Grant writing can be creative and fun, but it can also be tedious if you are caught in repetitive tasks. Imagine what it would be like if you could outsource these mundane tasks to affordable, automated grant writing software!

In this article, we’ll identify the best grant writing software and discuss how to choose the right one for you in your role as a nonprofit representative or consultant (or both!). We will walk through how these tools can help streamline your workflow to free up your time. So let’s get started!

What is grant writing software? We define it as a computer program, or set of programs, that will directly empower the grant writing process. This could include fine-tuning grammar, assisting with managing the grant lifecycle, improving communications, building out project management, and more.

An important note is that this post looks at grant writing software and grant management software designed for prospective grantees writing applications. These are not the grant management software designed for grantors to administer grants, or “grantmaking” software.

How did we decide what makes each one of these grant writing software options the “best”? Criteria included price, integrations, features, scalability, and accessibility.

Price: We like the plans that give you a free option to experiment and explore.

Integrations: How the software can fit into the grant writing you are already doing.

Features: The capabilities that the software has to empower your grant writing work.

Scalability: What options there are to “upgrade” to higher tiers based on your needs.

Accessibility: How quickly you can start using the product, and how user-friendly it is.

Before you start exploring your options, make a list of your grant writing goals, and what portions of your grant processes could use the most support. Then review the resources below to determine which tools will be the best fit for your specific needs.

The first place to start off when it comes to grant writing software for beginners is with the software tools that are available to you for free trial periods (or are completely free!) for you to experiment with, software solutions that provide technical assistance and training, and software that streamlines your grants research process as you are creating your overall grants protocol.

Google Workspace/Google Cloud

A powerful word processing software is essential for the extensive writing that is the core of grant proposal creation.

Google Workspace is an incredibly versatile writing and communications tool that allows you to write, communicate with your team, coordinate projects, and manage data all in one place. Google Cloud also provides a place to host those projects and data. If you are looking for an affordable way to cover each of the aspects of the grant writing process for your team, this is an excellent choice.

Price: Google Workspace is 100% free for individuals with all of its suite features and is also free for Cloud storage up to 15 GB. Increased storage and features for businesses are covered in tiered pricing.

Integrations: Google Workspace is very integration friendly, both with communications between its own internal features and with outside apps.

Features:

• Gmail (email platform)
• Drive (cloud storage)
• Meet (video calls)
• Calendar (shared scheduling)
• Chat (direct messaging)
• Jamboard (brainstorming whiteboard)
• Docs (word processor)
• Sheets (spreadsheets)
• Slides (presentation tool)
• Keep (note-taking service)
• Sites (web-creation tool)
• Forms (surveying tool)

Scalability: Tiered pricing and features are available based on your storage needs, business needs, and any regulations you need to follow such as HIPAA compliance.

Accessibility: It’s very easy to start with Google Workspace, you just need to register for a Gmail account, a process that only takes a few minutes.
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Grammarly

Grammarly is a powerful tool that provides automatic suggestions for grammar, spelling, style, and tone. This is a great tool to make sure that your grant writing is clear, readable, and error-free.

‍Price: Free plan is available indefinitely for up to 2 users, with options to grow. ($25/month for each user if you pay monthly, and $15-$12.50/month if you pay annually based on the amount of licenses that you purchase for your team).

‍Integrations: Grammarly has a vast number of integrations that allow you to use it across your communications platforms (see the screenshot below).

‍Features: The free plan is great for providing simple, automatic grammar edits, and there is also tiered pricing for additional features.

‍Scalability: Tiered pricing allows you to access more detailed features as needed, such as a style guide to shape your brand “voice” while writing.

‍Accessibility: This option has a quick download and is an easy add-on to many of the online tools you use day-to-day, such as Google Chrome and other browsers.
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Grants Search Engines

A grant search engine is a software program that helps people research information about grants online using keywords and phrases. This article by Instrumentl does a deep dive into the most popular choices for grant search engines, weighing the pros and cons of each.

Prices: Most of these search engines offer a free version or free trial period as you get started, with the option to switch to a paid plan (the article explains the tiers in more depth).

‍Integrations: Integrations vary across platforms.

