FAQ

Most grants consultants like Interwoven Threads Consulting will offer a grants readiness checklist to determine whether you are grants ready. 

For some organizations, such as those starting out or with limited staff on a small budget, that may mean focusing instead on building your donor base. It's important to understand that grants are not easy money; they come with serious time investments for your staff not just for the application but for the entire grant lifecycle. If you are just starting out, grants are not the way to go. 

For others, such as established nonprofits but with a very small staff, that may mean they have their documents in order but lack the capacity to devote time for properly writing a grant. It could also mean they need support in getting their documents or database organized. In these cases, it is worth your investment to hire a grants consultant like ours to help you develop your grants strategy.  

While there is no definitive answer, estimates range from 10 hours for a foundation grant to more than 150 hours for complex grants like federal applications. It's important to recognize that these hours vary depending on many factors, including the writer's experience with grant writing, the application complexity, familiarity with the funder, and communication between departments or partners. 

 Many factors go into these estimates, including the complexity of the application, familiarity with the funder (regardless of writing the application internally or outsourcing), and communication between departments/partners. This is why many nonprofits prefer to outsource their grants to consultants, as most nonprofit workers are wearing numerous hats already, and a consultant can ease some of that burden, with the added benefit of a significant return on investment.

While AI tools are becoming more prevalent across all sectors, training for proper use is scarce. Without properly understanding AI tools they can be a significant detriment to your grants and fundraising goals. AI could actually set you backwards without know how to use it. Additionally, AI tools cannot help your organization develop long-term relationships with your community or potential funders, meaning investment in building your development team and outsourcing to consultants are still the standard.

Nathaniel Ansari has sat on grants review panels and has often seen how easy it is to pinpoint when a grant application has been written using AI tools like Chat-GPT or Claude. Often, it's because the applicant never edited the application after generating the material. While an applicant may ask an AI tool to answer grants questions, it doesn't mean the resulting narrative or budget reflects the need, purpose, or even the intent of the organization or program it is supposed to reflect. Additionally, it is likely that some funders are or will adopt AI-detection software to minimize the work they have to do in the review process, meaning your application is more at risk if you are overusing AI models. While not sector-wide yet, expect this to become more prevalent in the future. 

In short, it is possible to use AI for developing your grants application but it must never to the place of human writing and editing. If done properly, AI tools can be just that, a tool to add as part of a larger toolset alongside Google Docs and Microsoft Suite. Do not rely on it, especially if you do not have training to properly use AI models.

Having an internal process that all your staff can refer to keeps your messaging consistent and your information up to date for both donors and grants deadlines. For donors, it's helpful to have systems to understand their touch points with you over any given time, whether that be a newsletter or program interactions. Knowing how donors and potential donors interact with your organization gives you a better understanding of what services speak most to your community. Additionally, it's important to track donations across any given year, both for tax purposes and for building a long-term understand of giving trends for your organization. 

Grants are complex, with numerous deadlines and requirements that make it very easy to lose track of without a proper monitoring system and procedure. Grant compliance is crucial for both building trust with funders and your community, so tracking what a grant was awarded to fund, its reporting requirements, and monitoring your budget is crucial. And, like your donors, it's important to track touch points with funders so that, as your organization builds relationships over years, you have a record of each interaction.  

Investing in one of the numerous tracking systems (many with discounts for nonprofits) not only helps organize your donor base and grants, they can help you create realistic grants and fundraising goals. If purchasing a CRM is currently out of reach, you can use tools your organization already uses, such as Google Suite. Even with a CRM, organizations may not have the capacity to proper organize their system. In both cases, optimizing your database can help your organization focus more on the mission and less on the administration. 

In either case, we can help you build or optimize your tracking system. Contact us to see how we can help you meet your needs.

Building relationships with funders is a crucial part of the fundraising process, similar to building relationships with small and large individual donors. While submitting a grant application "cold" (no previous interaction between you and the funder) is acceptable, there are some pitfalls if you only take this approach. One, a grant application will not convey the passion and excitement of your work better than you can, and funders will remember you more when they are reviewing your application then if they never knew you at all. Remember, review panels go through huge amounts of applications each cycle, so taking the extra effort to meet a funder's representative can tip the balance in your favor. Even if your application is not initially accepted, having that touch point can help build long-term engagement with your organization. Two, meeting a funder is essentially a two-way interview; you are gaining a better understanding of if the funder is aligned with your mission and values and they are getting a better idea of whether your organization and programs meet their priority areas. This will help you determine whether or not putting capacity into an application is wasted effort. Finally, while funders offer one-time or annual applications, many are looking to build long-term relationships with organizations, so consider a funder meeting as an opportunity to see if they could be a viable long-term partner.

In almost every instance - whether a private, community, or corporate foundation -  investing the time to build relations with funders will give your organization a leg up in securing funding, whether in the short-term or the long-term. 

No. This is considered unethical compensation according to Grant Professionals Association's Code of Ethics. Please see our Services page for further details. 

At this time, we cannot offer pro bono work. This is solely due to our current capacity. At some point we would like to offer pro bono work, but for now we cannot. 

Interwoven Threads Consulting primarily utilizes a flat fee structure, with some individual services provided on a project-based fee. This gives your organization a known monthly expense without an hidden fees such as hitting hourly limits, while also giving us deeper working knowledge of your organization's needs. We offer free consultations, with a quote provided within 48 hours after our meeting. For more information on services, see our Services page.

We does not have a one size fits all approach, rather, we remain flexible to the needs of our clients. Generally speaking, after a contract is signed we would meet to discuss the details of the Scope of Work agreed upon, usually within a 6 to 12 month contract timeline. This ranges from discussing known deliverables such as grant applications, funder research, procedure docs, etc., as well as discussing staff engagement for program grants or building a list fo required documents the client needs to provide for grant applications. 

With that, we build utilize program management tools to create deadlines, writing/editing periods, estimated times to meet program or other relevant staff, among other pieces. For transparency purposes, these documents are shared with clients so they can also engage in the timeline, coordinating with us to adjust things as needed. We also engage clients in weekly or bi-weekly meetings depending on need, usually in the late morning or afternoon, which helps make sure the work continues at pace and new information can be shared between both us and clients. 

As a virtual-first consulting firm, we encourage utilizing asynchronous communications so that neither party feels they have to wait until a specific meeting time to communicate updates or needs. We also respect that not everyone works best at the same times, and party should feel obligated to reply to a communication during their off hours.

In addition to previous fundraising and program roles, Nathaniel Ansari has been actively consulting and writing grants since late 2022 as a side project and taking it full-time in 2024 as both a consultant and in-house grant writer. In a short period of time he has helped clients acquire more than $1 million in general operating and program grants while also building internal grants procedures and optimizing donor acknowledge systems. He has also conducted trainings for non-development staff to better understand how fundraising impacts their work, as well as taking leadership roles in statewide and national grants-related committees, including currently serving as the President of the Grant Professionals Association's Wisconsin Chapter.