Source
r/grantwriting•
greencycles

Is Freelance Grant Writing Lucrative?

I have a background in event planning (for very large nonprofits) and sales - no actual grant writing experience. I'm interested in starting my own grant writing freelance operation and recently managed to land my first client (they're aware of my experience). I'm capable of creating a good WordPress site and running my own SEO / internet presence. But a few questions remain regarding the viability of this business:

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Do you usually charge an upfront fee? Maybe half down, half at submittal?

This sub is pretty dead, do freelance grant writers have a more vibrant online community?

Are most grant writers hired direct by a company?

Is anyone making a living solely as a freelance grant writer?

Are sites similar to Instrumentl.com a good resource?

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Posted Jan 31, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

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maggz22•

I know this post is super cold, but would love to hear any experience that you have gathered since you posted! I have also though about trying to get into doing freelance work.

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OmNom96•

So I haven't done freelance work, but I can speak from the experience of contracting someone to write grants for my nonprofit. Being a small nonprofit first, it's been super helpful since we don't have the capacity to hire a full time Development Coordinator, but contracting someone freelance works for us. Her rate is $125 per hour and she has a good number of clients, that this is what she does full time. I've definitely been recommending her services to other organizations that are in a similar position as us because of how positive and successful the experience has been.

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From a client perspective, these are some of the things I really appreciated:

  1. She took the time to learn about our organization. We met before signing the contracts and she came prepared with a lot of questions about our mission, our history, our past and current work, our current funders, our strategic plan, and our funding priorities.
  2. When it's come to writing grants we will sit down and go through sections of the application where she could use more clarity from me as to what we want the proposal to reflect.
  3. Although we're far from her largest client, proposal drafts always have a very quick turnaround and so do the edits I suggest.
  4. She also has a really good understanding of the foundation landscape and part of the contract was actually for her to do research on potential foundations we could apply to, so it's not just about writing.

Some of her other services which we haven't used include supporting with site visits and meetings with funders, as well as preparing grant reports.

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