How AI Can Help You Find — and Win — More Grants
Use the newest smart tools to discover new funders, write stronger proposals, and improve grant-seeking efficiency.
By M.J. Prest
Senior Editor, Solutions
February 17, 2026 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of most Americans’ online experience — and for skilled grant seekers, it’s turning into an essential ally. They’re using it to discover new funding leads, craft more compelling letters of interest, and improve the quality of their proposals.
“AI is such a powerful tool that it makes loads and loads of information and education and knowledge accessible in very approachable ways for a lot of people,” says Josie White, philanthropic officer at Shelter the Homeless, in Utah.
However, experts advise that using the technology for grant seeking carries both significant advantages and risks. You’ll want to select tools that are trustworthy and capable of accurately capturing what makes your nonprofit special. To protect sensitive data, the pros recommend using the paid version of AI platforms and reading their privacy policies before signing up.
White and two other AI-savvy nonprofit professionals spoke to the Chronicle about the ways they’re integrating smart tools into their grant seeking and how the technology helps them save time and increase revenue in a competitive funding field. Here are their top tips.
Consider AI your digital intern.
At this stage of its development, AI can write about as well as an entry-level employee so you can rely on it for the first draft of a letter of interest or grant proposal.
“You can think of it as an intern that does a good first pass at stuff,” says Tinsley Galyean, co-founder and CEO of Curious Learning, a global nonprofit that delivers literacy programs to children in some of the world’s poorest areas. “It saves you some time and some energy and effort.”
But like an intern, he says, you’ll always need to review the work — and correct mistakes to help improve future output. Especially when it comes to making a good first impression with funders, sloppy errors can be damaging to your reputation.
“It’s very easy to abdicate your sense of needing to check it. And that’s why I like the metaphor of the intern, because you wouldn’t hire an intern and expect them to get it right. You would check their work,” Galyean says. “Treat it the same way.”
Use AI for prospect research.
With the right prompts, AI makes a handy assistant for researching new grant opportunities. Subscription-based tools like Instrumentl and Candid Premium can be used to identify foundations that make grants to organizations like yours.
The advantage of using AI over a traditional search engine is that you can upload information about your mission to give it a deeper understanding of your programs. That step will generate a better list of prospects, pointing you toward institutional funders that are actively looking to fund your work.
The advantage of using AI over a traditional search engine is that you can upload information about your mission to give it a deeper understanding of your programs.
T.J. Kim, grant writer at Curious Learning, likes Instrumentl for its extensive database. “It pops up all the information you might need both for specific grant opportunities and then also just for foundations in general,” she says. “You can search for specific open calls, or you can also search just for foundations that are aligned with you.”
Train it on your organization’s data and voice.
Kim, who also uses Grammarly and Grantable in her work, says the newest generation of tools can learn to write in your voice: “Most of these AIs at this point, the ones that are specific for grant writing, will have a system now where you can upload all of your past applications or any other material you might have, like your branding or other writing content that you think would help inform the AI of what your style is like.”
Your mission statement, annual reports, fundraising appeals, and social-media posts also make good AI-training resources. Your writing samples are stored in a “bank” you can tap into when you’re drafting a new letter of interest or grant proposal. You can select which ones to use for each new application or other items you have it write, she says.
White likes ChatGPT for drafting grant applications, but she has found it sometimes draws data from outdated sources on the internet, leading to mistakes. She recommends telling it only to use internal program figures or financial documents — after getting approval from your nonprofit’s top decision makers.
“I provide the data I’ve already verified, researched, and know I want to use,” she says. “I run it by our programs person and the executive director, and then once I have that data in hand, I tell whatever AI tool I’m using just to use the data I’ve uploaded and approved.”
Weigh the cost savings against the drawbacks.
Curious Learning raises about $2 million each year, of which 75 percent comes from institutional funders. Galyean says AI has helped his team — which includes Kim and two contractors based in Pakistan and Lebanon — become far more efficient, doubling their number of grant submissions each year.
He estimates that nonprofits generally spend “between $5,000 and $10,000 per grant we write, in staff time and energy and effort.” But with AI at his staff’s disposal, “I would say that it’s roughly cut our cost of applying to a grant, maybe as much as in half,” he says.
While AI can be a labor-saving device, Galyean notes that widespread adoption of the technology would flood foundations with applications, unintentionally creating disadvantages on both sides.
I would say that it’s roughly cut our cost of applying to a grant, maybe as much as in half.
“If AI tools mean that nonprofits can apply to twice as many grants as they used to, now we’re burdening foundations with twice as many applications to review and inevitably they’re going to figure out ways to use AI to filter those out, right?” he says. “Now you’re making the problem worse.”
He would like to see funders develop an AI chatbot that invites grant seekers to ask questions about alignment as a prescreening process. In an ideal world, he says, these chatbots could give nonprofits feedback and guidance so that they don’t waste time applying for a grant they are unlikely to receive.
This practice would resolve a chief complaint among grant seekers, Galyean says: “There’s less connection and less transparency in the process, and … nonprofits as a whole are spending more money than they’re raising as an aggregate.”
Skip the AI occasionally.
Even the pros close the app sometimes. For White, her main concerns are ethical. She says living in Utah, which is currently experiencing a statewide drought, she often thinks about the energy demands of AI data centers.
“My main hesitation when using AI is its environmental impacts, especially its impact on the availability of clean drinking water,” she says, calling herself “surprisingly selective about when, where, and why I use it.”
Even if your organization doesn’t have an official policy to govern AI use, think carefully about what you hope to get from these tools, advises White: “It’s just about setting your own framework about when and why to use AI. Both to answer to your own code of ethics but also if a donor or a grant maker asks you when and why you’re using AI, you’re very clear on that answer and that justification.”
Kim says she will sometimes forgo AI not only to keep her skills sharp — “I like to know that I’m still capable of doing it and that I don’t necessarily need the AI boost to help me” — but also for writing that requires the depth of personal experience.
“Especially if it’s something that needs a really strong narrative or needs something that has a more human touch to it in terms of using emotions, then I’ll just go ahead and write that,” Kim says. “I don’t think any AI’s ever going to be able to really replicate it to a point where it feels genuine to me.”
