessible price point. Its website is light on details, so it also brings the same potential concerns about the depth and specificity of its training materials. 

If you’d like to learn more about Grantboost, we recommend exploring its website and contacting the vendor directly to learn more and see the product in action.

Instrumentl

Instrumentl has been a longtime leader as a grant research database. Its modern design, intuitive features, and wealth of information help tons of grant writers find, research, organize, and manage their grant projects every day.

Instrumentl has also been working to develop AI grant writing tools. While they still appear to be in development, you may want to keep this option on your radar.

These AI features may ultimately be a smart choice, especially if you already use this platform for grant research, because they will most likely be trained on rich, real information from the database of grant opportunities. However, this tool's exact features and comprehensiveness are still unclear—keep an eye out if you already know and trust Instrumentl!

Quick note: Understanding the roles and limits of AI grant writing tech

Remember, grant writing is a complex process with many stages and complex logical steps. The goal of adopting AI tools should never be to fully outsource your grant writing. AI is best used to handle straightforward tasks, make new connections, and save time.

Your human reasoning, expert context, and emotions are all essential to a successful grant proposal, too.

By approaching AI tools (whether one of these grant writing-specific platforms or a more case-specific tool) as a collaborator, you’ll remain in the driver’s seat and ultimately do the best work for your mission. Stay aware of your tech’s real features, functions, and limitations. Reach out to vendors to discuss them and ask for real examples of their work.

AI grant writing tools for specific use cases

How else can you use AI tools for grant writing? Let’s look at the top platforms for more limited or specific use cases in your grant writing workflows.

Broad generative AI tools

Next, we’ll review a few all-purpose generative AI platforms that you might use to support your grant writing projects.

These can help with many different tasks, but they should be used in very limited or focused ways. That’s because these general tools can easily provide incorrect or misleading information. However, they’re still very useful when you understand their limitations, and, best of all, they’re highly accessible—each platform is free and/or offers inexpensive paid plans with additional features.

ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the industry leader in all-purpose generative AI. It excels at helping you quickly generate text, summarize documents, analyze data, and troubleshoot problems. 

Claude

Claude is a lesser-known but equally powerful and functional generative AI platform. Some users have found it to provide consistently better outputs when generating text about technical topics.

Gemini

Google’s generative AI chatbot, Gemini, is another reliable option for all-purpose AI tasks that can streamline your grant writing, and it works seamlessly with all other Google products like Sheets and Docs. 

Important to Note: When using broad generative AI tools, remember that they’re not trained specifically to help nonprofits or write grants. Pay close attention to how you prompt them for responses, ask for corrections and changes, and carefully review and refine all outputs. Consider relying on them for your most straightforward tasks, such as visualizing data and helping you come up with ideas rather than finished products.

AI tools to help with research and logistics

This last category of AI grant writing tools is diverse. It includes platforms built for various purposes that can supplement your toolkit and help speed up your grant writing.

Perplexity

Perplexity is akin to an AI search engine that can quickly generate answers to questions. It stands out among similar platforms because of its diverse training sources and citations, making it generally more reputable and helpful for the grant research process. Use it to learn more about topics and gather information and data to enrich your grant proposals.

Coefficient

Coefficient is built specifically to help with data analysis and visualization. It can integrate directly with your data tools (or analyze uploaded data) to generate reports, create graphs and live dashboards, and uncover hidden trends. Coefficient’s powerful tools can help you analyze and summarize data for grant proposals and regular reports to funders post-award.

Fireflies

Fireflies is an AI tool that transcribes accurate notes from audio and video. Grant writing often involves meeting with many people internally and externally to discuss your project, ask for documents, get answers to key questions, and more. AI can help ensure you capture all the details, and FireFlies even integrates directly with several leading project management platforms like Slack and Asana to create reminders from conversations automatically.

Jasper

Jasper is a generative AI platform designed specifically for marketing use cases, so while not directly related to grant writing, it can help quite a bit in some content creation areas. Its top features allow you to closely train the AI model on your organization’s voice and visual identity. Jasper Studio also makes it easy to create your own custom AI tools using its underlying system.

With some tech know-how and a clear understanding of what you need, Jasper could be a helpful part of your AI toolkit—just be aware that it’s trained for for-profit contexts and will need hand-holding to generate consistently useful text for grants.

Grammarly

Grammarly, the well-known spellcheck plugin, has many built-in AI features that could strengthen your grant writing. Besides checking for typos and grammatical improvements, the system can also screen your text for tone, clarity, and brand alignment. You can also prompt Grammarly to improve or suggest particular changes, for example, trimming down a section you’ve written to meet a funder’s guidelines.

Tome

Tome is an AI platform designed for sales and account management but comes with one feature that may be particularly useful for grant writers: AI slideshow generation. If you meet with team members and funders to discuss plans and pitch ideas, Tome could be an easy way to boost the visual professionalism of your presentations and streamline your work.

Otter

Otter is another notetaking and transcription AI tool that can improve your grant writing workflow. Use it to quickly generate meeting summaries, combine meeting transcriptions with other notes, and send lists of action items. It integrates with top video conferencing tools, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more, making it an easy addition for many organizations looking to improve communication.

Key reminders when using AI grant writing software

As discussed above, it’s important to understand the distinctions between different types of AI tools and their limitations before making an investment for your organization.

If you want AI tools built specifically for grant writing, look for options that are truly purpose-built, expert-trained, secure, private, and relevant to your needs. 

Grant Assistant checks all these boxes and more. We’re confident it’s the best AI grant writing software available today. However, you should still take stock of your nonprofit’s unique needs—what do you want to accomplish, and what can you reasonably take on?

Remember, AI is best when used as a collaborator, not as a full replacement for your own careful thought processes. If you don’t have the capacity to actively manage and execute an influx of new grants, your AI won’t be as much help once the funding (and its requirements) arrive. Take the time and attention to choose the right opportunities for you, use AI to apply for more of them more efficiently, and boost your impact and capacity in a sustainable way.

Learn more about Grant Assistant or request a walkthrough of the platform. Or, keep exploring with additional resources about how to use AI to boost your productivity and impact:

• Webinar: A deep dive on five practical AI uses for nonprofit fundraising
• Can you use AI for grant writing? What you need to know
• Top 10+ grant writing software picks and supplemental tools
• Free Download: AI tool starter kit for nonprofits