For many organizations, grants are the lifeblood that keeps them running. However, procuring these funds is often a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Writing a proposal can take hundreds of hours, require the services of a specialized grant writer, and cost thousands of dollars – narrowing the pool of potential applicants.
Sean Carroll’s Solution: Using AI to Help with Grant Proposals
Sean Carroll, the former chief of staff and COO of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is well acquainted with the challenges around grant writing. At USAID – the stateside government agency responsible for doling out civilian foreign aid and development assistance – Carroll oversaw billions of dollars in grants disbursed.
Carroll’s solution to these challenges? Using AI to help with grant proposals. Alongside Mustafa Hasnain (the founder of creative services agency Creative Frontiers), Syed Murtaza (an ex-corporate banker), and Gilberto Lopez (a Harvard academic), Carroll founded Grant Assistant, which offers a set of AI-powered tools designed to help grant writers think through their approach, target beneficiaries, and surface potentially useful information from relevant documents.
How Grant Assistant Works
Hasnain stressed that Grant Assistant isn’t meant to replace professional grant proposal writers. Rather, it’s meant to support them in their professional work. The platform works by having users fill out a questionnaire containing questions similar to what a project consultant might ask – which informs an AI-generated draft of a grant proposal.
A "suggestion engine" highlights content from documents that users upload to the platform to ‘enrich’ grant proposals with references. Hasnain wouldn’t say exactly which generative AI model is powering Grant Assistant’s grant writing, save that it’s a ‘fine-tuned’ model of some sort.
Model Fine-Tuning and Training
Image Credits:Grant Assistant
"Model fine-tuning has been done on USAID writing style guides and policy documents," Hasnain explained. "The platform is trained on a vast amount of data, including grant proposals, to ensure that the generated content is accurate and relevant."
Limitations and Future Developments
While Grant Assistant shows promise in streamlining the grant proposal process, there are still limitations to its current capabilities. For instance, the platform relies heavily on user input, which can be time-consuming and requires a significant amount of expertise.
In addition, the AI-powered suggestion engine may not always provide the most accurate or relevant information, especially if the uploaded documents are incomplete or outdated.
However, Hasnain is optimistic about the future developments of Grant Assistant. "We believe that our platform will dramatically reduce the time and cost spent on creating a proposal, letting mission-driven large organizations focus those saved resources on crucial program delivery while small organizations can better compete with their ideas," he said.
Conclusion
Grants are a vital source of funding for many organizations, but procuring them can be a daunting task. With the help of AI-powered tools like Grant Assistant, grant writers can now streamline their workflow and generate high-quality proposals in record time.
While there are still limitations to its current capabilities, Grant Assistant shows great promise in revolutionizing the way grants are written and submitted. As the platform continues to evolve and improve, it’s likely that we’ll see a significant reduction in the time and cost associated with grant writing – opening up new opportunities for organizations of all sizes.
Topics
- AI
- Enterprise
- Funding
- Generative AI
- Grant Assistant
- Grants
- Startups
