Grant Writing with AI For Dummies (eBook)

Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
283 Seiten
For Dummies (Verlag)
9781394305872 (ISBN)

Infos

Supercharge your next grant proposal with the power of AI

A stand-out grant proposals can be the difference between your organization thriving, surviving, or folding. So don't miss the opportunity presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to take your grant proposals to the next level! In Grant Writing with AI For Dummies, business writer extraordinaire Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts delivers an exciting new guide to supercharging your next grant proposal with AI. She's helped countless organizations win millions of dollars in funding.

In the book:

• Boost your chances of being selected for funding.
• Craft inspiring stories that tug at reviewer's heartstrings and wallets.
• Learn to write spot-on executive summaries.
• Crack the keyword code so electronic scanners notice you.
• Find loads of examples of actual AI output in addition to AI websites.

With AI as your virtual assistant, you have a secret weapon to take your grant proposals to the next level. Grab a copy of Grant Writing with AI For Dummies today and see the difference a dash of AI can make!

Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts is a business writing guru who has helped secure millions of dollars in grant funding for clients in many industries. She has been featured and quoted in The New York Times and beyond. She is the author of Technical Writing For Dummies, Storytelling in Presentations For Dummies, and Business Writing with AI For Dummies.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Introducing the New Power Duo: Writer Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence

IN THIS CHAPTER

Using AI to help secure your grant

Becoming familiar with popular AI tools

Figuring out how WI and AI can work in tandem

Using WI and AI throughout your grant-writing process

Keeping the human touch alive

Realizing that counting solely on AI can be costly

Fearing not … because human grant writers are irreplaceable

In the world of writing grant proposals, the fusion of writer intelligence and artificial intelligence introduces an enticing frontier for crafting successful grant applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) brings a lightning-fast processing power that can analyze mountains of information more quickly than you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” It can sift through data, spot trends, and even generate content at a breakneck speed. Writer intelligence (WI) comes from the proposal writer, armed with empathy, personality, humor, and a knack for storytelling.

Infusing WI’s oh-so-human touch with AI’s findings is like adding a sprinkle of magic. You get something truly incredible. And it could be just the combination you need to land that coveted funding. Imagine the proposal writer, the imaginative artisan weaving words and adding heartfelt stories, paired with AI as the tech-savvy virtuoso, armed with algorithms and adept at crunching data. This merger forms a dynamic duo, akin to classic pairings like peanut butter and jelly, each contributing their unique strengths to the collaboration.

As you dive into this chapter, get ready to discover how AI can become your virtual assistant, doing the heavy lifting to prep various sections of your proposal. And notice how I put WI before AI. It’s a playful nod to the power of human smarts over artificial ones: They might help us out, but they’ll unlikely take our place!

Using AI as Your Virtual Sidekick

Simply put, AI is like a computer program that can think and learn (somewhat) like a human. AI has access to way more information than any human can have, which helps to process information or answer questions. (Learn more about the wonders of AI in Chapter 2.)

Why should you consider AI as your virtual sidekick in the quest for that coveted grant? Let me break it down for you with some compelling ways that AI can help:

• Identifying relevant funding opportunities by analyzing data to find and match potential funding sources with your needs. (Chapter 16 offers more insight on finding funding.)
• Evaluating the competitiveness of grant applications.
• Providing recommendations based on historical data and predictive analytics.
• Uploading the Request for Proposal (RFP) from which to pull requested information. (Learn more about RFPs in Chapter 11.)
• Analyzing the requirements and matching them with potential reviewers who have relevant expertise.
• Gathering and analyzing large amounts of data.
• Analyzing past grant applications and funding outcomes to identify patterns and trends.
• Leveraging AI algorithms (formulas) to analyze funding trends, donor preferences, and past successful proposals so organizations can gain a deeper understanding of what resonates with funders.
• Optimizing language to appeal to funders’ sensibilities and align with grant criteria. (In Chapter 3 you discover how to win hearts and minds of funders through sharing stories.)
• Creating accurate and comprehensive budgets for the projects by analyzing historical data and in some cases providing recommendations on budget allocation.
• Providing iterative learning from past funding outcomes.
• Generating drafts based on predefined templates and guidelines.
• Proofreading and editing.

