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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Using AI to Write Grant Proposals

Can you use artificial intelligence (AI) to write your next grant proposal? New companies like Grantable and Grant Assistant believe the answer is yes. But can you truly step away from the process and rely on an AI tool to do all the work? Probably not—at least not yet. However, AI tools can reduce the work associated with writing a proposal.

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Using Evaluation Criteria to Prepare a Stronger Grant Proposal

Courses on proposal writing typically focus on the importance of writing clearly and avoiding jargon. While important, these tips alone will not lead to a winning proposal. Writing a high-quality proposal also involves remembering that proposals are scored, not read. If you write a well-written proposal but fail to consider how the reviewers will read and evaluate it, your proposal may not score well.

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Searching for Grant Opportunities Using Google

To help those of you relying on Google to find funding opportunities, we have several suggestions on how to structure your search so that you get the best and most relevant results.

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Questions to Ask Before Responding to a Funding Opportunity

When you come across a funding opportunity that looks like it is a good fit, it can be tempting to start work on it immediately, especially if the deadline is only a few weeks away. But jumping into the writing phase without first reading through the solicitation carefully is always risky.

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Paths to Becoming a Grant Writer

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.

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Project Budgeting Tips for New Grant Writers

If you’ve never prepared or managed a project budget, the budget piece can be intimidating. To help new grant writers, below is a list of several strategies you can employ to make the budgeting process easier and more accurate.

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Tips for Editing Your Own Writing

It isn't easy to edit your own writing. Because you know what you meant to write, your eye will often gloss over misspellings, missing words, and incorrect word choices.

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Working on a Complex Proposal? LiquidText Can Help.

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.

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How to Create a Cloud-Based Style Guide

Proposal style guides cover in-house style rules and any supplemental style guidance provided by the funder. A cloud-based, shareable workspace is an ideal way to create a shareable style guide.

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Write Your Next Grant Proposals with OneNote

Writing a grant proposal has several stages. There’s the research stage when you are learning about the funder’s interests, studying the proposal requirements, and collecting background information related to your topic; the outline stage, when you are deciding the proposal’s structure, developing the outline, and determining which content goes where; the writing phase, when you are drafting text; and finally, the submission phase, when you are editing the proposal, completing the final reviews, and collating all the required pieces. Managing each of these stages requires a system of some kind and one or more tools to save content and permit collaborative development of the proposal. While there are many tools to choose from, one readily accessible (and free!) tool that you can use to manage and write a grant proposal is Microsoft OneNote.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

How Difficult Is It to Get a Grant? It’s Debatable.

In our blog posts and other materials, we share our experiences related to researching potential funders, writing grant proposals, and managing the process. Based on feedback we’ve received on our blog posts and courses, we’ve found that some of the information we’ve shared has been viewed as discouraging or overly complicated. In this post, we’re going to cover three areas that seem to stir up the most debate.

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Does Revenue Diversification Actually Work for Nonprofits?

Nonprofits are always told to diversify their revenue streams. On its face, this advice makes sense. There’s no question that several sources of income provide better financial security than having a single source. But can all nonprofits successfully pursue diversification?

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Thinking of Becoming a Grant Writer? Read This First.

Based on our experiences 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 you decide to become a grant writer.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Creating a Content Library for Your Best Content

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.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Choosing a Grant Database Based on Your Needs and Budget

We recommend using at least one grant database on a regular basis if you are serious about finding grant opportunities. The key issues are: What kind of information do you want your database to contain, and what can you afford?

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