If you work on certain kinds of grant proposals, particularly proposals for research grants, you must cite sources that support your proposed solution and provide evidence of related work and data.

One of the reasons why USG funding opportunities are so daunting is that you usually need to consult multiple documents located across the funding agency’s website (and sometimes, several websites) to understand how to prepare and submit your application. After trying various options to stay on top of federal guidelines, we’ve found the app LiquidText to be ideally suited for this task.

A content library is a storage site where you save different types of content, including templates, excerpts from documents such as proposals and reports, and even audio and video clips. In this post, we review several tools and suggested approaches for establishing and organizing your library so you can easily find and reuse previously created content.

After you finish writing an important document like a grant application, it’s always a good idea to have it edited.

In this post, we'll start by looking at three options for copyediting assistance. After the overview, we’ll segue into a review of Editorr.com, an online service that connects editing jobs to real (human) editors. 

If you can't afford a freelance editor, and no one in your organization has the time or skills to take on copy editing, a tool you should know about is Grammarly.

There is abundant information online about every conceivable topic, grant writing and philanthropy included.  One way to stay abreast of nonprofit-related news without overwhelming your inbox is to use a content aggregator that collects relevant articles and blog posts from around the Web. Some of the services will email you a consolidated list of relevant articles weekly, or sometimes daily, while others provide tailored content through an account you setup on their website.

If you're serious about finding grant funding, you'll need a system to track which funders you've researched.  Without a method to track the funding resources you've evaluated, you may miss out on funding opportunities. You may also find yourself researching the same funder multiple times because you've forgotten the details of your initial review. One tool that offers the flexibility to manage all parts of the funding process is Trello.

Even for a relatively simple proposal, proposal work requires the work of many hands. This means that before you start working on a proposal you'll want to have systems in place to track the status of tasks, delegate work assignments, and communicate with team members. The list below is a collection of tools to manage tasks, email, notes, and workflow.  All of the products on the list offer a free trial period so you can test them out to see if they work for you. Several also offer free versions.