September 17, 2021
Have you ever considered becoming a grant writer? Nonprofits are constantly seeking new funding streams to stay afloat, so if you work for a nonprofit, you’ve probably seen that grant writers are always in demand.
While lots of grant writing needs to be done and knowing how to write a grant is a valued skill in the nonprofit sector, there’s a big difference between occasionally writing a grant proposal and working as a full-time grant writer.
Based on our experience writing grants for nonprofits as employees and as consultants, we’ve compiled what we regard as some of the most important factors to consider before deciding to become a grant writer.
What Is It Like to Work as a Grant Writer?
Working as a grant writer has its highs and lows, just like any job. And just like any job, your experience will be greatly influenced by your work environment and the personalities of the people you will be working with most closely.
However, several aspects of being a grant writer come to mind when we think of the general pros and cons of the work.
We’re going to start by reviewing some of the negatives associated with being a grant writer. Once those are out of the way, we’ll move to the positives.
Negatives Associated with Being a Grant Writer
Below are several of the drawbacks of working as a grant writer.
You’ll work behind the scenes. As a grant writer, your name will never appear on the final document, and after a proposal goes in, your colleagues may forget your specific contributions to a proposal. You may refer to yourself as a “grant writer.” However, you will primarily be contributing to a proposal as one of several writers. You may be regarded as the lead writer because you are responsible for the bulk of the writing, but typically, others will need to write some of the proposal’s content. Grant writing is a collaborative process. Because of its collaborative nature, it can be hard to separate your work from others', making it difficult to produce a proposal writing sample that is exclusively your own.
You won’t be able to control all the variables. A significant challenge of being a grant writer, especially a freelance grant writer, is that you need others to send you the proposal’s substantive content. Most proposals center around projects. Unless you are a part of the organization and intimately familiar with its activities, you will be relying on members of the program staff to feed you information about the proposed project’s history, purpose, goals, objectives, activities, and challenges. If the staff members do not give you what you need, your work as the writer cannot proceed. If the organization is seeking funding for a new project, securing what it needs can be even harder because the program staff must first design the project, which is a slow process.
You may receive partial credit for successful proposals but full credit for those that fail: Grantmakers evaluate proposals based on several factors, including the quality of a project idea, the size and reasonableness of the budget, and the qualifications of the proposed personnel. A proposal’s ultimate success or failure cannot be attributed to one person, but particularly when there’s a lot of pressure on a proposal (a “must-win” effort), there’s a tendency to look for people to blame if it's unsuccessful. Did you write the entire proposal? No, you probably didn’t—nor did you develop the project activities, design the log frame, create the budget, or recruit the proposed project staff. However, simply by being the designated grant writer, you’re in a vulnerable spot.
You will work nights and weekends: Most grant proposals must be written in a relatively short amount of time. Because of the condensed timeframe, it’s difficult to avoid working nights and weekends as a grant writer. A typical dynamic, especially if you are a freelancer, is that the organization’s staff will work on the proposal during regular work hours. At the end of the day, they’ll send you the latest draft, expecting you to deliver an improved version to them in the morning so they can resume their work. If you like working traditional 9-to-5 work hours, and especially if you want your weekends off, grant writing may not be a good career choice.
You’ll work with irritable people: A challenging aspect of being a grant writer is that you often see people at their worst. Members of the proposal team may feel anxious about a particular grant proposal because they know that if the grant doesn’t come through, they’ll lose their jobs. Or they might be irritable because working on the grant brings them in close proximity to coworkers and higher-ups whom they can’t stand…and now they’re in a situation where, for perhaps two months, they must interact with these difficult people every day. Many proposal efforts leave ill feelings in their wake, so much so that, if the proposal is funded, those feelings carry over to the project. The higher the dollar value of the proposal, the more pressure everyone will feel, and the greater the likelihood that you’ll encounter irritable people. To minimize your exposure to this dynamic, one option is to support smaller nonprofits on proposals that are of interest but not “must-wins.”
Your career growth may be limited: We’ve observed that grant writers tend to remain grant writers in organizations. Generally, there’s not a lot of upward mobility or even lateral movement. If your career aspiration is to be a senior director at a nonprofit one day, you’re better off working as a project manager than as a full-time grant writer. One reason grant writers may have limited career growth is that many people don’t see grant writing as a skill or craft but as something anyone in the organization could do—if only they weren’t so busy with the real work of running projects. The most successful grant writers we’ve met are people who have held positions as senior project staff at large nonprofits, foundations, or government agencies before moving to grant writing as a second career. Because of their project experience and subject-matter expertise, grant writers with this background tend to receive more respect and have greater opportunities for advancement than those who have worked solely as grant writers.
Your income will be unpredictable if you freelance: If you work as a freelance grant writer, as with many freelance gigs, your income can be wildly unpredictable. Unless you are lucky enough to have a retainer with an organization (i.e., the organization commits to paying you a set amount for a given period), you’ll be unable to forecast your annual income with any degree of certainty. Proposal work is cyclical. For many freelance grant writers, it can be feast or famine, with a flood of opportunities coming in at once, followed by long periods of little work. If you work as a full-time grant writer on the staff of an organization, your workload will also fluctuate. However, a key advantage is that your income will at least be predictable.
