The AI Problem No One in Grant Writing Wants to Talk About

Recently, I came across a grant application that felt… off. On the surface, it sounded polished, but the more I read, the more it all started to blur together. The same phrasing, the same structure, the same repetitive language that didn’t quite line up with the actual work, and then it clicked.

It wasn’t written by a person thinking through a strategy. It was copied and pasted from AI with barely any edits. The worst part was that this wasn’t a beginner's mistake. The application was written by someone with years of experience who should have known better, which is exactly why this matters.

Right now, the conversation is stuck on whether AI can replace grant writers, and honestly, that’s missing the point. What actually matters is how your grant writer is using it.

Frankly, whether we like it or not, AI is not going anywhere, and when it’s used well, it can make us grant writers even better. It can help us move faster, clean up language, and spend more time where it actually matters, which is strategy. However, there is a huge difference between using AI to support your work and using it to do your work.

That difference becomes even more obvious when you think about who is actually reviewing these applications. Grant reviewers read hundreds of submissions, depending on the RFP. They know what strong, thoughtful writing looks like, and they can spot patterns quickly. So, if I can read an application and recognize AI-generated language almost immediately, don’t you think they can, too? And when they do, it raises questions about how well you actually understand your own work, and that can hurt your credibility fast.

And once your credibility is in question, everything else starts to fall apart. That’s the risk.

So if you are hiring a grant writer right now, you need to be paying attention to how they are using AI. Not just if they use it, because honestly, most of us are. If someone tells you they are not using AI at all, I would question that, and more than that, I would question why. Used well, AI can make us faster, more efficient, and give us more time to focus on what actually matters. However, that’s not where the conversation should stop.

You need to ask how they are using it. Ask them to walk you through their process. How do they take what AI gives them and turn it into something that actually reflects your organization? How do they make sure it aligns with your data, capacity, and reality?

There is a huge difference between using AI as a tool and using it as a shortcut. A strong grant writer is not handing your organization over to a prompt and hoping for the best. We are using AI to support our thinking, not replace it. That means we are still leading the strategy and actively making sure every piece of that application actually reflects your work in a way that makes sense.

In short, AI might help us move faster, but it is not doing the heavy lifting, and this is where a lot of people get it wrong.

If your grant writer cannot clearly explain how they use AI, what they use it for, and what they do after it generates something, that is a red flag because the real work is not in what AI produces. It is in how that output gets challenged, refined, and aligned with reality.

That is the difference between an application that sounds good and one that actually holds up.

So yes, ask the question. Ask it directly. Ask them to walk you through their process.

At the end of the day, you are not just hiring someone to write. You are hiring someone to think, to catch what does not make sense, to push back when something is off, and to turn your day-to-day work into something fundable.

AI can support that, but it cannot replace it. If someone is treating it like it can, you will see it in your results, just not until the opportunity is already gone and you’ve left the grant reviewers questioning your credibility.