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About This Course

About this Course

Grant research is often the most overlooked phase of the grant development process. Many organizations begin their search without a clear understanding of how the funding world is organized, which tools are best suited for different tasks, or why independent verification of every AI-generated finding is non-negotiable. This chapter builds the foundational knowledge that makes everything else in this course more effective.

By the end of Chapter 1, you will be able to describe how the grant funding landscape is organized by funder type and grant type, identify where AI adds the most value in the research process and where your judgment remains essential, and explain the specific failure modes that make verification a required step rather than an optional one.

How the Grant Landscape Is Organized

Where AI Adds the Most Value

The Verification Imperative

The Grant Landscape Before You Start

The most common mistake new AI-assisted grant researchers make is skipping setup. Without a configured workspace, every research session starts cold: the AI has no background information about your organization, no reference to your priorities, and no basis for filtering results to your specific situation. The result is generic, low-value output that requires extensive manual work.

This chapter walks you through four setup tasks that will pay dividends across every search you run: choosing the right AI tools for your workflow, creating a dedicated grant research workspace, building an organizational profile that focuses every search on your institution, and writing custom instructions that load your profile automatically.

Choosing Your AI Tools

Creating a Grant Research Workspace

Building Your Organizational Snapshot

Writing Custom Instructions

Setting Up for Success

Your workspace is configured and your organizational snapshot is ready. Now you search. This chapter covers two discovery strategies in full depth (the landscape scan and targeted funder research) and introduces four additional strategies at an overview level. The full prompt sets for all six strategies are included in your companion guide, Using AI Assistants to Research Available Grants. This chapter teaches you what to use, when to use it, and how to interpret and act on what you get back.

The Landscape Scan

Targeted Funder Research

Other Discovery Strategies

Finding Grant Opportunities with AI

Finding grant opportunities is only half the work. The other half is deciding which ones are actually worth pursuing. This is where many grant researchers lose time: they find a promising-sounding opportunity, invest hours in research, and only later discover they do not meet the eligibility requirements, cannot meet the match requirements, or are competing against a very different type of organization than theirs.

This chapter gives you a systematic approach to evaluation using AI, so you spend your proposal development energy on the opportunities with the strongest chance of success. It also covers the verification process that converts AI-generated leads into confirmed, actionable opportunities, a step that is non-negotiable regardless of which tools or strategies you use.

The Fit Assessment

Red Flags and Disqualifiers

Verifying What AI Tells You

Evaluating Fit and Making Go/No-Go Decisions

Research without action is just information. This final chapter is about turning your verified research findings into organized, shareable outputs, and then making the cleanest possible transition into the proposal writing process. You will learn how to use AI to generate the stakeholder-ready deliverables that get institutional buy-in, how to build and maintain a grant pipeline that keeps opportunities from falling through the cracks, and exactly what to carry forward when you open a proposal writing workspace for the first time. This chapter closes the research phase and opens the door to the writing course.

Organizing and Presenting Your Research

Building Your Grant Calendar and Pipeline

Bridging to the Writing Phase

From Research to Proposal

Pass the knowledge quiz with a score of 100% to earn the course completion certificate.  

Course Completion Quiz

<p>Finding the right grant opportunity takes more than a database search. It takes knowing where to look, how to evaluate what you find, and how to confirm that an opportunity is worth your time before you invest in writing a proposal. This course teaches you how to use AI tools to do all of that more efficiently and more thoroughly than traditional research methods allow.</p><p>In this course you will build a complete AI-assisted research practice: setting up a workspace configured around your organization's profile, scanning the funding landscape across federal, state, foundation, and corporate sources, conducting in-depth funder analysis, and evaluating opportunities against a consistent set of fit criteria. You will also learn how to verify every AI-generated result before acting on it, and how to turn your findings into organized, decision-ready outputs your institution can act on. By the end of the course, you will have the research foundation that makes every proposal you write more targeted and more competitive.</p>

Find better funding opportunities, evaluate fit faster, and walk into every proposal with research that gives you a competitive edge.

AI-Assisted Grant Research

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What you will learn

Set up an AI research workspace configured around your organization's profile, eligibility, and funding priorities.

Scan the funding landscape across federal, state, foundation, and corporate sources using targeted AI prompts.

Conduct in-depth funder research, including past award analysis and giving pattern review.

Evaluate grant opportunities systematically for fit, feasibility, and disqualifying factors before committing to a proposal.

Produce stakeholder-ready research outputs that support institutional decision-making and a clean handoff to the writing phase.

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