October 31, 2020
Preparing grant proposals isn't something everyone enjoys, feels confident doing, or has the time to do. This is where hiring a freelance grant proposal writer can help. Hiring a grant proposal writer can be a great solution for occasions when you lack the time or skills to write a particular proposal. However, hiring an external proposal writer is not always the solution, and hiring a proposal writer is also no guarantee that your grant proposal will be funded. In fact, since the overwhelming majority of proposals are not funded, the odds are against you regardless of who writes your proposals.
Given that you may not get a return on your investment in the form of a grant award, is hiring an external proposal writer worth the cost?
To help you decide whether hiring a freelance proposal writer makes sense for your organization, we're going to look at three scenarios when hiring a grant writer makes sense. We'll also discuss the different types of proposal writers and tips for collaborating with one to help the process go more smoothly.
It can feel like an impossible dilemma: Your organization needs grant money to survive, but you have so many tasks that you never have time to sit down and search for grant opportunities or write proposals.
If this is your situation, it may make sense to hire a consultant to help you pursue grant funding. The question is, do you need periodic or ongoing assistance?
If you need occasional help, hiring a grant consultant or a freelance proposal writer can be a good option. If you need help preparing grant proposals regularly, hiring a staff person (even a part-time employee) who can dedicate her time to researching funders and writing proposals will be a better option. Not only can relying on freelance proposal writers be expensive, but you may also have difficulty finding a proposal writer every time you need one.
What about when you lack both time and money? If you chronically lack both the time to work on grant proposals and the money to hire help, your options are obviously going to be more limited.
One way forward is to recruit volunteer proposal writers to work with you on the majority of your proposals. You can then reserve your limited funds to hire professional proposal writers only for those grant opportunities that are particularly important or complex.
If you lack confidence in your writing skills, hiring someone to write your grant proposals can certainly help. While you focus on the parts of the proposal process that you may be very good at, such as the project’s design, the proposal writer can focus on preparing a clearly written document that follows the funder's guidelines.
Regarding writing skills, another scenario in which it may make sense to seek grant writing help is when you need to prepare a proposal in a language other than your native language. However, it’s possible that instead of a writer, what you actually need is an editor to help you refine your language.
One thing to keep in mind is that you will likely still need to write some of the content even if you hire a proposal writer. The reason for this relates to the proposal writer's skills and to who is best positioned to write specific sections of a proposal.
Many freelance proposal writers are familiar with standard grant applications and the general flow of the proposal writing process. They usually are not subject matter experts, though, so you will need to provide them with the proposal’s core ingredients to knit together, refine, and polish. These core ingredients include a description of the context for the proposed work, an outline of the proposed solution, and a list of the resources (human and equipment) required to conduct the project. If the proposal writer is a subject-matter expert, they will have an idea of what needs to be covered, and some of this work should be reduced. However, an external proposal writer will almost always need your help to describe your organization's capabilities and past accomplishments.
If you are a fairly strong writer and simply haven't written many (or any) grant proposals, that’s a different type of challenge than lacking writing skills. In this case, hiring a proposal writer may not make sense, especially if you have access to reviewers who can critique your proposal drafts and an editor who can polish your writing.
Hiring a freelance proposal writer who has specialized knowledge that complements your own is often a good strategy. For example, if your organization wants to submit a high-value proposal to a funder that is new to you, finding a proposal writer who has experience preparing proposals for that funder can have a huge impact, not only reducing the amount of time it takes to respond but also preventing you from making costly mistakes.
Hiring an external proposal writer who has specific expertise can also make a difference when you want to submit a proposal in a new area, whether that's geographic or programmatic. A proposal writer with subject matter expertise can fill your knowledge gaps for you, and in far less time than it would take you to research a topic in an attempt to come up to speed.
Of all the reasons for hiring a freelance proposal writer, hiring someone for their specialized knowledge is perhaps the most compelling. If you don't have time to write grant proposals, arguably, you can adjust your schedule to find the time. If you don't write well, you can find someone to edit your writing. On the other hand, if you lack knowledge or experience with the funder, the funding mechanism, or the subject matter, these are gaps that can be difficult or even impossible to fill in the limited time you have to prepare a proposal.
