We surveyed over 300 grant professionals at organizations and consultancies of different sizes.
We learned that you can use AI for much more than just meeting character counts.
The below report unpacks:
AI is cutting the grant writing time in half for many.
The bigger the organization, the more they use AI — unless they’re raising more than $10M. Then it’s split down the middle.
Most people use AI to draft and edit. But very few are taking advantage of AI research.
Instrumentl’s AI assistant, Apply speeds up your grant writing process. Apply does the legwork of pulling together relevant content from your past proposals to give you a head start. Learn more about Apply.
Organizations Raising More Than $200k Are More Likely to Use AI
Our survey shows that organizations with more grant funding are more likely to adopt AI tools.
Why? Larger organizations may have more resources readily available to invest in tools. And these investments can increase how much money they raise. Therefore, their board may be more likely to support short-term spending for long-term gains.
Let’s explore a breakdown of nonprofit AI usage based on grant revenue.
49% of nonprofits who raised less than $10,000 in grant funding used AI.
74% of nonprofits who have $1-2 million in grants have integrated AI into their workflow.
91% of nonprofits who have between $2-10 million in grants rely on AI to help support their operations.
There is one outlier. Nonprofits who raise more than $10 million report that only 50% use AI; however, this is rare. Only 5% of respondents raise that much.
So, what does this tell us? In general, as nonprofits grow, they’re more likely to integrate AI into their work.
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Nonprofits with $1-10 million in grant revenue are the most likely to adopt AI. Now, let’s explore how AI usage can affect grant volume, speed, and tasks.
Those Who Manage Lots of Grants Use AI More Often
On average, we found that the more grants an organization is actively managing, the more likely it is they will use AI.
In organizations that manage between 1-5 active grants, only 59% percent use AI to help manage them.
For organizations that manage 6-10 grants, that jumps to 72%.
For organizations managing 11-15 grants, AI use increases again to 77%.
Grant managers can face many challenges when managing multiple grants, including competing deadlines, varying requirements, and tracking down reports, to name a few. Grant management software like Instrumentl can help with these common challenges.
You can plot your deadlines using your grant calendars and receive automatic reminders of upcoming deadlines, create a workflow and assign tasks, track the grant status, and pull reports all in the same place. Combined with automation, this can transform the ways you work.
Almost 3/4s of Nonprofits Using AI Submit Grant Proposals in Less Than a Week
According to grant professionals, the average time to write and submit a grant proposal is two weeks.
However, that time can be cut in half with AI.
In fact, 71% of nonprofits shared they can write and submit a grant proposal in less than a week using AI.
That results in significant time savings, and you may even be able to double your grant output if you dedicate the same time and resources to the application process as before.
Using AI, nonprofits are able to apply for more grants without reducing the application’s overall quality. They’re able to increase their odds of landing new grants without investing additional resources, time, or staffing.
Most Organizations Use AI for Writing and Editing
By far, most respondents (46%) are using AI to draft proposals. That’s not surprising.
But, this changes with the size of the organization.
For small organizations without any grants,drafting proposals is the top AI activity (61%)
For large organizations managing more than 50 grants,proofreading and editing are more popular (59%)
What does this mean?
For smaller nonprofits, AI helps generate drafts quickly, enabling them to pursue more opportunities. Margit Brazda Poirier, M.S., GPC, of Grants4Good, explains:
"AI can often get you 80% of the way there, making it easier for smaller teams to edit and enhance drafts. This approach saves time, but the quality of results depends heavily on the prompts used."
Meanwhile, larger nonprofits often approach AI cautiously. Kim Joyce, CEO at Kim Joyce & Associates, specializes in large nonprofit clients. When the topic of AI comes up, she’s often met with resistance.
She shared that many of her clients immediately shot down the idea of using AI to write grants. They’re often concerned with the quality or the authenticity of the drafts. AI could make their grant proposal look and feel like everyone else's, and it will be difficult to stand out.
Meredith Noble, founder of Learn Grant Writing, understands the hesitation many nonprofits feel, but believes there are much stronger uses for AI in grant writing than just proofreading and editing.
“I, too, am surprised to see so many survey respondents using AI for proofreading and editing versus drafting. That might suggest grant writers are only using Grammarly. Drafting proposals is hands down the best use case for AI, specifically using Perplexity for research.”
It may be that larger organizations may not fully trust AI or don’t have the internal buy-in to use it yet.
Despite these trends, nonprofits underutilize AI in strategic tasks like funder research. According to Poirier:
“AI can analyze data from funding databases and match nonprofits with ideal opportunities—a huge time-saver compared to manual research.”
As familiarity with AI grows, many organizations are adopting a human-AI hybrid approach: using AI for suggestions and refining drafts with human judgment. Starting small, such as with less complex applications, can build trust and internal buy-in.
