he ABCs of AI for Grants

Every year, nonprofit professionals spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money trying to write better grant proposals. They attend workshops. They tweak their logic models. They agonize over word choice. And now, increasingly, they are turning to AI tools to help them produce more polished narratives faster.

None of that is wrong. Strong grant writing genuinely matters. A muddled narrative, a budget that does not reconcile with your program description, or a proposal that ignores a funder's guidelines will cost you real opportunities.

But after five years of grant consulting and over $11 million raised for grassroots nonprofits, I have come to believe that writing alone is not what wins grants, and that organizations investing heavily in the craft while underinvesting in everything around it are leaving money on the table.

Writing Well Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling

Think of grant writing as the price of entry. A well-written proposal gets you taken seriously. It demonstrates organizational competence and shows a funder you can clearly articulate what you do and why it matters. It’s indispensable, but it’s not the only factor that will get you funded.

Once you clear that bar, the factors that actually determine whether you get funded are largely about your organization and its connection to the community. Funders make decisions based on whether your organization has a track record of delivering on what it promises, whether they trust your leadership, and whether the relationships between your organization and their staff have been cultivated over time.

The proposal documents all of that. It does not create it.

This is also why working with a skilled grant consultant matters for organizations at every stage of building a grant program. For the established organization, writing stronger proposals can be the key differentiator that secures funding. For those who still have work to do, a consultant can guide the relationship building, data collection, and storytelling that will get you on funders’ radars.

What Actually Builds That Foundation

The organizations with the most sustainable grant programs I have worked with tend to share the same characteristics, and none of them are primarily about writing.

Genuine funder relationships. The relationships that matter are not about being liked. They are about the kind of connection where a program officer genuinely understands your work, trusts your leadership, and sees your organization as credible. Two moments where most organizations underinvest: before the first ask, and after a decline. A pre-submission conversation, a warm introduction through a mutual colleague, a gracious response to a rejection that asks for feedback — these are the investments that make your next proposal land in context rather than as a cold introduction.

Communication that runs in multiple directions. Strong grant programs maintain a consistent rhythm with funders between grant cycles, not just at application and report time. Internally, they treat grant management as a shared responsibility between development and program staff. When those two functions operate in silos, grant reports become disconnected from what is actually happening on the ground.

Programs designed around community need. The organizations that are hardest to write grants for are the ones whose programs were designed primarily around what funders want to fund. There is a real difference between aligning existing community-grounded work with funder priorities and building programs because a funder has money available. Organizations whose programs genuinely reflect what their communities need have an easier time making a compelling case, because the story is clear and true.

Honest, specific measurement. The most effective grant narratives weave quantitative data and qualitative story together. Data tells a funder what happened. Story tells them why it matters. Getting that balance right is a genuine writing skill, and it is also where overpromising on outcomes does the most damage. Funders are not expecting perfection. They are expecting honesty.

Organizational culture that values accuracy over optics. This one underlies everything else. Organizations where development and program staff genuinely collaborate, where leadership is honest with funders even when the news is not great, and where accuracy is valued over a relentlessly positive image tend to have strong and growing grant programs. When that culture is absent, polished writing cannot compensate over time.

What AI Does and Does Not Change

AI tools have genuine value in the grant writing process: research, structuring proposals, catching inconsistencies, and increasing efficiency when managing a high volume of applications.

But AI does not change what wins grants at the foundational level. It cannot build funder relationships, accurately represent programs it does not truly understand, or generate authentic community voice. The specific, grounded stories that make grant narratives genuinely compelling come from real relationships with real people.

There is also a leveling effect worth considering. As AI makes it easier for every organization to produce more proposals, volume itself becomes less of a differentiator. The organizations that stand out will be the ones whose proposals contain things AI cannot produce: genuine specificity, authentic relationships, honest data, and real community voice.

Want to Learn More About Using AI Effectively?

This is exactly the conversation we are continuing in our upcoming workshop, ABC's of AI with Adam Levine, on June 18th at 12 Noon EST.

If you have been using AI just to clean up your notes, or you are not sure whether what it tells you is even accurate (it once told someone the capital of Australia is Sydney — it is not), this session is for you. We will cut through the noise and show you what AI can actually do to strengthen your grant program — and where human judgment still has to stay in the driver's seat.

I’m excited to join Adam in this workshop and share my pointers for how you can use AI to improve your grant program. I hope to see you there!

Space is limited. Click here to register.