While there are many advantages to hiring someone with experience and knowledge that complements your own, the downside is the cost. The more specialized a person's skills are, the more expensive they will be. Going back to the point that all grant proposals are a gamble, before you hire someone with specialized knowledge to be your proposal writer, you need to be realistic and assess your chances of putting together a winning bid. If you have little chance of success, you may not be able to justify the cost of hiring a proposal writer.
If you choose to hire a proposal writer, there are a few things you can do to streamline the process. Doing so will not only make the process go more smoothly but also reduce the amount of time required to prepare the proposal, thus saving you money:
Understand the Proposal Requirements: When you hire a proposal writer, the proposal writer works for you, which means someone at your organization needs to serve as the point person to supervise their work. Unless you understand the contents of the solicitation and the proposal guidelines, you won't be in a good position to monitor or evaluate the proposal writer's work and keep it on track. You should plan on working closely with the proposal writer throughout the entire process. One thing you can do to master the solicitation is to prepare a summary of the solicitation for the proposal writer. Having a reference document like this will help ensure you and the proposal writer share a clear understanding of what needs to be done.
Assemble Background Materials in Advance: Before the proposal writer's first day of work, assemble the materials the proposal writer will need. These background materials could include a copy of the solicitation, information about the funder's programmatic priorities and funding trends, and copies of articles related to the proposal’s topic. In addition, you may want to provide a list of expected competitors (i.e., other organizations pursuing the same opportunity) and a list of potential partner organizations. There's always a chance—often a very good one—that the proposal writer knows these organizations and can provide valuable insights. If you've received grant funding from the funder in the past, also plan on providing the proposal writer with a description of these past grants, including their objectives, what was accomplished, how much money you received, and the dates of the project period. If you're applying for funding for a project that is a follow-on or similar to a past project, you should provide the proposal writer with a copy of this earlier proposal, along with copies of any project reports. The proposal writer will also benefit from receiving a list of the names, titles, responsibilities, and contact information of the people she will be working with most closely on the proposal. In terms of your organization's capacity and accomplishments, it will be very helpful to the proposal writer if you can provide a list of your grants from the last five years (funder, award amount, project period, accomplishments, and partners).
Provide the Proposal Writer with "Building Blocks" for the Proposal: After you've had time to review the solicitation and summarize the key components of the proposal, the next thing you can do to help the proposal writer is to write down the major themes or proposal sections that will need to be addressed and generate a series of bullet points of relevant information under each one. For example, if one of the funder's themes is experience working in a specific geographic area, you could create a bulleted list of the current and past projects you've conducted in that area, the names of your staff with experience in the geographic area, and even the names of other organizations that have recently conducted projects in the target location. If the funder expects the proposal to have a section called "challenges," where you describe anticipated challenges of conducting the proposed work, you can provide the proposal writer with a bulleted list of some of the challenges your organization is aware of, such as weather conditions, the political or economic environment, or cultural barriers. The idea is not to flesh out the entire proposal; the goal is to "prime the pump" by providing the proposal writer with information that can help her ask the right questions and begin building the proposal's framework. You could also provide the proposal writer with a document that summarizes the proposed project and your organization's experience, so they can weave it into the proposal.
Grant the Proposal Writer Access to Your Online Workspace: If your organization uses a Cloud-based collaborative tool, it will help tremendously to give the proposal writer at least some access to the workspace. Your workspace could be a dedicated SharePoint site for proposal development, a Google Drive folder containing all proposal materials, or a collaborative space such as Microsoft Teams. Depending on your organization's policies and the Cloud-based tools you use, adding someone as a user can be a lengthy process. To limit downtime, as soon as you hire the proposal writer, you'll want to begin granting them access. Ideally, all proposal writing will take place in this shared workspace, eliminating the need to email drafts.
It will improve your relationship with the proposal writer if you understand her strengths and weaknesses and what she can and cannot do for you. Below are some things to keep in mind when you are considering hiring a proposal writer. From our experience, proposal writers typically fall into one of these three categories:
Writers for Hire: Some people who market themselves as proposal writers are generalists. Writing is their strength, but they do not exclusively—or even predominantly—write grant proposals. As a result, they are not necessarily well-versed in philanthropy, grant-seeking, different types of grant funders, or the ins and outs of nonprofits. While you can benefit from their writing skills, if your proposal writer falls into this category, you will need to work with them closely to ensure that the proposal is not just clearly written but also is responsive to the funder's guidelines.
