How Funds Online and a simple AI assistant can save your team hours

Securing grants is quite competitive, budgets are tight, and time is the one thing none of us has in abundance. In this blog (and video below), I share a fast and low-cost way to combine Funds Online with a GPT assistant, so you can find better-fit funders, draft stronger applications, and track your pipeline in a single afternoon. 

Here are more details on how to set it up:

Step 1: Set up your GPT assistant in 15 minutes 

Create a customised GPT inside your ChatGPT account that acts like a fundraising assistant.  

What to include in your GPT’s instructions: Your charity profile, mission, beneficiaries, geography and average grant size. Also, your top three project areas, restricted or core preference, and any compliance notes. And don’t forget to include your writing voice and any house style you have, and the output formats you want, for example, bullet lists, checklists, 150-word email. 

Prompt recipes to include in your GPT instructions 

• Eligibility scan: “Read this funder’s guidelines. List eligibility criteria in bullets, highlight any red flags for a small charity in [location], and score strategic fit from 0% to 100%.”
• Summary builder: “Turn these guidelines into a 6-bullet brief: who they fund, what they fund, typical amounts, deadlines, geography, and reporting.”
• First-contact email: “Draft a concise, warm enquiry email that references [programme name], includes a 2-sentence project summary, and ask one clarifying question about eligibility.”
• Bid helper: “Draft a 120-word need statement for [beneficiaries] in [place], grounded in realistic outcomes and avoiding jargon.”

Privacy tip: keep personal data out of prompts and instructions. Share only public guidelines or anonymised summaries.

Step 2: Use FundsOnline to find prospective funders 

FundsOnline has filters that help you get a strong longlist in minutes. 

Quick search set-up. Choose your organisation type, then filter by Activity and Location to mirror your projects and tick Only show funders that accept unsolicited applications when you need speed. Add Type of funding filters such as Core cost, Project funding or Salaries and then short by Grant total to sport the most material opportunities for your organisation.  

Save time with the dashboard saving your searches, interesting funders and funders you applied to, so you can return to them at any time with just one click. Use Print to PDF to save the funders you are interested to, to share them with your GPT assistant.  

Step 3: Pair the files for faster decisions 

Move your shortlisted funders into your GPT and run this mini workflow: 

1. Quick fit check: “Given our profile, score fit from 0% to 100% and justify the score in 3 bullets.” 
2. Question builder: “Write one clarifying question to email the funder if the score is 50% to 74%.” 
3. Micro-outline: “If the score is 75% or higher, draft a 6-bullet outline for a proposal that matches their stated priorities.” 

As a result, you cut the noise, focus on best-fit funders, and get usable text for emails or proposals without starting from a blank page.  

Step 4: Track your pipeline 

Keep a sheet with your four columns: Prospect, Contacted, Applied, Result and update it weekly. Tie each prospect back to your saved FundsOnline searches to keep your dashboard updated too. 

Things to avoid 

• Copy-pasting guidelines into bids without tailoring to the funder’s language. 
• Chasing low-fit grants because the amount looks tempting. 
• Letting the search criteria be too broad giving you a lot of results and hiding gems.  
• Giving your GPT vague prompts which produce vague outputs.  

Want to learn more on making AI work in fundraising? 

Join Grants Unlocked 2025 on Thursday 18 September. It is a one-day online conference with practical sessions on strategy, prospecting, and making your bids shine. If you want help to implement this workflow in your team, this is the place to start. Register here now. 

Think an AI assistant could revolutionise your fundraising but just want someone to do it for you? Our expert in-house team can create an AI assistant tailored to exactly what your charity is looking for, just drop us a line at [email protected] to find out more.