CONSTANTLY CHANGING TECHNOLOGY

Even though AI is relatively new, innovations are constantly emerging. For instance, with Apple’s AI, the chatbot is integrated into the technology. This means that if you're writing an email and want to adjust the tone to be more conversational, you can access the AI feature directly within the email application rather than having to cut and paste your text into a separate chatbot. The integrated AI can help refine your message on the spot, making the process more efficient and user-friendly. And who knows, soon we might have AI that not only helps with our emails but also dings us when we’ll need a coffee break before we even realize it!

Getting to Know Some Popular AI Tools

Each of the AI tools (also known as chatbots) listed in this section simplifies the proposal-writing process. Although they all offer the same basic functionality, different chatbots can offer varied perspectives and insights based on how they were “trained.” By trying a few, you can get a broader range of answers and find the one that suits you.

• AmpliFund: https://www.amplifund.com
• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com
• Fluxx: https://www.fluxx.io
• Fundwriter.ai: https://www.fundwriter.ai
• Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com
• Grant.io: https://grant.io
• Grantable: https://www.grantable.co
• Grantboost: https://topai.tools/t/grantboost
• Optimy: https://www.optimy.com
• SmartyGrants: https://www.smartygrants.com
• Submittable: https://www.submittable.com
• WizeHive: https://www.wizehive.com

Understanding the Synergy Between WI and AI

AI tools can help you improve the quality and accuracy of your work by detecting and correcting errors, suggesting alternatives, or offering feedback. Furthermore, AI writing tools can help you expand their creativity and diversity by generating original text based on different inputs, data, or models. They can also introduce new words, phrases, or sources to diversify the writer’s vocabulary and references.

Pairing WI and AI from Outline to Finished Proposal

To show you just how powerful AI can be in grant writing, let’s look at a real-world example with a proposal writer named Luis. We’ll walk through a project of his where traditional expertise and AI teamed up to save a historic building from the 1700s. This case highlights how AI’s smart features, such as creating tailored proposals and analyzing data, made a big difference in landing the grant.

You can find out more about grant writing in general by reading Beverly A. Browning’s Grant Writing For Dummies, 7th Edition (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022).

Creating an outline

Luis was tasked with writing a proposal to preserve a historical home in Sudbury, Massachusetts, USA. He was working to a very tight deadline. Although Luis was a seasoned proposal writer, this type of proposal was something he’d never dealt with before. Most of the proposals he’d written involved medical research. So he turned to ChatGPT, and prompted it to create an outline for preserving this historical home. (Learn more about writing prompts in Chapter 5.) In Figures 1-1 and 1-2 you see the two-page outline AI generated.

Learning of funding opportunities

Luis then prompted ChatGPT to find several funding opportunities available for historic preservation in the Sudbury, Massachusetts, area. Here are some potential sources of funding AI discovered:

• Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund (CFF)
• Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) Preservation Grants
• Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds
• Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) grant

  © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  FIGURE 1-1: Page 1 of the outline generated by AI.

• Local historical societies and foundations (such as the Sudbury Historical Society and the Wayland Historical Society)
• Private foundations and donors (such as The Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, The Stanton Foundation, and The Sudbury Cultural Council)

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-2: Page 2 of the outline generated by AI.

Working towards the finish line

Now Luis was ready to write the proposal, but he still felt unsure of how to proceed. Once again he turned to ChatGPT. He prompted the chatbot (see Chapter 2) to write a proposal to preserve The Eric Marks house in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and he included lots of details. It was a place Washington and his troops had spent the night during the Revolutionary War, and the mission of the project is to turn this historical home into a museum.

In Figures 1-3 through 1-8 you see the completed grant proposal. AI created the draft and Luis added his much-needed WI in the following ways:

• Opening with a heartwarming story. (Check...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Wirtschaft
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• Schlagworte: chatgpt grant writing • grant applications with chatgpt • grant application writing • grant writing guide • grant writing skills • grant writing tips • grant writing with artificial intelligence • grant writing with bard • grant writing with chatgpt
• ISBN-13: 9781394305872 / 9781394305872