Want credit for your work? As a grant writer that can be difficult because you’re a ghostwriter.
The Positives of Being a Grant Writer
We’ve gone through several negatives with being a grant writer. Now let’s turn to the positives.
Meet interesting people. As a grant writer, you will meet and collaborate with interesting people committed to improving the world. Through your efforts, you can provide valuable assistance by helping them secure project funding. These projects might be in your backyard, or they could be on the other side of the globe.
Support important causes. If you are serving as a grant writer for an organization whose work you believe in, you can experience a sense of satisfaction from supporting an important mission.
Work a flexible schedule. If you are a freelance grant writer, you can have a flexible work schedule, with options to work when and where you like.
Spend your days writing. If you enjoy writing and editing, you will have plenty of opportunities to do that as a grant writer! Additionally, depending on the grant proposal and the organization you work for, you might have opportunities to engage in strategic planning and research.
We admit the list of cons appears longer than the list of positives. However, many of the benefits of working as a grant writer are intangible, such as the feeling of accomplishment after successfully securing funding for an important initiative. If you like supporting nonprofits and enjoy the type of specialized writing required for proposals, you may find grant writing professionally and personally fulfilling.
Do you enjoy writing and working with others to help fund important projects? You may find grant writing fulfilling work.
☞ Read our post Paths to Becoming a Grant Writer for more information on starting a career as a grant writer
How Much Can You Earn as a Grant Writer?
Most of us want fulfilling work, but we also want work that will provide financial security.
How much you can earn through grant writing is difficult to answer because of the number of variables at play, such as your proposal writing experience, educational background, and technical knowledge. Additionally, where you live is a major factor that will influence how much you can charge and how much work you can expect to receive.
In the United States, a grant writer can earn thousands of dollars a week working on a grant proposal for a large, multi-million-dollar award. For a small proposal that may result in an award of a few thousand dollars, the amount of work required will be much less, and the compensation will be significantly lower.
In general, if you have experience writing proposals for government donors, you will earn a higher rate than if your experience is limited to writing proposals for private foundations (this is especially true if your experience is limited to submitting proposals to small family foundations). This is because the proposal process for government funding opportunities is typically much more complex.
The other variable is your area of expertise. If you are a writer—that is, you don’t have a technical or programmatic area of expertise—you will not be able to charge as much for your services as someone who is a subject-matter expert. If you have worked in a senior position for a government agency, large NGO, or a foundation (private or corporate), you will be able to command the highest rate.
You can get a general idea of how much you can earn by looking at job postings for grant writers on sites such as the Grant Professional Association and other job boards. However, make sure you use geographic filters in your search, as hourly rates and salaries vary widely across the United States and globally.
Should You Pursue Grant Writing?
If you enjoy writing and working in a team environment—and you are okay with deadline-driven work that will entail working nights and weekends—grant writing might be a good job prospect for you.
If you don’t want to work in a high-pressure environment and prefer a job that will give you guaranteed credit for your contributions and a clear career path, then grant writing may not be a good fit.
If you think grant writing might be for you, the other major decision is whether to work as an employee or as a freelancer.
The benefits of being an employee include a steady paycheck and access to benefits like health insurance and an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The downside is that, as a grant writer employed by a nonprofit, you might struggle to have your voice and opinions heard because you’re considered “just a grant writer” and not someone with the capacity to weigh in on more technical areas or the proposal’s strategy. As a consultant, you may or may not have a better chance at shaping a proposal than you would as an employee. However, it’s possible you could have a greater voice, especially if you’ve been hired as a subject-matter expert or if you have significant experience preparing proposals for a particular type of funder or funding mechanism.
Like any job, whether grant writing will end up being a good fit for you depends on what you enjoy doing, your skills, and the opportunities you can access. Depending on where you live, you may find it relatively easy to advertise your grant writing abilities and pick up a steady flow of well-paid work. However, the reverse could also be true—your community may have lots of need for grant writing assistance, but local nonprofits may not be able to pay you well (or at all) for your services.
If you are unsure whether you would enjoy being a full-time grant writer, you could write a few proposals in a volunteer capacity to see how you like it. Additionally, if you already work for a nonprofit, you could try out grant writing by offering to help with your organization’s next proposal effort.
Where Can You Find Grant Writing Jobs?
You can find work as a grant writer through job boards and word of mouth. If you want tips on where to look for jobs, you can check out the resources in our blog post “Searching for a Position as a Grant Writer? 5 Websites You Need to Know About.”
💡 One thing to note if you want to work as a grant writer is that it’s essential to keep track of the proposals you’ve worked on, including the name of the organization, when (month/year) you wrote the proposal, the name of the funder the proposal was submitted to, how much the proposal’s budget was, and the outcome of the proposal (i.e., funded or not funded). Even though a win or a loss cannot be credited entirely to you, future employers may want you to give them your “win rate” when you interview for a grant writer position, and recording the proposals you’ve worked on will help you answer this question. To see a template to track proposal work, please view our Notion template.