Subject Matter Experts: Other people who market themselves for proposal work are subject matter experts who know one aspect of the proposal very well, such as the funder or the programmatic area, but writing is not their strength. Additionally, unless they've worked with you before, they are unlikely to have a thorough knowledge of your organization's capacities and capabilities, so even if they have strong writing skills, you'll still need to play a role in preparing the proposal. In terms of strategy, hiring a subject matter expert to serve in a specific capacity often works better and can be more cost-effective than hiring them in the general role of "proposal writer." One approach that works well is to have someone in-house serve as the lead writer for the proposal, with the subject-matter expert serving as a proposal reviewer, reading each draft and providing feedback. Another way to leverage a subject matter expert is to hire them to work with you on the front-end of the proposal process. For example, you could have them prepare an in-depth assessment of the solicitation and what the funder is looking for, or provide you with detailed feedback on your project design. With subject matter experts, it's always a good idea to bring them on as early as possible, preferably consulting them even before you've made a decision to respond to the grant opportunity. If you consult them after you've made most of the major decisions about your strategy, you won't have time to change direction to incorporate their feedback, which can lead to frustrations for everyone.
Former Nonprofit Staff: Other people become freelance proposal writers because they have worked with nonprofits in the past and have experience with grant proposals; this group can also include former program officers at foundations and government agencies. While they often have significant experience with the proposal process or grantmaking, consultants in this category may not be familiar with the funder or funding mechanism you are pursuing or the scope of work you are proposing. A subset of individuals in this category are those who have held a senior leadership position at a nonprofit and have left (usually retired from) that position to work as consultants. This group often has concentrated experience with a specific class of funders and even a single funding mechanism. Because of this, they can be considered more as subject matter experts and might be best used as proposal reviewers rather than writers.
It is very unusual to find a freelance proposal writer who can offer everything you need: knowledge of the funder you are applying to, experience with the proposal process, strong writing skills, and expertise in the subject matter. What this means in practice is that you and others in your organization will have to fill in the gaps. Hiring a proposal writer may reduce your workload, but you'll still need to be heavily involved. The proposal writer will not be able to prepare the proposal on her own.
For additional reading on topics covered in this section, please see Three Faulty Assumptions about Grant Writers, How to Create a Proposal Binder, and How to Write a Grant Proposal Part II: What Will You Need to Prepare?
Whether you are working with a volunteer proposal writer or have hired a professional one, things can go wrong, and tempers can flare during the proposal writing process. Three common reasons for this are:
Unrealistic Expectations Related to Workload: If you think hiring a proposal writer means you give the proposal writer a copy of the grant opportunity and she comes back a few weeks later with a final draft of the proposal, you need to brace yourself for disappointment. The truth is, the proposal writer can write very little on her own. While there are exceptions, the proposal writer generally depends on you to provide the substance of the proposal.
The proposal writer usually lacks the relevant knowledge to write the whole proposal. You or someone else at your organization will need to pitch in and write one or more sections, such as the personnel and management section, or the section on past accomplishments.
External proposal writers typically don't do a lot with the budget or budget justification, so someone in your organization must be assigned to lead these pieces.
Proposals usually require meetings to discuss their development and the proposed project. External consultants are not always best positioned to organize and facilitate these meetings, so you and your colleagues will also have to handle them.
Unrealistic Expectations Related to Ease and Speed: If you hire a proposal writer, your work related to preparing a grant proposal may be less than it otherwise would be, but the proposal process itself may not be any easier. In fact, when you recruit people from outside the organization to work on a short-term project like a proposal, it's often harder and can feel like more work because the consultant doesn't know the people, your organization's culture, or its systems. As a result, it can sometimes take longer to draft a proposal with a consultant's help than without one. If you are hoping for a speedy, seamless proposal process, you may not find that with an external proposal writer. Any proposal writer, even a very good one, may require a lot of your time and attention. Although it's often expected of them, external proposal writers cannot pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat all on their own. You must provide both the hat and the rabbit for the proposal writer to do her job.
