Free grant writing tools and guides
Everything you need to find funding, price your work and build a proposal, free. Use the calculators, take the checklist, and read the template guides.
- Four calculators for pricing, startup costs, and earnings
- Two step-by-step guides to starting and growing
- Ten template guides covering the paperwork
Free tools and guides
No sign-up needed. Use them as often as you like.
Grant Writer Rate Calculator
Work out what to charge for a proposal. It runs from the hours the work actually takes, including reading the announcement properly and the revision rounds nobody budgets for, so the figure holds up when a client asks how you arrived at it. Hourly, per project and retainer are all worked the same way.
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Grant Budget Calculator
Build a budget a reviewer will accept. Personnel, fringe, indirect costs and the match requirement, laid out so the arithmetic is visible and the categories line up with what funders expect to see. A budget that does not reconcile is one of the fastest ways to lose an otherwise strong application.
Open it nowGrant Writer Income Calculator
Model a year of proposals. Put in how many applications you can realistically write, what you charge, and the proportion that turn into repeat clients, and see what is left. Change one number at a time to find which matters most, which is usually retained clients rather than one-off proposals.
Open it nowHow to Become a Grant Writer
The full path, in order. Learning the funding landscape, reading an announcement the way a reviewer does, building the case, handling budgets and evaluation, and submitting. It is the long read here and the place to start if you have not written an application before.
Open it nowHow Much Do Grant Writers Make?
What the work actually pays, with the arithmetic shown. Employed roles, freelance per-proposal work and retainers broken out separately, because they pay in different shapes, and an honest account of what the first year usually looks like.
Open it nowTemplate library
What each document a grant writer produces needs to contain.
Grant Proposal Template
Almost every funder asks for the same handful of things in a slightly different order. Once you can see the underlying structure, a new application stops being a blank page and becomes a set of questions you already know how to answer. This is that structure, section by section, with what a reviewer is actually looking for in each one.
Read the guideLetter of Inquiry Template
Many private funders will not accept a full proposal until they have seen a letter of inquiry, which is a two-page argument for why a longer conversation is worth their time. It is a different document from a proposal, not a shortened one, and the difference is what most first attempts get wrong.
Read the guideGrant Budget Template
A budget is read as a test of whether the plan is real. Reviewers check it against the narrative before they judge either, because a project that promises four staff and funds two has told them something about the whole application. This is how the standard categories work and where the arithmetic usually goes wrong.
Read the guideLogic Model Template
A logic model is a one-page argument that your activities will produce the change you are claiming. Funders ask for it because it exposes whether a plan holds together, and the place it usually falls apart is the arrow between outputs and outcomes, where a proposal quietly assumes the hard part.
Read the guideStatement of Need Template
The most common weakness in a first proposal is a need statement about the organization rather than about the problem. A funder is looking for the condition their money would change, described so it would still be true if you did not exist. This is how that section is built, and how to tell whether yours is one.
Read the guideEvaluation Plan Template
An evaluation plan answers one question: how will anyone know whether this worked. Weak plans promise to measure everything and end up measuring nothing, because the person named to do it also has a full-time job delivering the project. This is what a plan has to specify to be credible.
Read the guideGrant Cover Letter Template
A cover letter is often the first page a program officer reads and the last page an applicant writes, which is why so many of them simply restate the summary. It has four jobs to do in one page, and none of them is summarizing the proposal that is attached to it.
Read the guideSustainability Plan Template
Funders ask what happens when the money runs out, and the standard answer, that you will apply for more grants, tells them nothing. A sustainability plan is a realistic account of which parts of the work continue, how they are paid for, and what genuinely ends. Saying that plainly is more persuasive than an optimistic plan nobody believes.
Read the guideGrant Tracker Template
Once you are running more than two applications, the thing that fails is not the writing but the calendar. A tracker exists so you always know what is due, what is pending and what has to be reported on, and so a decision made in March is still findable in November when the same funder opens again.
Read the guideGrant Report Template
Reporting is where the next grant is either earned or quietly lost. A report that arrives on time, answers the questions asked, and is honest about what did not work does more for a future application than most cover letters. This is what those reports contain.
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