Paths to Becoming a Grant Writer
April 30, 2023
We’ve written several posts over the years about how to write grants. We’ve also written about the pros and cons of being a grant writer. But one thing we haven’t done is write about how to become a grant writer. We’re going to cover this topic now, sharing three different paths.
THREE COMMON PATHS TO BECOMING A GRANT WRITER
1. Work on a Project for a Nonprofit or Academic Institution
By far, the most common way that people learn how to write grant proposals is by working for a program at a nonprofit or academic institution that is wholly or partially dependent on grant funding for its operations. If you want a single, surefire way to move into grant writing, it’s this one. This path doesn’t always require strong writing skills (although you’ll need them eventually) or subject-matter expertise. You can start on this path fresh out of college, after grad school, or even in retirement.
At nonprofits, most job descriptions reference grants. For example, a job description for a project staff member might say, “support grant writing as needed,” or something similar. For more senior-level jobs, the job description might list “lead the development and submission of grant applications to relevant foundations, government agencies, and corporations in collaboration with business development and executive staff.”
At a university, faculty are always seeking grant funding. If you have a job supporting a department or a project at a university, there’s a good chance you’ll become involved in preparing or supporting faculty members’ grant applications.
With the scenarios above, your core job responsibilities will have nothing to do with grant writing or seeking grant funding. Most likely, your job will involve implementing activities funded by grants. However, because a typical grant is for a project period of five years or less, finding and applying for grant funding is an ongoing job for any organization that relies on grant money. Initially, your role in a grant effort may be small and include tasks like reformatting CVs or collecting background information. Eventually, you could graduate to writing sections of proposals, usually starting with the less technical ones like personnel, management, and past performance. As your skills and subject-matter knowledge increase, you’ll be assigned more technical aspects, such as those covering project activities, milestones, and project monitoring and evaluation. As you work on various proposals, you’ll gain exposure to different types of grant applications and proposal sections, becoming familiar with the terminology, common guidelines, and typical proposal development stages.
The most common path to becoming a grant writer is to be exposed to grant writing through work as a project staff member in an academic department or nonprofit.
Gaining grant writing and proposal development experience by working for a nonprofit is the most common and also arguably the best way to segue into full-time grant writing. Note that if you think you’ll eventually want to transition to working as a grant writer, it’s essential to keep a list of all the proposals you’ve ever worked on, including the name of the funder, the type of project, the value of the award, what your contribution was, and the proposal’s outcome (funded or rejected). Many nonprofits will ask for such lists from candidates and, for better or worse, will judge your work and skill level based on how many proposals have been funded.
2. Consult on Proposals as a Subject-Matter Expert
Another common path to becoming a grant writer is through subject-matter expertise. The vast majority of grants are for projects rather than for core funding (the latter is funding to cover basic operating expenses). Projects are time-limited endeavors that have defined goals and objectives and are often related to a specialized area of focus.
While many nonprofits have staff with expertise in their key areas of service or research, not all do. And even if an organization employs subject-matter experts, schedule challenges and workload issues may make it difficult to involve in-house experts in every proposal. Even university departments—which have access to many subject-matter experts—may struggle to find faculty who can set aside other work to write grant proposals. For both nonprofits and university departments, the way to fill this expertise gap is to hire subject-matter experts (SMEs).
SMEs can assist with a proposal’s development in several ways. For some proposals, an organization might need an SME with expertise in a specific technical area or geographic location. Another proposal effort might require someone with broad experience in areas such as forestry, agriculture, education, or public health who can help the organization’s staff translate technical concepts into more proposal-friendly language. Lastly, other organizations may hire a consultant when applying to an unfamiliar funder or funding mechanism.
Do you have subject-matter expertise but don’t like to write? You can still offer your services as a grant writer. Many subject-matter experts working as consultants often write very little of the proposal’s content. Instead, they may mainly serve as reviewers, providing feedback on proposal drafts.
When an organization hires an SME to assist with a grant proposal, it wants someone with experience working on proposals and, ideally, with the funder in question. Preferably, the expert will also have strong writing skills. However, in the case of a technical expert with a specialized background (e.g., engineering, medicine, or program evaluation), the person’s degree of technical knowledge is what the organization will scrutinize most closely when making a hiring decision. Writing skills will be of interest but not formally evaluated, and potential consultants may not be asked for a writing sample. However, if the organization seeks someone with experience with a specific funder, it may request applicants to provide a copy of a successful proposal submitted to this funder.
