How to Become a Freelance Grant Writer: Quick Guide

As a nonprofit professional, you love your organization and feel passionately about the importance of its mission. You’re proud to help push the good work forward and make a difference in your community.

However, you might also feel disengaged or held back personally or professionally by your job.

After all, nonprofit work can be uniquely challenging for all kinds of reasons—tight budgets for staff compensation, inflexible schedules, unclear routes for professional growth, emotional burnout, and more.

You might know that making a move would be the best long-term choice for you, your career, and your family. However, you’re driven by passion and hesitant to give up such meaningful work. Sound familiar? If you feel conflicted, you’re not alone.

As an alternative career in the nonprofit space, freelance grant writing has unlocked lives of increased flexibility and (sometimes much) higher pay for tons of passionate people.

Grant writing may check all the boxes on your career wishlist, so if you’ve been thinking about making a change, it’s an option worth considering. In this quick guide, we’ll explore what it means to work as a freelance grant writer and expert-recommended steps for making a career transition.

What does freelance grant writing entail?

Freelance grant writers help to research, compile, and draft grant proposals for different types of nonprofit organizations and institutions of all sizes. Their clients can include:

• Nonprofit organizations
• Schools and higher ed institutions
• Museums and history and cultural centers
• Hospitals and other nonprofit health centers
• Local government offices and tribal organizations
• Some faith-based organizations

Clients pay their grant writing consultants through either flat project fees or at an hourly rate, as they do for other strategic consulting services. Grant writers may increase their fees as they develop stronger portfolios of work and positive reputations in their communities.

Freelancers typically bounce between nonprofit clients but often build lasting relationships with particular organizations over time. These relationships can bring many benefits: consistent gigs, eventual full-time paid positions, and connections to new nonprofits and peers.

The median salary of a grant writer is currently around $76,000. However, note that grant writing is a highly diverse field. This average amount includes both salaried grant writers employed directly by nonprofits and institutions as well as freelance grant writers who may choose to take on vastly different workloads.

If you choose to become a freelance grant writer, you have several options for how you can shape your career. The ultimate outcomes for new grant writing freelancers can include:

• Consistent side work (as much or as little as you want) in addition to another job
• Part-time work for clients without another job
• Going the small business route by building your own independent consultancy
• Using your freelance portfolio to land a full-time paid job in a different organization

Grant writing gives you flexible choices at any stage of life. Plus, as a nonprofit professional, you’re already in an excellent position to thrive in this area of specialization. Your prior experience and familiarity with nonprofits, how they operate, and how they secure and manage funding can help you hit the ground running with grant writing clients.

Key benefits and considerations

To sum up, let’s review the most common benefits that nonprofit professionals see from making the switch to freelance grant writing:

• Potentially much higher earnings
• Greater schedule and workload flexibility
• Meaningful and diverse work in the nonprofit space

But to approach a career transition as realistically and strategically as possible, it’s essential to also understand a few key considerations. Specifically, you should know that becoming a freelance grant writer (even with prior nonprofit experience) requires investments of:

• Training. Unless you’re already a stellar grant writer at your nonprofit, you’ll need to get a firm grasp of the essentials to begin working. Grant writing training courses come in all shapes and sizes, but remember that you get what you pay for in terms of comprehensiveness and relevance to your skill level.
• Time. You may be in a safe position to quit a full-time job and grow a freelance career at your own pace. If not, you may need to take grant writing projects on the side in addition to your full-time job. It’ll take extra work and possibly a few late nights, so be prepared and remind yourself of the benefits you’re securing for yourself.
• Resources and skills. Organizational tools like project management platforms and spreadsheet software, basic business skills, and familiarity with grant databases will all be important for kicking off and sustaining your freelance work.

Keep in mind that a freelance grant writing career offers the freedom to shape your own path based on your professional and personal goals, wants, and must-haves. Plus, you can easily take the change at your own pace. Below, we’ll outline a recommended process for switching careers that gives you time and breathing room to decide your next steps as you go.

How do you get started with freelance grant writing?

