Let’s start with the headline truth: AI can speed up grant writing tasks by 80–90%. That’s not hype, but it is back-of-the-napkin math. Consider this: a grant writer who typically spends eight hours drafting narratives a week could, with a well-configured AI workflow, reduce that time to less than one hour. That’s seven hours back every week. Time you can redirect to strategy, storytelling, or the thousand other things that make or break a grant. I’ve been saying this since January of this year when AI tools added new capabilities that made this possible. A recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article comes to a similar conclusion. 

But here’s the catch: AI isn’t magic. It’s math. And math doesn’t understand community, values, or best practices unless you tell it how.

What AI Can Do (and do fast)

AI excels at the pieces of grant writing that are time-consuming but not particularly complex:

• First drafts of boilerplate language.
• Summaries of past projects, budgets, or reports.
• Drafting variations of existing content: need statements, organizational history statements, or project descriptions.
• Rewriting a section in a different voice or length: think of cutting a section from 750 words to 300 words.

What AI Cannot Do (at least for now)

AI doesn’t know your funder’s hidden rules. It doesn’t recognize when language crosses into exaggeration, or when a description for a new program drifts from your mission.

Most importantly, AI will absolutely give you garbage if you don’t give it the right inputs. 

• Garbage in, garbage out. Vague prompts or lackluster reference documents produce generic language. And you risk submitting a grant that every other applicant using AI might also submit. Yikes!
• Hallucinations happen. AI will confidently make things up. If you don’t fact-check, you risk submitting fiction. And if you don’t have a grant writer squarely in the driver’s seat of AI, you might submit something that obviously doesn’t align with grant writing best practices.
• Authenticity can be lost. AI language can “sanitize” your story, stripping out the authenticity funders actually want. This can be overcome, but we need to provide the AI the information it needs to draft in your voice.

The Human Factor: Why Expertise Still Matters

Grant writing is more than words on paper. It’s strategy, compliance, and trust-building. That means AI will never replace the role of someone who:

• Understands what funders are really looking for.
• Knows how to evaluate whether AI output is high-quality or hot garbage.
• Applies best practices in grant writing, from clarity and compliance to centering community voice.

Without that expertise, you risk generic language. And funders are being inundated right now with AI-written applications from people who don’t know how to use AI to its full potential. 

There is a better way forward. We have to start thinking of AI as a grant writing assistant. The more you train it with clear instructions and context, the better it gets at helping you. But the final accountability? That stays with you. Always.

Bottom Line

AI is transforming grant writing and will have a lasting impact. Nonprofits that choose curiosity over fear, capacity building over scarcity, and professional development and training over a head-in-the-sand approach will weather the shifting winds. 

AI can help under-resourced teams feel like they’ve got a whole new staff member supporting their team. But speed without strategy puts you in a tailspin. Let AI handle the drafting, the copy-and-paste, the minor refinements, while you do the thinking, the judging, the final checks. That’s where the wins come from.

Call to Action

If you’re curious about weaving AI into your grant writing without losing quality, start small. Try it on background sections or summaries. Notice the time you save. And remember: the tool is only as strong as the expert holding it.

Here is a link to a free grant writing CustomGPT. I challenge you to try to use it to draft a grant narrative in 20 minutes or less. Does it seem impossible? All the more reason to try.

And when you are ready to implement a custom AI grant writing assistant for your organization, send me a message. I’d be delighted to build you tools that can save your grant writer hours each week!