Grant Writing Assistant
AI-powered grant proposal drafting, budget templates, compliance checklists
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Grant Writing Assistant
Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.
An AI-native, open-source platform for drafting compliant grant proposals, managing institutional knowledge, and discovering funding opportunities across federal, foundation, and EU programmes.
Grant Writing Assistant helps nonprofit development teams, academic research administrators, and principal investigators move from a funding opportunity announcement to a compliant, well-structured proposal draft. It combines RFP/FOA parsing, AI-assisted section scaffolding, budget templating, and institutional memory of prior submissions in a single open platform.
Why Grant Writing Assistant?
- Existing AI grant tools (Grantable, Grant Assistant, Granted AI, FundRobin, DeepRFP) are proprietary SaaS with custom pricing typically in the $3,000–$15,000/yr range for nonprofits, putting them out of reach for smaller organisations.
- Funder prospect databases such as GrantStation (~$699/yr), Instrumentl (from $179/mo), and Pivot-RP charge institutional licence fees but offer minimal AI drafting support.
- Tools tend to specialise — Grantable and FundRobin focus on nonprofits, Granted AI and DeepRFP on federal RFPs, ScienceDocs and Pivot-RP on academic researchers — leaving no integrated open alternative that spans NIH, NSF, SBIR, EU Horizon, and foundation grants.
- Proprietary platforms raise IP concerns when ingesting prior proposals and research data; zero-training-retention is only an emerging vendor standard, not a default.
- The grant management software market is estimated at USD 1.5–2.5 billion globally and growing 10–15% CAGR, with US federal grants alone exceeding USD 700 billion annually — a scale that justifies open infrastructure.
Key Features
RFP/FOA Parsing and Proposal Scaffolding
- Parse funding opportunity announcements to extract required sections, page limits, formatting rules, and evaluation criteria
- AI-assisted proposal outline and section scaffolding aligned with the parsed requirements
- Compliance checklist generation for NIH, NSF, and EU Horizon programmes
- Human-in-the-loop drafting model where AI generates approximately 80% and the user refines
Funder Discovery and Opportunity Monitoring
- Funder discovery and opportunity database
- Continuous monitoring of Grants.gov, NIH Guide, NSF, EU Horizon, and foundation databases
- Opportunity ranking by organisational fit and win probability
- Deadline and milestone tracking
Budget and Compliance
- Budget templates aligned with OMB Uniform Guidance (2 CFR Part 200)
- Institutional budget justification generator producing narrative explanations from structured line items
- Agency-specific compliance checks for federal and EU programmes
- PDF/Word export with formatting preservation
Institutional Memory
- Repository of prior funded and unfunded proposals, publications, and CVs
- Retrievable knowledge base that informs future drafting
- Reviewer feedback parsing with resubmission recommendations cross-referenced against original review criteria
- User and organisation management
AI-Native Advantage
The system uses AI for the work that incumbents handle inconsistently or not at all: parsing funding announcements into compliant outlines, generating budget narratives from line items, retrieving relevant passages from an organisation's prior proposals, and analysing reviewer critiques to recommend specific revisions for resubmission. Continuous opportunity matching across federal, EU, and foundation sources surfaces fits ranked by organisational profile and historical win rate.
Tech Stack & Deployment
The platform is intended to support standardised submission formats including the Grants.gov XML Schema, NIH Application Guide structure, NSF PAPPG conventions, SBIR/STTR phase requirements, and EU Horizon Europe templates. A GDPR-compliant zero-training-retention policy is targeted to protect proprietary research and organisational data. Integration with CRIS / research information systems is planned for the v1.1 milestone.
Market Context
The US federal government distributes over USD 700 billion in grants annually, with global philanthropy and foundation grants adding hundreds of billions more. The grant management software market is estimated at USD 1.5–2.5 billion and growing 10–15% CAGR. Primary buyers are nonprofit development officers, academic research administrators, principal investigators on NIH/NSF/EU Horizon proposals, SBIR/STTR coordinators, and government affairs teams.
Project Status
This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.
Contributing
We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.
Licence
Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.