The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Contract Grantwriters

A small but not insignificant percentage of proposals are apt to be authored not by the applicant but by contract grantwriters. These are the pens-for-hire of the philanthropic world, who will for a fee write a proposal to describe the applicant's ideas. Program officers tend to harbor ambivalent feelings about contract grantwriters. On the one hand, grantmakers like them because they are pros; a proposal authored by a contract grantwriter is generally a pretty good one: clear, well written, and fluent in foundationese. Contract grantwriters can be particularly good at translating the good ideas of community-based organizations into good proposals. By preventing the good idea–bad proposal problem, they can make life much ...