Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow in popularity. With new applications and use cases emerging daily, it can be challenging to keep up—and understand what’s here to stay and not just another passing fad.
The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone!
In this article, we’ll share:
An overview of AI and how most grant writers are using it today
A look at how AI can help with proposal development
Unexpected ways you can use AI beyond grant writing and editing
Sound good? Let’s jump in!
What Is AI And How Are Grant Writers Using It?
Many people use AI as a catch-all term, but there is a difference between traditional AI and generative AI. It all comes down to the data you’re using to begin with and the output you’re hoping to produce.
Traditional AI uses existing information and analyzes it to make data-driven decisions and suggestions. Generative AI uses new inputs to create fresh content shaped by your creative direction.
Both use machine-learning capabilities to train the algorithm and refine the outputs to help drive efficiencies, uncover patterns, and revolutionize the ways we work.
Some of the most popular AI tools for grant writers include:
ChatGPT uses prompts and inputs to generate new content, create outlines, suggest ideas, and refine your writing. It’s a good starting point, but requires refinement to help the final product stand out.
Gemini is powered by Google and provides AI-generated suggestions around research, sales, and marketing. It integrates seamlessly within the Google suite and accesses real-time data to help provide timely insights.
Grammarly uses AI to help improve your writing, including identifying grammatical errors and opportunities to communicate with confidence. It can also help generate new content and parse for plagiarism.
DALL-E can help grant writers create images, pulling from their repository to customize based on their text description. These images can be used to enhance reports and save countless hours creating new collateral.
Whether you’re using traditional AI or generative AI, it can be a great way to enhance your workflow and streamline operations in new ways that save you time and resources.
However, by far, the most common way nonprofits are using AI is for writing proposals.
We recently surveyed more than 300 grant professionals, and found that more than 46 percent use it to help them with grant writing. In fact, drafting proposals is the top AI activity (61%) for smaller nonprofits.
Results from Instrumentl’s insights report showing that 46% of respondents use AI primarily for drafting proposals.
So, how can you best use AI in the proposal development process?
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While there are multiple AI tools on the market, Instrumentl’s AI Apply tool is designed specifically for grant proposal development.
Instrument’s AI grant writing tool uses your past applications to generate new content
Here’s how it works:
Apply learns from your past applications to resurface your best ideas intelligently, allowing you to generate your first draft in minutes. You can also use Apply to reduce word count with the click of a button. Shortening, simplifying, or matching specific formatting criteria can be accomplished in seconds.
By using Apply, grant professionals have experienced a 2x increase in annual grant submissions.
Grant professionals spend 40% less time per application with Instrumentl’s Apply tool
However, AI can do so much more than simply kickstarting your writing process. Keep reading as we go over some additional AI use cases for grant writing professionals.
You can use AI in some unexpected ways during the grant-seeking process, and we’ve outlined a few of the most promising ones in more detail below.
1. Suggest Funders
You may be familiar with heavy-hitter funders in your nonprofit’s niche or local community, but AI can actually be used to help you uncover new funding opportunities that you may not have heard of!
You can prompt AI to generate:
Local and national funders: ”Please share a list of foundations that are located in [city] or a list of foundations that recently gave to the [X metropolitan area].”
Similar funders: “Please share 10 corporate foundations that are similar to [X foundation].”
Funder’s giving history: “Please list the nonprofits that [X foundation] gave to in 2024.”
Grants other nonprofits have received: “Please share a list of grants that [X nonprofit] has received in the past five years.”
Margit Brazda Poirier, Owner and Founder of Grants4Good, believes this is one of the biggest untapped uses for AI in nonprofits:
“AI can analyze vast amounts of data from funding databases, past awards, and funder priorities to identify and match nonprofits with ideal funding opportunities.”
AI, when paired with the right grant databases and tools, can help you identify the best-fit funding opportunities so you don’t waste time applying for grants you don’t have a chance of winning.
2. Identify Connections
Personal connections are a great way to get a foot in the door with potential funders, but it can be tedious to sift through staff lists to identify possible opportunities.