3. Leverage Your Skills as a Professional Writer
A third path to becoming a grant writer is one that professional writers can take.
If you work as a writer, grant writing may seem like a natural application of your skills. Although writers can find work as grant writers based on the premise that “writing is writing,” it’s not as easy as one would think for a professional writer to get a job as a proposal writer. Strong writing skills are advantageous and will make establishing a career as a grant writer easier. However, it isn’t straightforward to move from another form of writing, such as copywriting, to grant writing.
Proposal writing requires a different approach than writing marketing copy, a blog post, a research paper, or a novel. If you are a professional writer and wish to move into grant writing, you must demonstrate that you can collate input from others, follow application instructions, and work as a member of a proposal team to prepare a responsive, compliant proposal. Unlike many other forms of writing, writing grant proposals is not a solo activity. The ability to collaborate with others is critical.
Grant writers must be able to interpret the proposal guidelines and understand the funder’s interests as well as the proposed project’s objectives. When choosing between someone who writes exceptionally well but lacks experience with grant proposals versus someone who writes moderately well but possesses at least some experience writing or managing grant proposals, most nonprofits will value the grant and nonprofit experience over writing skills. Because grant funding is so critical to its existence, it can be difficult for a nonprofit to take a chance on someone who has not worked on a grant proposal team before and who not only has limited knowledge of the nonprofit’s work but also lacks familiarity with the various types of funders and standard funding mechanisms. However, the ability to write well under pressure is unquestionably a valued skill in the proposal world, so once a writer has some proposal experience, they can find themselves in high demand.
WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR GRANT WRITING SKILLS
If you want to transition to working full-time as a grant writer or add grant writing to your portfolio of offerings, what specific steps can you take? There are a couple of things you can do.
Volunteer as a grant writer. Aspiring grant writers are frequently told to serve as volunteer grant writers to gain experience. We’ve offered this advice as well because, in theory, volunteering could be a way to gain experience. In practice, we’ve never worked at an organization that has either recruited (or allowed) volunteer grant writers or met anyone who has gotten their start as a grant writer by volunteering. These observations have led us to believe that, of the various ways to gain experience as a grant writer, volunteering might be the least successful.
Two reasons why organizations may shy away from using volunteer grant writers are that (1) volunteers are harder to hold accountable than paid staff, so if you need something done that could make or break the organization’s finances, a paid staff member is a safer bet; and (2) grant proposals contain confidential information, and an organization may hesitate to share confidential information with a volunteer.
If you want to try to gain experience as a grant writer by volunteering for a nonprofit, we recommend avoiding large nonprofits that have a dedicated business development unit and instead approaching small, community-based nonprofits that do not have a grant writer on staff. Although community nonprofits might be good for finding volunteer opportunities, the downside of volunteering at a small nonprofit is that there may be no one on staff who can offer you coaching or mentoring on how to write a grant.
Take a grant writing course. Taking a course on grant writing can help build your skills as a grant writer and introduce you to the world of grant seeking.
Grant writing courses are offered through many outlets. You can find them at community colleges, continuing education programs, and online course platforms, so you should have no difficulty finding options if you search for “grant writing course” plus “online” or the name of the city where you live. As with courses on any topic, grant writing courses vary considerably in length, price, and quality. When choosing a course, you’ll want to consider these factors plus the type of grant and recipient organization the course focuses on (e.g., small foundation grant vs. multi-million dollar federal grant or community-based organization vs. a large international NGO). A course designed to help you write proposals for small family foundations is not going to be a good choice if you intend to market your skills to large nonprofits that operate nationally or internationally and rely on government grants. Taking it a step further, if you know you want to focus on grants from a single government source (or type of foundation), you should find a course targeting that funder. For example, for those interested in U.S. government funding, you can often find grant writing seminars focusing on a single federal agency. Sometimes these courses are offered by the agency itself.