Unrealistic Expectations Related to Success: It should go without saying that hiring an external proposal writer, even a very experienced one, does not guarantee you'll end up with a funded proposal. As we mentioned earlier, most proposals are not funded, regardless of the funder, subject matter, budget size, or who wrote them. Hiring an external proposal writer can help prepare a proposal. However, the overall quality and competitiveness of a proposal depend on several factors, many of which are beyond the proposal writer's control. When you hire a proposal writer, you need to be clear with her how you will evaluate the quality of her work. Whatever the performance metrics are, they should be decided in advance at the time of hiring and relate to the proposal process, not to whether the proposal is funded.
If you want to submit a proposal in response to a particular grant opportunity but lack access to a grant writer in-house or the money to hire a freelance proposal writer, you have a few options. You could decide not to pursue the opportunity, you could find a volunteer proposal writer, or you could commit to writing the proposal yourself. Below, we explore the implications of all three.
Decide It's a No-Go: If the grant opportunity in question is a reach (i.e., it's very unlikely your application will result in a grant), it probably makes sense to let the opportunity go and not apply. Instead, you can focus your energies on creating a plan to identify and hire a proposal writer for future opportunities. To read more about the go/no-go decision process—the process of evaluating whether to pursue a grant opportunity—check out our post Overview of the Go/No-Go Meeting Process.
Find a Volunteer: Theoretically, you might be able to find a volunteer to write the proposal. Realistically, it may be difficult to find a willing and qualified volunteer to work on your grant proposal. Even a short, relatively uncomplicated proposal can take 20+ hours to write, with the writing often done in a concentrated period. Many volunteers do not have the flexibility to devote that much time to a volunteer task. A second barrier to recruiting a volunteer is that you have to contend with all the issues listed above for professional grant writers—lack of skills, knowledge, and experience—except even more so, as volunteer proposal writers often seek, but do not have, significant proposal writing experience. If a volunteer lacks the necessary skills and experience, it diminishes the likelihood that you'll end up with a quality proposal. If an inexperienced volunteer is your only option, again, it may not be worth applying.
Write it Yourself: If you spot a grant opportunity that you simply cannot pass up, the final option is to buckle down and write it yourself. The catch here is that proposals are never prepared by one person in isolation, so before you decide to go down this path, you need to identify others who would be willing to work with you. If it is a short proposal with a summary budget, it’s possible you may be able to do all the writing yourself. However, if a detailed budget is required, you'll probably need help. (To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of those on a proposal team, see our post Creating a Proposal Team: Identifying Who You'll Need). If you can't find anyone in your organization who has the time and skills to work with you, you may have to walk away from the opportunity. If you decide to write the proposal yourself, a non-negotiable is to find at least one person willing to serve as a reviewer and provide feedback on your drafts. Additionally, you should try to find someone to edit the proposal for you, since you'll be too close to it to see errors.
If you can afford it, and especially for targeted assistance, hiring someone to help you write a grant proposal makes sense and can be a very good investment. Among the benefits, by working with an experienced proposal writer, you can gain skills that will help you respond to future proposals with greater confidence.
Hiring an external proposal writer works best when you need help with select proposals. If you need external help to write any grant proposal, you may have a bigger, systemic problem that cannot be solved by hiring a proposal writer. Moreover, unless you have a deep reservoir of funds, if you plan to submit proposals frequently, you're quickly going to run into cost issues if you need to hire someone to write every proposal. While the cost of hiring a proposal writer varies by region and factors such as the complexity of the proposal, proposal writers can be expensive. If you need ongoing proposal assistance, you really should work to find an in-house solution, either securing the funding to hire a permanent staff member, making proposal writing a part of someone’s job, or reserving the time to write them yourself.
If you opt to write the proposals yourself, you can grow your skills to make the process easier. In addition to working on your writing skills, one way to improve the quality and success of your grant proposals is to research potential funders. Understanding a funder inside and out will help you write a more responsive proposal.
Another step you can take to make proposal preparation easier is to create a system for storing information about your organization, including copies of past proposals (see Make Grant Writing Easier by Using Boilerplate Text and How to Use Trello for Grant Research & Writing). It's always easier to edit text than to face a blank page. You may find that, with a few revisions, you can quickly update and adapt text from a past proposal for use in new ones. Although you won't be able to prepare the whole proposal by using repurposed text, adapting text from past proposals will save you time on some standard sections.
Finally, whether you write your grant proposals yourself or hire someone, set realistic expectations for everyone involved. Preparing a grant proposal is not a solo activity. If you choose to write the proposals yourself, you will need help; if you hire someone, they will need your help.