A practical guide to using AI for grant applications. From your first draft to a reusable system. Free, for charities, CICs and community organisations.
Why this exists
What is your organisation? Who do you support? What difference does your work make? Why now? These questions appear in almost every grant application. And most small charities, CICs and community organisations answer them again from memory each time, in slightly different ways, under time pressure.
AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can help. But they only produce strong, specific output when they have real knowledge to work from. Without it, the text is fluent but generic - and you end up editing heavily anyway.
This guide shows you how to build up from scratch: starting with a free tool that asks you the right questions, then moving to something you own and can reuse, and finally pointing to what a fully structured system looks like.
Level 1 - Try it now
The Charity Excellence Framework offers a free AI bid-writing tool - the AI Bunny - that works well as a first experiment. You register, answer a structured set of questions about your organisation and the project you need funding for, and it produces one proposal-style draft of up to 1,000 words.
The questions it asks are a useful prompt in themselves. Thinking through your answers carefully - even before touching AI - is already valuable work, and the output can give you a fast first version of the story.
When this is the right starting point: you want to try AI grant writing without any setup or cost, or you want a quick proposal-style draft to see how your project sounds before going further.
Its limitation: the AI Bunny is not a reusable grant-writing workspace. It does not hold your organisation's knowledge over time, answer individual funder questions one by one, or pause to ask targeted follow-up questions before drafting. Its input fields and word count are also limited, so you still need somewhere better to store the fuller evidence behind your bids.
Try it, see what it produces, then come back: Level 2 below shows you how to turn the same thinking into something you keep and reuse.
Level 2 - Make it reusable
Level 1 gives you a single generated proposal. Level 2 gives you a reusable drafting workflow. Instead of squeezing your organisation into a short form each time, you write down the core knowledge once, keep one maintained version, and draw on it for each new application.
Importantly, Level 2 builds on the same Charity Excellence question foundation used by the AI Bunny. The difference is not the basic questions themselves. The difference is what you can do with the answers once they are stored in an AI-ready format: reuse them, expand them, update them, and apply them to individual funder questions rather than generating one fixed proposal-style draft.
The practical gain is control. You can give the AI the full list of funder questions, ask it to plan the application as a whole, then work through each answer one at a time. When the knowledge document is not enough, the AI can ask targeted questions before drafting instead of filling the gap with plausible but generic text.
The most important thing is not the tool. It is having one maintained knowledge document and a repeatable way of using it. You can attach the latest version manually to each grant conversation if that works for you. A persistent workspace is recommended, called a Project in Claude and ChatGPT and a Notebook in Gemini, because it keeps the document in one place, reduces setup each time, and makes the routine easier to repeat.
For a single document like the one in Level 2, the free tiers of several major tools now work reasonably well.
Where free tiers hit a wall is not storage. All of these will hold a single knowledge document comfortably, and a free Gemini Notebook will hold up to 50 sources. What you run into first is usage: free plans cap how many messages you can send in a day, and drafting a full application is dozens of exchanges, so a long session can stop part-way through. That is the practical reason to consider a first paid tier, rather than running out of room for files. For now, any of the above will get you started.
Use AI with organisational information, not sensitive personal information. Before you upload anything, do these three things.
On consumer accounts, turn off any setting that allows your chats, files or activity to be used to improve or train models. In ChatGPT, this is "Improve the model for everyone" under Data Controls. In Claude, check the "Help improve Claude" or model-training preference. In Gemini, turn off "Keep Activity" for future chats.
For many small and medium-sized organisations, a first paid tier such as ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro or Google AI Plus is a realistic step up from a free account: better file handling, higher limits and clearer control over model-training settings. For ordinary organisational material - descriptions of your work, outcomes, policies, impact, governance and past grant wording - this is usually a proportionate starting point when those settings are turned off.
It is still not the same as a private in-house system. Even with training turned off, AI providers may retain, process or exceptionally review content for service operation, abuse prevention, safety, legal compliance, feedback handling or technical support.
Never enter:
Safe to enter:
Create one master knowledge document in plain text. You can upload it to a Project, a Notebook or a Gem, or attach the latest version manually when you start a grant conversation. The template uses the Charity Excellence question set as its starting framework, then turns it into an AI-ready knowledge document: answer-led, easy for the AI to read, and designed for repeated use beyond a single form submission.
Aim for at least 50 words per answer. Use plain paragraphs and avoid heavy formatting like bullet points. Write what is true and evidenced, not what sounds impressive.
A pre-formatted template is ready to download - all four sections already structured with every question, plus the prompts and final checks that help you use it safely and consistently with your AI tool.
Download the knowledge document templateThese four content areas are the sections of the knowledge document. Open each one to see what to include.
The funder probably knows nothing about you. Tell them about your charity, what you do and how. Avoid jargon or acronyms they may not understand.
You can reuse most of these answers across future bids - write them well once and adapt, not rewrite.
This is the core of any application. It is not about what you want - it is about what the funder wants and what your beneficiaries need.
For project-specific questions (dates, partners, particular outcomes), write a version for your current project. For the need and urgency, write something that can be reused and updated over time.
Funders want to know what they will be paying for and that your budget is reasonable. Be clear and proportionate.
Never enter bank details, account numbers or payment information in any AI tool. Budget totals and narrative descriptions are safe.
These are the details that move a competent application to a compelling one. Build this section up over time as you gather evidence and feedback.
