Four Ways ChatGPT Can Help a NonProfit Grant Writer
They’re usually overworked and underpaid, and AI can make a difference.
When I was Executive Director of a small nonprofit in central Wisconsin, one of our board members suggested we write for a grant from his employer, a large finance firm.
We were small, and didn’t have a grant-writer on staff, but the Director of Operations and I both had a background in writing, and thought we could handle it.
Spoiler: we did, and got the grant both years I worked there.
But the process of writing that grant was hard. Trying to craft the right answers to esoteric questions generated by a faceless board of judges, tracking down data that was important to them for some reason, it meant lots of late nights, marked-up google docs, and a huge sigh of relief when we submitted it.
Not because we thought it was going to be accepted. But because the process was over.
It gave me a deeper respect for those peculiar humans who make their living in that world; they do that much and more over and over again, generating thousands of words in ways particular to the needs of whatever organization they’re applying to, often under extreme deadlines.
