The Impact Issue #116: Your Expertise In Grant Work Is Your Biggest AI Advantage

Hi everyone!

We’re taking a break from our typical Impact format to bring you insights from a roundtable dinner we hosted last month.

If you've been thinking about what AI means for your career in grants, this is the conversation you’ll want to lean in for.

On May 16, Instrumentl gathered eight nonprofit leaders for an intimate dinner in the Bay Area: founders, consultants, frontline development staff, a philanthropy leader, and a fundraising coach. Different roles, different org sizes, different relationships with AI.

We asked one question and let the conversation wind for the next two hours: what does AI actually mean for grant work and for the future?

A lot of ground got covered. But one thread kept coming back: what AI actually means for the craft of grant work and for the people who've built a career around it.

We’re excited to share three big takeaways from that conversation.

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Don’t Miss Out!

Uniform Guidance is getting its biggest overhaul in years. Join live on July 8th to learn what you need to know.

The 2 CFR Part 200 updates represent sweeping changes to how federal awards are managed, and for nonprofits navigating grants compliance, the details matter.

On Wednesday, July 8th at 1pm ET, federal grant experts Rachel Werner (My Fed Trainer) and Fielding Jezreel (Jezreel Consulting) are joining us to break down exactly what's changing and how to prepare.

You'll walk away knowing:

• The top themes behind the regulatory updates and how each one affects your day-to-day work
• How pre-award and post-award processes will be impacted across the full grants lifecycle
• What to watch for when reviewing a notice of funding opportunity or a notice of grant award

There will also be time for live Q&A, and attendees receive a resource guide covering all changes by Uniform Guidance section.

👉 Save your spot now - it's free!

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3 Takeaways From Our AI & Grants Work Roundtable

📈 Takeaway #1: AI raises the bar for high-quality grant craftsmanship.

Most grant pros relationship with AI is an efficiency play: do more faster, with less. If we can use AI to help us draft applications faster, we’ll submit more grants.

And when we can double grant output, everything that cannot be automated becomes more valuable - your judgment, your relationships internally and externally, your authenticity.

Angela Braren, Instrumentl co-founder, drew a parallel that stuck with the table. When manufacturing made clothing affordable and abundant, handmade goods didn't lose value…they gained value. People could tell when clothes were made by machines - and handmade clothes created a new signal for quality. She mused that grant writing may be heading somewhere similar.

Funders are already feeling the shift. As application volume increases, reviewers are looking past the writing itself.

They're looking for the signals that can't be generated: a warm relationship, a track record, a proposal that reflects genuine organizational knowledge rather than a well-prompted template.

💭 Think about it: When was the last time you articulated, out loud or on paper, what "great" looks like in your proposals?

🥇Takeaway #2: Grant practitioners winning with AI have a high standard of excellence first.

The practitioners using AI most effectively aren't the ones who've found the best prompts. They're the ones with the strongest opinions about what great looks like, and who use AI to execute on a standard they've already set.

Danette Fettig Halloran, Corporate and Foundation Relations Manager at The Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery and Founder of The Empowered Person, said it directly:

"AI puts a magnifying glass on anything. How do we put AI tools in the hands of someone who knows what a high-quality product looks like? Because AI reveals who the great thinkers are."

You can't delegate taste. AI amplifies what grant professionals bring to the work, which makes knowing your craft deeply more important now, not less.

Mallory Erickson, Founder and CEO of Practivated and Host of What the Fundraising, framed what this means for the profession:

"In the future, we'll need better grant teachers. People who teach how to write well, how to communicate the impact of your work thoughtfully, how to build a program that's solid. The craft becomes the expertise and the knowledge. There are so many tools to do it well now, and we used to spend a lot of time working on the tools. But really, can you make good, clear, logical arguments? Can you find the heart of the mission? Those become the key questions. It's like the calculator. Mathematicians don't have to do so much computation anymore. The question is whether we're teaching the skill set that matters now."

💭 Think about it: Are you the person who writes about your organization's work, or the person who understands it most deeply?

That understanding, of your programs, your funders, your data, is exactly what AI can't replicate. But it can amplify it, if you know how to use it.

🥇Takeaway #3: Practically using AI and amplifying your craft and impact.

Knowing your standard of excellence is the starting point. The next step is putting it to work.

Fielding Jezreel, Founder and CEO of Jezreel Consulting and Federal Grants Accelerator, shared how she does exactly that:

"Some of the best grant writers are incredibly formulaic in their approach. And what is AI actually good at? Formula, patterns, and recognition. It’s using the same ideas and maybe changing out the details.”

Fielding gave a concrete example of what this looks like in practice when it comes to reviewing grant applications and providing feedback for clients:

"I can talk to a client and I can ask them three questions only and can tell where the problem is in their proposal. So if I can give the answer to those three questions to a bot, having already trained it on how to write like me, trained it on what the application looks like, well now I've spent the time thinking. And I can spend the time coaching my clients and I'm not actually spending time creating individual sentences."

Fielding , what's left is the work that was always most valuable: the client relationships, the strategic coaching, the organizational knowledge no prompt can replicate.

Teaching AI your formula isn't a shortcut. It's how you reclaim the time and attention the craft actually deserves. Do you have questions you ask every client or program lead before you start a proposal?

That's the start of your formula. Now think about how you can engage with AI as a thought partner , and what you'd do with the time you got back.

📖 Want the full picture from the evening? Watch or read the complete roundtable recap on the Instrumentl blog.

💭 Think about it: is there a manual, repeatable part of your work that you've never thought to document, because you've always just done it?

That expertise you’ve built over years that lives in your instincts rather than a process doc is exactly where AI can take something off your plate.

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Want the full conversation?

This conversation went further than craft. The group got into what funders should actually be looking for instead of polished proposals, whether collective impact is worth revisiting in the age of AI, and what the grant professional's job title looks like in 2029.

Read the complete roundtable recap on the Instrumentl blog, or watch the full 1+ hour long roundtable here!

💬 What AI Means for Grant Work!

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Looking for New Funders to Support Your Mission?

If you’re ready to make  smarter, more strategic funding decisions, we’d love to get you a free trial on Instrumentl. You’ll get access to real-time funding opportunities, expert insights, and the tools you need to build a more sustainable grant strategy. 

‼️Try Instrumentl for free!

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