Want to Win More Grants? Know the Place for AI, and It's Not What You Think

It's tough out there and we're all doing more with less. And AI sure offers a sweet way to cut down on workloads.

And for some tasks it's perfect.

It's the bionic assistant that can do everything amazingly well except fetch coffee. (I bought a Nespresso machine to make that job easier.)

But please, please, don't use it to write your grant proposal.

It's no surprise institutions are starting to lean on this new technology for the heavy lifting of grant writing—researching foundations, drafting narratives, polishing reports. More and more organizations are experimenting with letting AI take a first pass at project narratives. And maybe a second pass. And a third. And with all that terrific, flawless writing, the odds of a grant getting funded in this hyper-competitive climate go up, right?

Wrong. Leaning on AI this way actually undermines the very things that make a project worthy of funding—its integrity, its effectiveness, and most of all its originality. The biggest problem is AI pulls its "knowledge" from what's already out there. And it has no "life experience," so it's very poor at telling quality insight from dreck.

This is the problem with AI use, period, and not just in the world of grant writing. The more this technology gets used, the more the information it has is recycled and mushed together into Frankenstein fragments. The perfect analogy is inbreeding. Fewer genetic options, a smaller and smaller pool. The chance of harmful mistakes increases. Diversity disappears.

And that's a problem that's only going to get bigger. As Katelyn Roellchen recently pointed out in her article on the increasing use of AI in grant writing, strong, persuasive writing—the kind that reflects a project's own voice and ideas—is going to separate funded proposals from the rest, especially as grants get more competitive and applicant pools keep growing.

In short, in a world of AI-influenced clones, you gotta be you.

Let your vision shine. Let your voice be heard. Pitch as only you can, because that's why they hired you and not ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. And if they did...They'll be back.

Use AI for fact-searching. It's Google on steroids. Use it to spell and grammar check. It's a dictionary, thesaurus and your 11th-grade English teacher all rolled into one. But don't expect it to give your work the human touch. It resembles a human the way a mannequin in a department store window resembles a runway fashion model. Don't expect it to have a voice, or at least a compelling one. You do that. It's where you shine.