• Example: Instrumentl provides a platform that connects grants prospecting, tracking and management in one place.

‍Features: Each search engine has pros and cons depending on your organizational needs.

• Example: Grants.gov is always free to use, but is limited to showcasing only federal grants, not institutional giving.

‍Scalability: Tiered pricing and features are available based on the size of your organization, with room to grow at the higher price point subscriptions.

‍Accessibility: Of all of these options, Instrumentl is the most accessible one for beginners if you are looking for a comprehensive grants lifecycle tool. Instrumentl automatically matches you to funding opportunities and provides you with an individualized training session on how to utilize its features when you register for your two week trial.
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Grant consultants and consulting agencies have unique sets of needs when it comes to grant writing software, as they have a different set of day-to-day grant writing operations than the nonprofits they work with.

Slack

Slack organizes projects into organized spaces called channels, with a different one for each thing you’re working on. Your team’s messages and files related to a grant writing topic can be kept in one place, streamlining productivity and empowering communication.

Price: Starts off with a robust free plan your team can use indefinitely, with options to grow alongside your changing needs.

‍Integrations: Very customizable, and can integrate with popular platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce.

‍Features: Channels help you keep track of grant opportunities and their associated files. The workflow builder for automating routine activities can be a real time saver while you are managing multiple projects.

‍Scalability: Tiered pricing is available, including for regulatory security for things like HIPAA compliance.

‍Accessibility: Great for consultants that are helping agencies build from the ground up and those that are growing their teams.
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Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine that specifically focuses on scholarly literature. You can search across academic disciplines and resources to compile research for each of the grant writing projects you are working on.

Price: Always free to use, although the articles themselves can be behind a paywall.

Integrations: Integrations aren’t really necessary for this resource, as it's a stand-alone research tool.

‍Features: You can refine searches by time, date and relevance, and create libraries for yourself to collect the resources you need.

‍Scalability: This tool doesn’t really lend itself to scaling up, it’s a pretty straightforward search engine that allows you to navigate through academic sources.

‍Accessibility: Google Scholar connects automatically to your Google account, so you can use it right away. This is a great resource to take advantage of if you are using Google Workspace.
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Hemingway Editor/App

The Hemingway App is used to establish and finetune writing style, with a special focus on brevity to make your point quickly. This is great for grant consultants and teams who are writing grants frequently and daily, with many sets of proposal length guidelines to juggle.

Price: The online version of Hemingway Editor is free. The desktop version, Hemingway App, is available for a one-time payment of $19.99.

Integrations: It's a stand-alone online app or desktop program, so if you use the free version this would be something you copy and paste your text from into your preferred word processor. If you download the desktop version, you can export your work in a few different ways such as Medium or WordPress.

Features: The Hemingway App has two modes: writing and editing. In writing, you can type text without editing features. In editing mode, there are color-coded directions on how to streamline your writing style, thesaurus suggestions, notes on passive voice, and suggestions on how to shorten sentences to make them more powerful.

Scalability: You can use the free online tool, or the paid desktop app which allows you to edit offline and has download features.

‍Accessibility: The online version of the Hemingway App is especially easy to start using, as you can write and edit directly from the homepage without creating an account.

In your role as a development director or nonprofit leader of a medium-to-large nonprofit, grant writing software and grant management software will be tools that you use regularly in your organization’s grant writing process.

NonprofitPlus

NonprofitPlus is an accounting and project management suite designed for nonprofits. Great for tracking the fiscal aspects of grant project administration.

Price: Starts at $675.00/month.

Integrations: Currently limited to SalesForce and Zapier manual integrations.

Features: Specifically focuses on natively managing, tracking, processing, and reporting on grants (has a specific module tailored for grants). NonprofitPlus will help automate and streamline the financial aspect of your grant writing, such as describing sustainability plans.

Scalability: Really targeted to just the members of your team who are focused on the financial accounting and reporting areas of your nonprofit. A good tool to use for your Board of Directors development committee to keep track of grant reports.

‍Accessibility: More involved to register and onboard than some of the other software we have explored, but is a very targeted and powerful way to manage your grants.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-style project management solution with a lot of user-friendly, intuitive options. Smartsheet has a lot of potential to use across multiple departments to manage data, finances, and grants information.

