What if you could use a combination of experience and AI to help you decide how much in grant funds to request from a foundation?
I had a grant request on my calendar that needed to be written and sent in the upcoming weeks to a larger foundation in my state. While I already knew how much in grant funds I was going to request, I decided it would be neat to have AI, specifically ChatGPT, analyze the funder's list of grant recipients to get more insight.
This list included organizations the foundation had funded in the last year, how much in grant funds they gave to the organization, and a brief description of what they funded.
How to Decide How Much to Request from a Foundation
Once you've been in the grants field for a while, you learn to determine what amount you should request from a funder. It's typically based on a large variety of criteria.
This criteria includes:
- what your program needs are
- what your agency needs are
- who the funder is
- what they like to support
- their new or previous initiatives
- how much they give to others
- how much they've previously given to you
- what range they've told you they want to give
- the economy
- connections
- a feeling based on experience
- hope
- and much more
You can see there are typically MANY factors that go into deciding how much grant funds to request.
How I Used AI to Determine How Much Grant Funds to Request
(As a side note, don't use this experiment as your only criteria for choosing an amount to request. As stated above, many factors determine this decision.)
The funder publishes this information publicly on their website, so I grabbed the funding information from there. You could do this same type of research by getting information from their 990s.
1. I gave it a list of 41 nonprofits that received a grant. The list included the dollar amount they were granted, a 6-10 word summary of what the funds are for, and where they’re based.
2. I first had it determine the average, mean, and mode of $ dollar amounts given.
3. Then, I asked it to show me a list of common characteristics. It came up with 8 bullet points.
4. Then, I asked it to give me a common dollar amount in relation to funds for youths or children (that’s what my grant proposal will be about)
5. It gave me an average (mean) dollar amount of $74,360 specifically related to youths and children.
Final
I had already planned to ask for $75,000 from this funder, so it's neat to see it was right on the money (pun intended)!
While I still believe you need to use multiple criteria and good judgment when deciding how much to request, you can use this to give you more insight into their decisions.
