Episode Details

The Freelance Grant Writer Academy is OPEN for the last time in 2026!

You’re ready to quit your toxic job, retire with meaningful, part-time work, or work from home so you can pick up the kids. But how do you replace your paycheck?

Our 12-month group coaching program helps aspiring and seasoned grant writers replace your full-time income, on flexible hours, writing grants from home. You will build grant writing, marketing, and sales skills to find clients and create recurring income on flexible hours. 
Get weekly coaching, unlimited grant and business reviews, business and grant training, hundreds of templates,Grant Writer & Consultant Certification, a community, and listed on our Grant Hire for Hire Directory.

Our students have earned over $12.6 million in freelance business revenue. You don’t have to figure this out alone.

Join the Academy for $3,500 or 8 monthly payments of $475. Doors close October 23rd at 11:59 PM Eastern.

If you are looking to increase your grant writing skills to the next level, you are going to love these tips!

First off, do you already know how to write grants? If not, that’s okay! You might also want to refer to our article on the steps on drafting an effective grant application. 

In this article and podcast, I am going to go over some sidebar tips on grant writing that will increase your competitiveness for getting grant funding.

I’ve used these tips throughout my 16+ years of grant writing.

Grant Writing Tip #1

Sure, sometimes it may not be worth going after certain grants if they do not have the funding to support your program.

However, more often then not, I see nonprofit leaders just looking at how much money is available and then trying to fit their program into the funding source’s scope. This is referred to as chasing the money or mission drifting.

Your eyes might light up when you see all those zeroes in a grant announcement. However, this does not mean that the funding source is just pouring money out to anyone and everyone.

You will have better luck to secure grants when you apply for grants where you can show that your project is a good fit in one sentence. If you have to create complicated Venn diagrams and write more than a couple of sentences on why your project is a good fit, it probably isn’t a good fit after all.

Grant Writing Tip #2

This may seem like a no-brainer, but I can’t tell you how many nonprofit organizations come up with ideas for projects, but they don’t realize that the exact programs may already be operating in the neighborhood.

Here’s the thing. Just because you don’t know if a project exists, does not mean that it doesn’t exist. Do your due diligence to check and see if other partner organizations are already running that specific project.

Are yo