Grant Writers

Writing the Narrative Is Only the Visible Part

Two applications can both ask for 10 pages and have nothing else in common.

One funder provides a clean template, clear eligibility rules, and a straightforward budget. Another hides key instructions in an FAQ, limits every portal field differently, requires six attachments, and asks the client for data they do not have ready. The page count may match. The labor does not.

Consider an illustrative $2,400 fixed-fee application. You remember 18 hours of focused writing and think the engagement paid about $133 an hour. Then you account for the work around the draft:

• 3 hours reviewing guidelines and prior awards
• 2 hours in kickoff and program interviews
• 4 hours gathering outcomes, budgets, and attachments
• 2 hours turning client comments into a usable revision list
• 3 hours entering, checking, and submitting the portal
• 2 hours across email, scheduling, and final follow-up

That is 34 hours, not 18. The illustrative effective rate is about $71 an hour.

The point is not that every grant should be hourly. It is that a fixed fee is only useful when you know what is inside it.

Scope creep is especially easy to disguise in grant work because every request sounds connected to the deadline. “Can we also add a logic model?” “Could you rewrite the program description for the board?” “While you have the numbers, can you clean up the budget narrative?” Each request may be reasonable. That does not make it part of the original engagement.

If you wait until submission to reconstruct the extra work, you have already lost the cleanest moment to discuss it. A running total lets you raise the issue while there is still a decision to make: reduce the work, extend the scope, add a fee, or make a deliberate exception.