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Answering your questions about business and technology
Question
How can I use AI to help me draft responses to RFPs?
~ Every nonprofit that I talk to
Answer
Hello out there,
I am putting this in here because of how often it comes up. We work with a lot of nonprofits and this question comes up almost every time.
I will start with my disclaimer - Please find out from whoever posted the RFP if they allow the use of AI tools to generate, edit, or analyze proposals.
This is really important. Putting my opinions (and yours) aside, a lot of people and organizations do not support AI usage. It is possible that any time that you save from using the AI tools could all be wasted because they detect AI and automatically reject it. Some organizations allow AI editing but not generation, etc. Make sure you find out the rules on the other side first.
Okay, with that out of the way, here is a sample workflow that you can use to speed up the RFP process -
-
- Upload sanitized RFP to an AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.
- Upload or describe relevant information about your organization
- Could also have this in a project or custom GPT
- Craft prompt to respond - usually does better with one section at a time
- Key things to include
- Persona
- Task
- Context - reference the attachments
- Tone
- Length
- Examples
- Output in canvas - quick edits
- Review and edit output
The prompts that you can use vary wildly.
Here is a sample prompt from OpenAI’s nonprofit cookbook (low complexity):
Act as a grant writing coach for [ORGANIZATION_NAME] who understands our mission to [MISSION_STATEMENT].
Review our draft grant application for [FUNDER_NAME]'s [GRANT_PROGRAM] opportunity, search for best practices specific to this funder, and provide actionable feedback on strengthening our narrative, budget justification, and alignment with funder priorities while maintaining our authentic voice and impact story.
Hope that helps.
~ Damien
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