When to Hire a Grant Writer (and When Not To)

Every executive director knows the scene. It is 9 PM on a Sunday, and somewhere between the board packet and the dishes, the $180,000 federal application comes due. Again. Written badly. While exhausted.

We call that saving money. But you know what it actually is: the most expensive unbilled invoice in the nonprofit world.

So when should you hand grant writing to someone who does it all day? Here is the honest test I use with teams.

The ninety-second test

Open your last application and read only the first paragraph. Could a tired reviewer see your program in it? A room, real people, a specific number, a place. If yes, keep writing. If what they see is a mission statement wrapped in adjectives, the writing needs a hundred more drafts or a different set of hands.

Hire it out when three things are true

One: you have a live deadline and no writing capacity, and everyone's "next week" has been eleven weeks. Two: your program is real and documentable. Three: the cost of your staff hours genuinely exceeds the cost of the help.

Don't hire it out when

Your organization isn't ready yet (fix readiness first, a grant can't fix a foundation). You want to learn the craft and have the time (that's a wonderful goal, and tools like Greenlight Grantmaker make it faster). Or the budget genuinely can't stretch, in which case good $27 systems will carry you until it can.

P.S. If you just read the "three things are true" list and felt a pang of recognition: The Grant Hotline is my done-for-you service, 48-hour turnaround, and the details are at nmgrantwriters.com/the-grant-hotline/.