The Impact Issue #117: In 3-5 years, will we still call it grant writing?

Happy July grant pros!

Last week, we dug into a major theme around the role of craft from Instrumentl’s roundtable conversation on AI and grant work, and why your expertise as a grantwriter matters more now, not less.

This week we're tackling another hot topic from the AI roundtable discussion: what might the role of the “grantwriter” look like in 2030? And are there concrete workflows that AI can unlock for grant pros that weren’t possible before?

Let’s dig into what eight leaders in the nonprofit sector shared when we got them together for an intimate dinner in the Bay Area.

The title hasn’t kept up with the job

Ask any grant professional what they actually do, and "writing" will be somewhere on the list, but rarely at the top of what makes them most valuable to an organization.

You know the programs, the funders, the budget, the compliance requirements, the community impact. You’re often the most organizationally knowledgeable person in the building, and the title doesn’t reflect the breadth of work that you actually do.

At the roundtable, that gap came up early and stayed on the table. Mallory Erickson, Founder and CEO of Practivated and Author and Host of What the Fundraising, reframed where “craft” is actually heading:

"I think craft is going to become a lot less about what we do and the actions and activities of our day-to-day life, and more about how we think. How we connect dots, how we proactively build things to collect data and sync it up."

Fielding Jezreel, Founder and CEO of Jezreel Consulting and Federal Grants Accelerator, refers to the role of the grant pro as more accurately an “organizational curator”:

"The grant proposal is just a product of the work that happens. We are grant writers, but we are so much more than that. I often refer to it as organizational curation. How do we pull particular pieces together to create a new program that would work for this federal funding opportunity? We're curators and we know everything about what is happening in that organization."

Organizational curation requires a deep, human understanding of what an organization actually does, what it needs, and what information belongs in front of whom, when, and why.

Michelle Maryns, Founder and CEO of We Sparkle Co. and President of the Minnesota Council on Foundations tied the role of the grant pro to making sense of organizational complexity:

"You're the sense maker. AI may be gathering lots of information, complex information that would be very difficult or time consuming for us to do, but humans still need to make sense of it, weave a story around it so that it's understandable and has an impact."

The role was always about knowing the organization deeply enough to connect the right dots - the title “grantwriter” doesn’t reflect that magnitude of the role. Organizational curator, sense makers, grant strategists…these descriptors land closer to home.

What AI makes possible now is acting on that knowledge faster.

Putting AI to work to unlock a more proactive grant practice

Right now, most grant professionals spend an inordinate amount of time on administrative work. You’re finding grants, qualifying funders, drafting proposals, keeping track of budget spenddown, scrambling for program updates before a report is due.

The relational and strategic work gets squeezed into whatever's left.

Fielding offered a familiar example:

"Often a funder will say, we need a quarterly report. And you run off as the grant writer to the program team. You're like, oh no, we forgot to meet this month. Can you give me the lowdown on this program? And you're sitting there scribbling notes and you're not really taking it in because you're doing the work. You're taking the notes, you're figuring out how you're going to position this with the funder."

Most grant professionals have lived that moment. The alternative Fielding proposed changes the workflow entirely: schedule a real quarterly conversation with your program team to invite them into a genuine discussion about what's happening in the work.

Use AI to capture the conversation. Then use that single conversation as the source material for proactive updates to every funder who should hear it, in the voice and framing each one responds to.

"You're giving them preemptive updates on what's going on before you actually owe them anything. Instead of having this workflow where you are triggered by the funder reaching out for information, you change the workflow entirely."

✅ How to implement this strategy

• Schedule one 45-minute conversation with a program lead this month (no scribbling, just listening).
• Use a transcription tool like Otter (40% off on Tech Soup!) or Granola ($14 per user, per month) to capture it.
• Then ask: which of my funders should hear something from this conversation?
• Draft one proactive update before the funder asks for anything.

The future of the grant professional role in 3-5 years

Angela Braren, Instrumentl co-founder, painted the picture of where this is heading:

"The future is going to look like integrated data systems. You'll be able to have your accounting system talk to your email, talk to your calendar, sit in your meetings, be on-site visits. All of that data is now integrated — freeing you up to be more strategic, which is, I think, the central role of the grant professional."

Susan Mernit, Director of Development and Technology at The Early Wealth Partnership and Nonprofit AI Consultant, put a name to what that strategic role looks like:

"A lot of this work is really around product vision. You're helping to conceptualize what's the organization's mission, who are you serving, what are the revenue needs, and what are the opportunities out there to have a funding strategy. That idea of a strategist and a funding catalyst is really what that job could look like in three years."

Read the complete roundtable recap on the Instrumentl blog, or watch the full conversation here: What AI Means for Grant Work

We want to hear from you

What do you think the role of the grant writer will look like in 3-5 years? We're running a short survey on the future of the profession.

🎁Two respondents drawn at random will receive a $50 Amazon gift card — or the option to donate to a nonprofit of their choice.

Take the 3-minute survey → https://beinstrumentl.typeform.com/to/PAeoLuxJ

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