Charity AI - Funding Bid Writing Best Practice

We think the use of AI in charity bid writing has the power to help level the playing field of grant making processes that often result in small charities being less able to secure funding.  However, we think that there is a significant risk of some grant makers either banning its use or giving a higher priority to non AI bid writing. We believe that this would make an already unequal process even more so.

Why Use of AI in Funding Bid Writing is Ethical

An Already Unequal Playing Field

Whether you should be awarded a grant depends on how great the unmet need is and how well you would meet that.  However, whether you get it often largely depends on how well you understand bid writing, how good you are at writing and, too often, how well you know the funder.  This makes the system often unfair for small and marginalised groups and reduces the charitable impact of grant making.

Becoming a More Unequal Playing Field

I don't think AI is yet well understood and I think that the lack of understanding of this still new technology and concerns about the inaccuracies and hallucinations it has, may result in it being banned or obviously AI drafted bids being given less credence by grant makers.

• Disadvantaging Small Charities. The small and marginalised groups, with often limited skills in fundraising, digital and written prose would not benefit from it.  Even for those able to use it well, AI struggles to understand context and moral reasoning, lacks the insight and flair of a human, and doesn't have the benefit of the relationship with grant managers that many fundraising professionals do. Our AI bid writing systems cannot outperform their human counterparts.
• Benefitting Agencies and Larger Charities.  However, agencies and big trust teams will be using it to create initial drafts, with experienced bid writers using their experience, insight and flair turn these into high quality bids to submit, making it quicker and easier for them to get bids out.  Bids finalised by a human professional will be very difficult, if not impossible to identify with any certainty.

Making the Playing Field More Equal

Our AI bid writer asks people a whole series of questions and then uses AI to turn that into a well written case for support that gives a grant maker all of the key information to inform their decision making.  It's available free to anyone and works for everyone, including those who know nothing about writing funding bids and those who can't write well - for whom English is a 2nd language, or who have learning difficulties or who aren't particularly good at writing prose.  Since launch in 2023 (to date 2025), we think it has supported charities in submitting more than 20,000 bids.  The biggest success we've heard about was securing a grant of £20,800 for a village hall.

Our bid writer has made applying for funding more accessible to often marginalised groups, saved them time in writing bids and made the process fairer in doing so.  Disagree?  Which parts of this guide do you think were AI generated? (See below)

Weaknesses in AI Generated Content

Submitting AI Funding Bids - Best Practice

If using AI to draft funding bids, these are always reviewed by a human.

• For tone, style and spelling.
• Any facts or references provided by AI have been checked and confirmed, and.
• To ensure.
  • The factual accuracy of all information.
  • All relevant information has been included and.
  • The bid complies with any funder instructions, particularly any relating to AI.

Find the Funding and Free Help Your Charity Needs

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• Funding Finder - with categories for Core Cost Funding and Small Charities & Community Groups.
• Help Finder – find anything for free, including companies that make financial donations and raffle prizes.
• Data Finder – for fundraising bids & research, impact reporting, planning and campaigning.

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This Article on the Use of AI Bid Writers Is Not Professional Advice

This article is for general interest only and does not constitute professional legal or financial advice.  I'm neither a lawyer, nor an accountant, so not able to provide this, and I cannot write guidance that covers every charity or eventuality.  I have included links to relevant regulatory guidance, which you must check to ensure that whatever you create reflects correctly your charity’s needs and your obligations.  In using this resource, you accept that I have no responsibility whatsoever from any harm, loss or other detriment that may arise from your use of my work.  If you need professional advice, you must seek this from someone else. To do so, register, then login and use the Help Finder directory to find pro bono support. Everything is free.

Ethics note: AI was partially used in researching this guide.  If you took me up on my challenge in finding which parts were AI generated, the answer the section on Weaknesses in AI Generated Content.  AI originally drafted 5 points, I removed one, added 2 and rewrote all of them.