Let’s Chat About AI and Federal Grants
I’ll name the tension upfront: AI makes some folks uneasy.
And rightfully so. The headlines are loud. The ethics are messy. It’s not black and white, to be sure. The current and future environmental impact is concerning. And in mission-driven spaces where trust, nuance, and lived experience matter, there is a fear of losing the humanity of the work.
So if you're feeling hesitant about using AI tools in your grant process, I want you to hear this loud and clear:
You’re not behind. You’re not naive. You’re not alone.
But you deserve real information. Not hype. Not fear. Just practical insight from someone who's in the trenches with you.
This isn’t a tech tutorial or a love letter to automation. I’m tired of the over-hype as well. It’s a practical conversation about how we can work smarter without losing the soul of what we do. Because at the end of the day, grants are about solving real problems for real people. Otherwise, what are we even doing? AI can’t lead that work like you can, but it can provide support.
AI Can’t Replace You, But it Can Save You Time
Too many grant writers are burning out trying to do everything manually: combing through 80-page NOFOs, retyping the same organizational language from scratch, and formatting the same budget narrative four different ways for four different funders.
Here’s the truth: you don’t have to do all of that anymore.
AI tools can now draft boilerplate, summarize long guidelines, and help translate complex ideas into plain language. It’s not cheating. It’s smart prep. And for lean teams, time reclaimed is capacity regained.
And, it doesn’t happen because you type “write a grant” into the free version of an LLM. It works when you know how to use it and are paying for features that allow you to train it and provide it a body of knowledge to work from.
But let’s be completely clear: it isn’t coming for your job. AI doesn’t know your community like you do. It doesn’t feel the influence and impact of your mission. It doesn’t understand why a sentence that is deemed acceptable to a bot might feel completely wrong in the context of your work.
AI should not be in the driver’s seat.
Use it to get unstuck. Use it to move faster. Use it to automate tasks that honestly feel pretty mundane and take far too much time. But always bring it back to the human to bring it to life. That human insight - your insight - is irreplaceable.
AI Helps You Spot Gaps (Before Reviewers Do)
Have you ever reached the end of a grant draft and felt unsure if your budget really aligns with your narrative? Or whether your outcomes match your problem statement? That’s where AI can become a powerful reviewer–not just a writer.
Some teams are using AI tools to hold up a mirror:
Does this logic flow make sense?
Are our evaluation metrics too vague?
Did we actually answer all the prompts?
And while it won’t replace a sharp set of human eyes, it can help you catch blind spots earlier in the process to help you avoid that last-minute panic.
Because here’s what you must remember:
You’re not writing just to submit. You’re writing to be scored.
Let the tech help you think like a reviewer, then let your team make it resonate like a mission.
AI Can Strengthen Collaboration
There’s a common fear that AI will lead to isolation–that writers will go off into a corner, type prompts into a machine, and never re-engage the team. But that’s not what happens when you approach AI as a time-saving piece of your collaborative process. AI can do the grunt work, like summarizing program notes, creating first-pass content from interviews, or structuring outlines that program staff can quickly respond to. That kind of lift makes it easier to involve non-writers and busy department leads because they’re editing, not starting from scratch.
The result is a faster, more inclusive workflow. Not because the tech is brilliant, but because your team is.
AI expands capacity. Your people define quality.
Together, that’s how you write grants that are both fundable and rooted in reality.
We’ve been designing AI Grant Writing Assistants for nonprofits. Curious what that means? You can read more about it here.