Bang for Your Buck: What To Do When Professional Grant Writing Isn’t in the Budget

Professional grant writing can be costly, and while valuable, sometimes organizations simply don’t have enough money in the current budget to support the cost of professional consultants writing and submitting the full grant application. If you find your organization in that position but still feel strongly that you could use and benefit from some professional support, consider grant editing services. While not offered by all consultants, many do offer this or something similar, and Insight certainly offers and often advocates for clients to utilize our editing services!

Insight’s editing service requires applicants to write and submit all parts of the application themselves but also provides clear feedback on any documents the applicant wishes to send for review. While we certainly will do some basic proofreading along the way, this is NOT a proofreading service. Insight editing is aimed at helping the applicant identify exactly where and how the narrative (and other required documents if submitted at the same time) needs to be strengthened in order to stand the best chance of scoring highly and being strongly competitive. We provide specific notes both right in the document and as a summary in the accompanying email that detail what’s missing; what information should be moved or changed; where more detail is needed; and where the need justification, program design, management plan, and/or evaluation design feel weak. Clients can choose to receive a single round of editing or multiple rounds based on the amount of support they feel they need.

We’ve had terrific success with our editing clients, with the vast majority winning their grants, and our editing services come at a bargain rate. Typically, grant editing costs just 10-20% of what the cost would be for us to write the full grant application!

We LOVE writing grants, and we feel our work is super valuable and extremely competitive, but if your organization needs a more budget-friendly option or you have individuals in your organization who already have some grant experience or folks who want to learn to write grants and have the time, editing is a fabulous option for you to consider. If you’re interested in grant editing services, contact us.