For quotes, use role titles or "anonymous" - never include full names or any identifying details about the people you support.
The AI does not always automatically read your knowledge document when you open a new conversation, even inside a Project or Notebook. Follow these three steps in order at the start of every drafting session.
First - load your document into context
Replace [name of your file] with the filename you used. If you downloaded the template here, it will be: Grant Knowledge Document Template.txt
Once the AI confirms it has read the document, keep the knowledge document as it is. Do not paste the application questions into the file. The questions are provided separately in the next message.
Then - share all the application questions at once
Finally - set the rules for how it works through them
This produces a back-and-forth rather than a single dump of all answers. Each answer gets a targeted exchange - the AI surfaces what it needs, you supply it, and the draft is built on real information rather than plausible filler.
First drafts will still need work. The AI will identify gaps; you supply them; the draft improves. When you add new information to answer the AI's questions, add it back to your knowledge document too. Each application, your document gets richer. Each subsequent draft, less iteration is needed.
Level 2 is a meaningful improvement over Level 1 because it changes the shape of the work. You are no longer asking a tool to turn limited form answers into one long proposal. You have one maintained source of grant knowledge, a repeatable way to use it, and a process that lets the AI draft individual answers, ask for missing detail, and improve over time. For organisations with the confidence to maintain that routine, this is already a significant shift in how grant work feels.
If any of this feels like more of a lift than your team can manage right now, that is not a failure of the approach. It is a reasonable point at which to get some guidance. A short conversation can help you decide the right next step →
Level 3 - A complete system
The difference between Level 2 and Level 3 is not about which tool you use to store things. Whether that is a Project folder, a Gemini Notebook, Notion, or something else is a practical choice, not the point. Storage has stopped being the constraint: free tools will now hold dozens of files quite happily. The difference is the data model: the architecture of what you store, how it is structured, and what an orchestration layer can do with it.
Building a Funding Knowledge Base is a guided process that takes time, effort and expertise. It is not a solo afternoon task. The good news is that most of the raw material already exists inside your organisation: past applications, monitoring reports, evaluation data, impact case studies, funder correspondence. The build is not about creating content from scratch - it is about structuring what you already have into a form the AI can use precisely and repeatedly.
This is what Grant Resource Studio™ builds and maintains with organisations as a guided engagement. A Funding Knowledge Base is not a bigger document - it is a structured architecture of distinct, purpose-built modules, each with a specific job, maintained separately, and usable independently or in combination. Open any section below to go deeper.
These modules are held together by an orchestration layer - a set of rules that tells the AI which modules to load for which funder and application type, how to weight them, what the funder prioritises, and how to adapt your voice and evidence to their specific programme. It also gives the AI two operational modes: a fast first-draft mode for lower-stakes applications, and a deeper mode for strategic bids where it reviews modules carefully and asks clarifying questions before drafting.
Why the "ask me questions first" prompt becomes largely unnecessary at Level 3. In Level 2, that instruction is essential because gaps are common in a flat document. In Level 3, those gaps are filled by design. The orchestration layer already knows what a specific application needs and which modules provide it. When the AI does ask for more, it signals the knowledge base needs updating - not that you need to provide more context in the moment.
The Theory of Change and Case for Support are the two components that make the biggest difference to output quality, and the two that take real time, expertise and iteration to develop well. A flat document typically lacks both, or contains thin versions. Getting them right - with the right evidence, the right logic and the right voice - is most of the work of a guided build. Historical applications and funder intelligence then layer on top, turning the system from a strong knowledge base into one that learns and compounds with every application submitted.
The guided build draws on everything the organisation already has: past bids that worked, monitoring data sitting in spreadsheets, evaluations written for funders, strong passages from old applications. None of that is wasted. It gets structured, approved and made reusable rather than left scattered. That is what makes the process less painful than it might sound - and what distinguishes it from starting from scratch.
A guided Funding Knowledge Base build is a one-off, fixed-price engagement. There is no subscription and no day rate. The price is set to be accessible and realistic for small and medium-sized charities, CICs and community organisations: many fund it from unrestricted or core grant money, as a single piece of work rather than an ongoing cost. And the knowledge base it produces is yours to keep, works with any AI tool, and becomes more valuable with every application cycle.
There are two ways the build can happen. Most organisations commission it as a defined, one-off engagement. But if your organisation is bringing in broader fundraising support, the Funding Knowledge Base can be built as part of that work instead: same methodology, same result, delivered within an engagement shaped around your wider fundraising needs. Either way, what you end up with is the same: a structured system your organisation owns.
If you have been working at Level 2 and starting to feel its limits - the repetition that remains, the gaps the AI keeps surfacing, the sense that your knowledge is there but not quite organised enough - a complete Funding Knowledge Base is the natural next step. The raw material is already in your organisation, and nothing you have already written at Level 2 is wasted.
See the output difference concretely - the same funder question answered from memory, pieced together by hand, and from a structured Funding Knowledge Base:
See the difference for yourself →
In the 18 months after their Funding Knowledge Base went live, Early Years Cocoon - a CIC in Barking and Dagenham - secured 52% of their all-time grant income, with application preparation time down from 10 to 20 hours to 3 to 6:
If you would like to find out what a full Grant Readiness engagement involves - or just to talk through where your organisation is with its grant knowledge - book a free discovery call.
A free resource from Grant Resource Studio™ for UK charities, CICs and community organisations.