Harnessing Ai for Grant Writing: Best Practices and Pitfalls

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Steph Sang (Grant Angel)

Posted on

June 25, 2025

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4 minute(s)


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The Power of Ai in Grant Writing

Ai is the new ‘super term’ in business and at Granted, experienced first-hand how businesses continue to use this technology in many facets of their business. So where does artificial intelligence stand in the world of grants? While Ai can significantly streamline the grant writing process, it is essential to understand how to use it effectively and recognize its limitations. Let’s explore the best practices for leveraging Ai in grant writing and highlights the risks of over-reliance on this technology.

Ai can be an asset in preparing grant applications, benefits include:

  1. Efficiency and Speed: Ai can quickly analyze large volumes of data, identify relevant information, and generate drafts, saving time and effort for grant writers.
  2. Consistency and Accuracy: Ai algorithms can maintain consistency in language and formatting, reducing the likelihood of errors and ensuring that the grant proposal adheres to the required guidelines.
  3. Data Analysis: Ai can analyze past successful grant applications to identify patterns and trends, providing insights that can enhance the quality of the current proposal. This data-driven approach can increase the chances of securing funding.

Best Practices for Using Ai in Grant Writing

To maximize the benefits of Ai in grant writing, consider the following best practices:

  1. Regularly Update Ai Tools: There are SO many different tools and selecting the most appropriate one can improve the accuracy and relevance of the generated content.
  2. Use Ai as a Supplement, NOT as a Replacement: Ai should complement the expertise of human grant writers, not replace them. While AI can handle repetitive tasks and data analysis, human judgment is crucial for crafting compelling narratives and ensuring the proposal aligns with the program’s mandate.
  3. Customize Ai Outputs: Ai content should be tailored to the specific requirements of each grant application. Customize the language, tone, and structure to match the funder’s preferences and the project’s unique aspects.

Pitfalls of Over-Reliance on Ai

While Ai offers numerous benefits, over-reliance on this technology can lead to several risks:

  1. Not Timely when Sourcing Grants: Ai is not yet reliable in identifying programs when they launch or capturing grant changes at a rate necessary for businesses to be ahead of the grant curve. This means that businesses may miss out on key grants that could help their business grow when they are overly reliant on technology to source this information for them.
  2. Lack of Contextual Understanding: Ai may struggle to grasp the nuanced context of a grant proposal. It can generate content based on patterns but may miss the subtleties that make a proposal stand out. Human insight is essential to add depth and context to the application. It is very easy for an adjudicator to identify content that is Ai generated vs written by humans and/or content prompted by humans.
  3. Inability to Access Specific Data: Ai cannot pull grant application data from general sources. It relies on the data it has been trained on, which may not include specific information required for a particular grant. This limitation can result in incomplete or inaccurate proposals.

How Granted is Using Ai

At Granted, we’ve been using Ai for more than 5 years, from development of a tool that helps businesses understand how much grant funding they could leverage: Grant Calculator, to the development of the new version of our proprietary grant platform expected to launch in the next few months. Join the waitlist here and be ahead of the line to gain access!

Final Thoughts

Ai has the potential to revolutionize grant writing by enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and data analysis. However, it is essential to use Ai as a tool that complements human expertise rather than a replacement. To enhance the use of Ai, businesses must be able to draw on a reliable and vast database of grant applications to develop a reliable learning model. This includes submissions that have been both successful and denied applications to draw on the key features of approvals and learnings from rejected submissions. Until this is built, developing strong prompts that help develop quality applications can save you time, but ultimately, human oversight and expertise is still key help your grant applications stand out.