(Weekly updates here, if you're not new: Weekly Updates)

Greetings, I'm Kelly!

I'm building a tool for fundraising people to build grant proposals faster.

Which is a little funny, because I'm not a grant writer, nor do I even work for a non-profit. I'm actually a web designer (here, if you care). But before that I was an operations director at a small youth development org in New York City, and a program director of an opera company before that, and, as such, have written a fair number of grants.

So it kinda makes sense. I also just really like building stuff and putting off client work (shhhh).

This is my face.

This is my face.

<aside> 📌 I'm doing this as part of a #100DaysOfNoCode challenge thing. You can follow along with my progress here: Weekly Updates or on Twitter

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The Problem I'm Solving

When you write a grant proposal, it typically looks like this:

  1. Funder has a bunch of money, which you need for a thing your organization is doing. Producing a play, tutoring kids, advocating for non-idiotic gun laws. That sort of thing.
  2. That funder puts out a grant RFP with a bunch of questions about your org & initiative you're raising money for. Your job is to write super concise, non-fluffy answers to those questions in the form of a proposal. Usually 4-6 pages long, sometimes way longer.
  3. You decide to apply because what they want to fund fits what you're doing, and again, you need the cash.
  4. You dig through similar grants that you (or your boss, or your predecessor) have written in the past, to "pull" language from. This way, you don't have to start from scratch. (The questions on most RFPs are pretty similar to other RFPs. Just different enough to be annoying.)
  5. You copy/paste chunks of that old language into one huge, nasty Google doc.
  6. You rework that language you pulled to fit the constraints of this new RFP (word counts, page limits, slightly different angles to questions you've answered a million times).
  7. Someone on your team reviews your language, you make revisions.
  8. You submit the grant and wait to find out if you got it or not.
  9. If you got it, you might have to write a couple of reports telling the funder how you used their money.

It's a lot of work, and a lot of it is repetitive, but not quite repetitive enough for it to be automated or to hand off to an intern. (This kind of work is definitely done by smart people.)