First, you’ll likely need additional training on the grant writing process and best practices. As mentioned above, professionally developed (and typically paid) resources that fit your experience level will probably best serve your needs as a professional.

If you’re already confident in your grant writing skills and have successfully secured grants for your nonprofit in the past, take a moment to think about any gaps in your grant knowledge, for instance, project management, grant research, or federal grant seeking. You can find more niche resources for these specific topics or look for training specifically tailored to experienced grant seekers.

Next, think about your goals. Do you already have a clear idea of what you want from your career change and what kind of lifestyle changes you need?

For example, do you know that you want to step down into part-time freelancing work from a full-time career? Or do you hope to replace your current job with freelancing full-time? Or possibly use freelancing to help you land a new salaried position elsewhere?

If you can’t answer this question yet, no worries! You have the ability to make decisions as you go, but a general sense of your ideal outcome will be helpful as you get started.

Now, you can begin laying out a plan for your career transition. We recommend Learn Grant Writing’s 7-step Organic Networking Framework. Here’s the process in a nutshell:

1. Create an outreach contact list. Gather the names of organizations and individuals you’d love to work with as a freelance grant writer, which can include both those you’re already familiar with and others you find through research. Try to compile a list of at least 20 contacts. From here, begin reaching out with introductory messages. Mention that you love the organization’s work, are venturing into freelance grant writing, and would like to hear more about their grant seeking efforts.

2. Host an informational interview with a contact. Your goal is to ask questions, listen, and learn, not necessarily to pitch your services. If all goes well in an interview, you’ll learn more about the organization’s projects and needs and uncover opportunities to help them improve their grant seeking efforts and secure more funding.

3. Offer a deliverable that creates a quick win. Think through how you can help your contact. Your solution should provide the contact with a clear return on investment (ROI). Learn Grant Writing recommends creating a full Funding Strategy (a 12-month roadmap for the grants with the highest likelihood of success) for the organization. A Funding Strategy directly solves a common pain point, the struggle of constantly identifying and researching new opportunities, and makes the organization’s overall funding strategy much more efficient. Reach back out to explain your idea for solving the contact’s problem and ask to send them a proposal. If they agree, you can easily convert your proposal into a contract to secure your first paid work.

4. Create the deliverable. Execute the plan you’ve laid out in your proposal, like creating a well-researched Funding Strategy, following the agreed-upon guidelines and timeframe exactly. Stay in touch with the client to provide concise updates and give a professional impression. Aim to deliver the finished project ahead of schedule and plan ahead to provide the client with a window of time to provide feedback and make revisions.

5. Amend the contract to extend the work. Here’s the magic step—turn your one-off gig into sustained work with your first client. After completing your first deliverable, let the client know that you can also help implement your recommendations. If your first deliverable was a Funding Strategy, you’ve already created an easy roadmap for yourself to follow. Negotiate the amended contract and get to work!

6. Repeat. Work through this process several more times, learning and improving as you go. Take the time to carefully document your work so that you can build your freelance portfolio and continue expanding your list of contacts for ongoing outreach.

7. Earn $15K and decide your next steps. Learn Grant Writing recommends to its students that they continue securing and completing work until they’ve earned a total of $15,000 or more in freelance contracts. At this point, you’ll have proven to potential clients (and yourself!) that you’re an effective freelance grant writer, and you can take a moment to think about what you want to do next. Pivot from your original job to freelance full-time? Keep the ball rolling as a side hustle? Use your portfolio to apply for new full-time jobs? You know your needs and goals the best, so consider what will make the most sense for you, your family, and your career. The choice is yours!

This framework gives you invaluable flexibility and allows you to test the waters. There’s no need to rush, over-stress, or overcommit to a particular career change path right away if you’re unsure. Instead, think of the process as an iterative journey. Learn as you earn, building your experience and confidence so that, when you’re ready, you can make more informed decisions about your ideal freelancing outcomes.

Remember, grant writing is an incredibly diverse field. Nearly all nonprofits have a need for and could benefit from expert grant writing services to help augment and diversify their funding. If you’re interested in pursuing freelance grant writing, feel empowered to start slow and begin charting the path that works best for you, grant by grant.