Apply by Instrumentl leverages AI to help create high-quality grant proposals within a few minutes; however, it does it with a twist. It doesn’t cook up a grant from thin air like ChatGPT. Instead, it pulls together information from your previous applications that apply to the new application.
It does the research for you, automating tedious tasks like manually searching, repurposing, and fine-tuning content from past proposals to save you time and resources.
The grant draft you’re working on is based on your language and content - Apply simply does the leg work of pulling the information together for you.
How AI Can Solve the Biggest Challenges Grant Teams Face
Respondents shared their biggest challenges when writing grants.
Over a third of respondents struggle with managing multiple grant applications simultaneously.
Almost 16% of nonprofits spend too much time gathering evidence and creating a budget.
Almost 14% find writing a narrative to be challenging.
The remaining 19% find understanding funder requirements, meeting deadlines, and other factors to be significant hurdles during the grant writing process.
AI can help with many of these challenges, and it can be a game-changer for nonprofits of all sizes.
Challenge
Examples of AI’s application to solve these challenges
Managing multiple grant applications
Apply helps save you time, accelerating your submissions by generating new content based on past proposals. You will be able to apply for more grants in less time.
Gathering evidence
Apply culls through your past applications to gather relevant information for you.
Budget creation
Apply can dust up your old budgets to help give you a jump start on creating new ones.
Writing a narrative
Apply can help you write a narrative, generating new content suggestions using your own words and style.
Understanding funder requirements
Apply allows you to access more than 20,000 active grants and their applications in a click to help you understand funder requirements all in one place.
Meeting deadlines
Collaborate with your team on Apply with customized workspaces and user roles, streamlining your workflow so you never miss another deadline.
AI comes with a learning curve, and Meredith Noble encourages her clients not to get discouraged as they explore these new tools.
“The number one mistake I see grant writers make that leads to the most frustration using AI or why they don't continue to use it is because the grant writer is not providing context. Context is everything. Without it, AI tools can't give quality answers. It's like asking an employee to do something with poor instruction and then being mad that their work isn't good.”
Meredith asks her clients to approach AI creativity to help build team capacity.
“Another tremendous opportunity moving into 2025 is in linking multiple tools to automate repetitive tasks. This becomes a true needle mover for resource-strapped nonprofits. With AI, they essentially get several new employees on their team! To do this successfully, the actual staff will need to develop their own project manager skills.”
Nonprofits who have effectively implemented AI into their workflow have transformed their operations, driving efficiencies to help free up time and resources.
Many seasoned professionals embrace AI in their grant writing to drive success and help them win more grants.
Create a Solid Starting Point
Matt Hugg, President & Founder, Nonprofit.Courses, understands how hard it can be to get started on your grant application.
“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. In fact, the AI providers say that their content can be wrong - and they're right! So let AI give you something to work with, but never any final copy.”
Once you have the running start, make it your own. You don’t want your application to look like everyone else’s. AI is great, but it can yield generic content if you’re not used to it.
Meet Grant Requirements
Katelynn Martin, Stewardship Officer at Design Outreach, knows it can be tricky to meet grant requirements, especially if there’s a character limit.
“Every once in a while, I come across an application that wants me to be so stingy with words that it’s a challenge to get an answer in the space while actually answering the question.”
This can be extremely challenging, especially if you have routine boilerplate language that explains your core programs and why they’re important. It’s often edited down as far as it can be, but Katelynn loves to feed that through AI platforms.
“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.”
Consider using AI if there are other requirements you’re struggling with. It can provide a fresh and objective perspective.
Complete Tedious Tasks
Mary Gladstone-Highland, CEO of Spark Group Consulting, knows that not everyone feels comfortable using AI in grant writing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still use it!
“If you are comfortable using AI to reduce your tedious tasks, then you will free up your time to engage in more relational work, which is critical to grant-writing.”
This can include using it to generate templates, form letters, data analytics, and more. These tasks aren’t high-think work, but they can take time.
Supplement, Not Replace, Human Connection
At the end of the day, AI is a tool. Jeannette Archer-Simons, Grant Consultant, encourages nonprofits to remember that it should not replace human connection.
“Grant writing is about building a relationship that includes a personalized understanding of the needs of an organization and how they match to a potential funder.”
AI can help create more efficient processes and streamline your grant applications. It’s up to you to care for your funder relationships.
Conclusion: AI as the Key Differentiator
Based on this report from surveying over 300 grant professionals, AI is making grant writing faster and easier. It can be a key differentiator between high- and low-performance.
AI can be an incredible tool when used correctly, helping nonprofits streamline their processes, increase their grant submissions, and improve their odds of winning grants.
Apply by Instrumentl is a fantastic tool that uses information from your old grant applications and transforms them into a new proposal in minutes. You’ll get AI-powered suggestions about how to use your past work to win more grants.
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