Using AI to ask better questions, not give better answers

Most articles about artificial intelligence (AI) in fundraising centre on using it to write funding applications, letters of appeal or social media content. While AI can help with all of these, it can also serve as a critical friend that identifies gaps in your ideas, questions your assumptions and challenges your thinking before you submit an application.

This article looks at four ways you can use AI to improve your funding applications without asking it to write them for you.

Think like a grant assessor

One useful way to apply AI to grant applications is to ask it to evaluate your draft as a grant assessor rather than a copywriter. After you have completed a draft, ask AI to assess it against the same published criteria that the funder will use when deciding which applications to support.

It can highlight unsupported claims, points requiring clarification and places where your proposal does not meet the funder’s guidelines. If the assessment criteria are available, AI can also provide an indicative score and explain the reasoning behind it.

AI is unable to tell you how your application will compare to others, and its evaluation may be quite different to that of an experienced grants officer. What it can do is offer a fresh perspective and highlight any areas that may need working on before submitting your application.

Try asking AI:“Act as a grant assessor for this funder. Read my application, score it against the published criteria and explain where it falls short. What questions would you ask before recommending it for funding?”

Challenge your assumptions

You can sometimes lose objectivity when working on the same project for a long time. Decisions about how a project should operate may begin to feel self-evident, particularly when they are based on your organisation’s experience. However, a grant assessor may not understand why you have chosen one approach over another.

Using AI as a critical friend can help you examine the reasoning behind these decisions. For example, your application may propose weekly mentoring sessions for young people. AI might ask why mentoring was chosen, why sessions will take place weekly and whether this approach is suitable for the young people you want to support. It might also question whether there are other ways of achieving the same outcome.

Not every question will be relevant but considering them can reveal decisions that have not been fully explained or justified. You can then make the reasoning behind your project clearer in your application.

Try asking AI:“Act as a critical friend and challenge the reasoning behind this project. Which decisions have I not fully justified? What alternatives might a sceptical assessor expect me to have considered, and where have I assumed that the benefits of our approach are self-evident?”

Identify missing evidence

To create a persuasive application, you need sufficient evidence that your proposed approach is likely to succeed and that your organisation can deliver the planned work effectively. AI can assess the strength of your argument and flag claims that require more evidence. These could include claims about the scale of the problem you are addressing or the project’s anticipated outcomes.

AI can also highlight gaps in the evidence you have already provided. For example, an application may include national statistics but no local evidence or make ambitious claims about a project’s benefits without explaining how success will be measured. This can help you identify where further research, data or practical examples are needed.

You should always check any evidence suggested by AI. It may produce facts, figures or sources that appear convincing but are inaccurate or do not exist.

Try asking AI:“Review this application and identify every claim that needs supporting evidence. What evidence have I provided, what is missing and what type of information would make the case more convincing? Do not invent facts, figures or sources.”

Improve clarity

When developing projects within an organisation, there can sometimes be a tendency to use technical language, jargon or vague terminology. This language may be perfectly clear to people within the organisation but more difficult for a grant assessor to understand. AI can highlight unclear text and show where information could be expressed more simply.

AI can also help you identify unanswered questions in your proposal. Would someone unfamiliar with your organisation understand what your project will do, who the beneficiaries are and what the funding will be spent on? Asking AI to describe its understanding of your project may help you spot differences between what you intended to say and what a reader may understand.

The suggestions provided by AI may not reflect your organisation’s voice, but you can use its feedback to clarify unclear sections rather than rewrite them completely.

Try asking AI:“Read this application as someone who is unfamiliar with our charity. Identify any specialist terminology, unclear descriptions or overly complicated sentences. Explain what you think the project will do, who will benefit and how the funding will be used. Do not rewrite the application.”

AI is a useful tool for fundraising, but it is no substitute for your knowledge, judgement and experience of your organisation or project. However, when used as a critical friend, it can offer insight into how others may perceive your ideas and, in turn, help you ask better questions, identify weaknesses, and ultimately submit stronger applications.