If you are an SME and want to apply your technical knowledge to grant writing, it’s worth trying to learn who the dominant funder is in your field and whether any grant writing courses focus on that funder. If the funder is a well-known federal agency such as the U.S.-based National Science Foundation or a multilateral agency like the World Health Organization, you should be able to find a specialized course. Courses that focus on a single funder provide targeted information on how to interpret application guidelines, eligibility requirements, and the funder’s review and scoring process. Additionally, many funder-specific courses will include templates for standard proposal sections.
One cautionary note is that while a good course will help you build your skills, completing a course and listing it on your resume will not be enough to land a grant writing job. Grant writing courses must be combined with pursuing opportunities to gain practical, hands-on experience.
USING EXISTING SKILLS TO TRANSITION INTO PROPOSAL WRITING
Nonprofit or project staff. For those already working in the nonprofit sector, finding opportunities to work on grant proposals should be easy because nonprofits are continually seeking grant opportunities, and proposal teams are often understaffed. Initially, you may be asked to shadow a proposal or two, but relatively soon, you should have opportunities to contribute directly to a proposal effort. Once you’ve worked on several proposals and your level of participation increases, you can market your skills and experience to other organizations or use them in a new role at your existing organization. For current nonprofit employees, your knowledge of the organization will make it easier to contribute to proposals and take on more writing responsibilities.
Subject-matter experts. For subject-matter experts, your professional network might be able to help you connect with nonprofits needing assistance with proposals related to your expertise. In a consultant role, you might be tasked to review a proposal to confirm its technical accuracy or asked to write a section of the proposal narrative, such as the background section (also referred to as the context or problem statement, it provides the background on a given challenge and any previous attempts to solve it). After working on a few proposals as a contributor or reviewer, you can play a larger role in the proposal development process. This could include participating in the development of the proposal’s strategy or approach. You could also specialize in a single funder, which would allow you to offer future clients a deeper insight into what the funder is looking for in proposals. Subject-matter experts don’t always have a lot of writing responsibilities. If you want to be a lead writer, you’ll need to let potential clients know your expectations in this regard.
Professional writers. For professional writers, the challenge is to show nonprofits how your experience gained from writing other forms of content enables you to be a successful grant writer. To help make your case, you should mention any experience you’ve had working with nonprofits or in the nonprofit sector. Your experience could relate to a service or research area that a nonprofit focuses on. It does not necessarily have to be in fundraising or grant seeking. For example, if you have a background in psychology and have studied domestic violence or written about it, this would be something to highlight if you want to work at a domestic violence shelter as a grant writer.
For freelance and other professional writers who wish to transition to grant writing, we suggest looking at other types of writing services you can provide nonprofits as a way to establish a relationship with them. You could approach a nonprofit to see if it could use your writing skills for its newsletter, brochures, blog, or other forms of public content. After a nonprofit has engaged you as a volunteer or paid consultant to write content for public distribution, you could introduce the idea of helping them with grant proposals and project reports. If the nonprofit has gotten to know you and likes your work, it may be open to having you work on a few grants on a contractual basis. However, perhaps the easiest way to transition into grant writing is to start by editing proposals. After editing a few, you will quickly learn their flow, typical structure, and content. Proposal editing will also enable you to learn about the missions and capabilities of individual nonprofits, project areas, and funder interests. Additionally, many nonprofits that may hesitate to hire a consultant grant writer may be willing to pay occasionally for proposal editing services, which could eventually expand into grant writing.
If you lack grant writing experience, you can gain valuable exposure to the grant process by serving initially as a proposal editor.
SUMMARY
Working as a staff member for a grant-funded project or organization is the most common path for learning how to write grants. If you already work for a nonprofit, you may be able to segue into a grant writing role with your current employer. Or, you could gain experience supporting proposals where you currently work and leverage that experience to find a full-time grant writing position at another organization. To increase your marketability, you should try to gain exposure to as many funders and types of proposals as possible.
For subject-matter experts and professional writers, it may take time to build the skills and connections you need to secure grant writing work. For subject-matter experts, writing skills may not be as important as being able to show technical competency, understanding of the project goals, and knowledge of funders’ programmatic interests. For professional writers, you must be prepared to demonstrate your overall writing ability, your capacity to work as a proposal team member, and your ability to interpret a funder’s requirements. For professional writers, it may help to initially work with nonprofits on other (non-proposal related) writing tasks first. After you have established a relationship with the nonprofit and mastered aspects of proposal development and grant-seeking, you may find an opening to move into grant writing.