Price: Offers a range of free templates and a free trial period, and a tiered pricing model to access additional features. Tiered pricing is available at $7 per user/month and $25 per user/month.

Integrations: Works well with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Apple ID.

‍Features: One of the great features is free grant proposal templates to get you started in structuring your grant proposals.

‍Scalability: Higher tiered pricing allows for access to additional features like automatic proofreading and branding capabilities.

‍Accessibility: Easy registration through Google and Microsoft 365, as long as you use a work email address.

To finish our comprehensive list of grant writing software, we will explore the best overall software solutions for small-to-enterprise nonprofits. These are the best options for automating and empowering your grants work to free yourself up for the work that really needs you.

Instrumentl

Instrumentl is specifically designed as a nonprofit grant research, grant management, tracking, and grant writing hub. The software uses a matching algorithm to match your projects with tailored grant opportunities, provides regular training opportunities, and has excellent overall grant lifecycle features.

Price: Instrumentl has a 14-day free trial, and then nonprofit pricing starts at a couple hundred dollars a month. You can learn more here.

‍Integrations: Instrumentl does not currently have native integrations to other platforms like Salesforce at this time, but you are able to export PDFs and CSVs of views from your Tracker and import those accordingly to other platforms.

‍Features: Instrumentl connects grants prospecting, tracking, and management into one easy to use platform. It allows you to create beautiful reports and export data easily. Instrumentl also provides regular updates as new grant opportunities become available, making it a sustainable long term solution.

‍Scalability: The monthly plans allow you seats for three members, with enterprise solutions available for larger nonprofits.

‍Accessibility: An easy registration process with an individual training session included in the 14-day free trial.
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EveryAction

EveryAction is a grants management system that is specifically designed for nonprofits. The software links together a nonprofit CRM, donor management, and fundraising software. This might be a tool that you select to complement a grants-focused tool like Instrumentl to follow up on prospecting with long-term reporting.

Price: A free demonstration, and $109.00/month.

Integrations: A great solution to track individual and institutional giving in one place. Integrations include: WealthEngine, Google Analytics, Drupal, Google Tag Manager, Mobilize, Zoom, Apple Pay, Stripe, Paragon, PayPal Payments Pro, CallFire, Twilio, Pantheon, Google Drive, Salesforce, ROI Solutions, Facebook Ads, Twitter, Target Smart, Catalist.

‍Features: Includes access to customer service and training opportunities. Compared to competing CRMs, EveryAction dedicates a portion of its features to the grant writing and grants management process.

‍Scalability: Good for a team in a state of growth that is looking for long-term solutions to its overall nonprofit CRM/database needs.

‍Accessibility: EveryAction has an impressive array of features to make it a “one stop shop”, but can be challenging to onboard because of the complexity of offered services. If you choose this software, plan for a few months to be spent training your team on how to use it.
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Canva

Canva is a popular graphic design tool that has gained fame with nonprofits because it provides access to professional resources on the platform for free. This is an excellent tool for creating deliverables for your grant writing and storing them in organized folders right on the platform.

Price: Canva has a free option available for individuals, and the professional version is free for nonprofits, after completing a simple application.

‍Integrations: You can link your social media accounts to Canva and post directly from the integrated calendar. There is also an ability to share directly to other platforms and to invite collaborators to work on designs in real time.

‍Features: Canva has become an industry standard for digital media design for nonprofits. It has thousands of graphics, clip art, and editing features to use with their many tailored templates. It allows you to upload all of your brand guidelines for easy, coordinated campaigns.

‍Scalability: You can have up to 10 people on your team for your free nonprofit Pro account.

‍Accessibility: Very quick registration to sign up for a free account, and then another quick application process to get a free nonprofit Pro account.
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Grant writing software can be braided into your grant writing process in a number of ways depending on your needs and the needs of the organization(s) you are working with.

This article listed a few of our favorite softwares that we think would work well for you, so now all that is left is to decide on your favorites and get started!

Join us to see Instrumentl and other grant writing software in practice on our events page, updated regularly with webinars and workshops to learn more about what new and exciting technology is available to empower your grant writing.