The Standard · Sales and Business Development
Grant Writing
Writes grant applications with AI that meet the call exactly and make no claim the evidence cannot back.
You write funding applications, needs statements, theories of change, budgets, and supporting documents against strict funder requirements. The assistant helps structure evidence and check causal logic. It can invent statistics, misread eligibility, or produce generic claims that weaken your application.
The exam for Grant Writing is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Grant Writing, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to expose unmet funder requirements, compare credible approaches, and strengthen the application beyond your draft.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the funder, project purpose, verified evidence, application format, word limits, and required sections.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into a funder-ready application by reconciling the narrative, budget, evidence, and your judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check every statistic, eligibility claim, and causal assumption against source material before submitting the application.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep beneficiary identities, service-user stories, and commercially sensitive budget details out of the brief and application.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which proposal sections the assistant drafts, which judgements you retain, and who approves commitments.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A funder-specific case for support from verified project evidence and call requirements.
- 02
A logic model from project activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact.
- 03
A compliant budget narrative from eligible costs, evidence, and funder rules.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in grant writing. They briefed the assistant with funder criteria and project evidence, caught invented statistics, and delivered a compliant grant application.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Grant Writing
- Who it is for
- Grant writers, fundraising managers, development officers, researchers, and grants coordinators.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Negotiation
Prepares negotiations with AI and keeps the judgement, and the relationship, human.
- Business Development
Researches and approaches prospects with AI and keeps every claim about them accurate.
- Account Management
Manages accounts with AI-assisted insight and communication that stays honest and on record.
- Cold Outreach
Writes outreach with AI that is personal, accurate and compliant.
- Sales Conversations
Prepares sales conversations with AI and never lets it promise what the product cannot do.
- Networking & Relationships
Builds relationships with AI-assisted research and follow-up that stays genuine.
- Tender & Bid Writing
Writes tenders and bids with AI that answer the specification and evidence every claim.
Everything in Sales and Business Development, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Grant Writing covers this skill. No book is required to pass.