Now, you can leverage AI to explore connections between your nonprofit and potential funders, including board members, staff, volunteers, former employees, and more.
Consider asking AI:
“Are there connections between [funder] and [nonprofit]?”
“Does [foundation] have any board members or staff with connections to [nonprofit’s city]?”
Instrumentl’s Form 990 insights can identify key people at different foundations, and AI can help you dig deeper if the connections aren’t immediately apparent.
Instrumentl’s funder profiles include a list of Key People at the organization
3. Meet Funder Requirements
Funder requirements can be complex, and it can sometimes be challenging to understand how well you meet them. You may think you check all the boxes, but your application tells a different story.
To get a better understanding of the funder’s requirements, paste the grant’s criteria and ask AI to:
Highlight key themes
Suggest important keywords
Summarize what makes a competitive candidate
This output can help you understand if you meet funder requirements, as well as integrate key phrases to help your application stand out.
4. Suggest New Programming or Program Enhancements
As you’re looking to grow your nonprofit’s scope, AI can suggest new programming or program enhancements to help you level up your operations.
How? Through market analysis.
There is plenty of publicly available data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey—and you can leverage information from your local community.
Download the data, run it through AI, and ask it to identify trends, gaps, or redundancies in the market. Use that information to help guide your program strategy. You can learn a lot from what’s already there and how to approach the need differently to best serve the community's needs.
Pro tip: Compare multiple data sets to try to get a comprehensive picture of your community from different perspectives. This fresh look could help invigorate your programming in ways you hadn’t previously considered.
5. Write Template Emails
The volume of communication needs can be overwhelming for some nonprofits. However, AI can help you generate email templates that you can customize for individual donors, funders, employees, volunteers, and more.
Matt Hugg, President and Founder of Nonprofit.Courses, recognizes how intimidating a blank page can be.
“There's a saying that a writer's biggest fear is a blank page. AI can be a big help in giving you a starting point. But by no means is it an ending point, too…let AI give you something to work with, but never any final copy.”
So, use AI for inspiration, kicking the blank screen to the curb. You can use it to help generate:
Create a nonprofit communication strategy, and use AI to help develop your initial drafts to save time. Over time, the AI can learn your voice, and you can create custom GPTs based on your brand. Input your desired information, and refine the writing within the tool to help the algorithm learn your voice and streamline the process in the future.
6. Enhance Formatting
Most grants have specific formatting requirements, and AI can help you meet them without stress.
Katelynn Martin, Stewardship Officer at Design Outreach, uses AI as one of her secret weapons for formatting.
“I tell it to reduce it to the number of characters allowed without losing any of the meaning. I always have to tweak it so it doesn’t sound totally robotic, but it’s taken the burden off what used to be the bane of my existence—the dreaded character limit.”
You can alsoask AI to summarize your application to see how it parses through automated systems. You can get a clear understanding if it’s an accurate representation of your program and your nonprofit and make adjustments as needed.
7. Create Charts and Visuals
Not every nonprofit has graphic designers on hand to develop eye-catching charts and visuals. Thankfully, AI can help create new materials that meet your brand standards.
Ask AI to create:
Renderings of projected projects or spaces.
Infographics that summarize the projected impact.
Word clouds that summarize feelings and sentiments.
Charts that make data more accessible.
AI can also be used to generate images, but there is a lot of learning that comes through the process. These images may not be perfect, so make it clear that they are AI-generated images instead of pretending they are real. You don’t want to go accidentally viral for poorly-generated AI images.
AI is here to stay, and nonprofits will only do themselves a disservice if they don’t learn how to properly integrate it into their workflow.
In this article, we shared:
An overview of the difference between AI, generative AI, and how grant writers can use it
A look at how AI can enhance your grant writing with Instrumentl’s Apply
How you can go beyond grant writing to use AI in new ways
Instrumentl has many tools and resources to help you integrate automation into your workflow. From automated deadline reminders to suggesting new grant applications based on your past work, Instrumentl streamlines the grant application process, saving you time, energy, and resources.
Sign up for a free, 14-day trial today to learn more about what we can offer you—and how you can use AI to transform the ways you win grants.
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