How Omdena Uses AI to Cut NGO Grant Writing Time by 50%

January 14, 2025

Discover how AI-driven solutions cut grant writing time in half, empowering NGOs to secure funding faster and focus on their mission.

Writing grant proposals is a time-consuming challenge for NGOs, taking weeks that could be spent on impactful work. Omdena’s AI solutions cut proposal writing time by 50%, helping NGOs secure funding faster. By automating tedious tasks and simplifying the process, Omdena empowers NGOs to focus on what matters most—creating lasting impact.

Challenges in the Traditional Grant Process

NGOs face significant barriers in securing grants, including:

Time Drain: Weeks are spent manually searching for opportunities and crafting proposals.
Resource Strain: Limited teams often divert time from their core mission to meet administrative demands.
Missed Opportunities: Valuable funding can be overlooked due to lack of capacity.

These challenges make it harder for NGOs to achieve their goals, leaving them stretched thin and struggling to keep up.

AI-Powered Grant Management Solutions

Omdena’s customized AI tools tackle these challenges head-on, transforming how NGOs approach grant writing. Here’s how:

1. Faster Grant Matching

AI scans databases, government portals, and philanthropic websites in minutes, identifying opportunities tailored to your organization’s mission, goals, and geography. This saves countless hours and ensures no opportunity is missed.

2. Streamlined Proposal Writing

With the right inputs, AI generates an initial draft of grant proposals, aligned with funder criteria and your objectives. It automates:

Crafting project descriptions and goals.
Preparing budgets and timelines.
Ensuring compliance with funder guidelines.

3. Effortless Submission and Tracking

AI ensures all documents are formatted correctly, tracks deadlines, and manages multi-stage applications. Automated reminders and progress reports help your team stay on top of the process, reducing errors and missed deadlines.

Human Oversight and AI as an Assistant

While AI plays a powerful role in transforming the grant writing process, human expertise remains essential. AI acts as an assistant, automating repetitive tasks and generating drafts, but the final proposal requires human oversight to ensure alignment with an NGO’s unique voice, mission, and strategic goals. By combining AI’s efficiency with human creativity and contextual understanding, NGOs can produce proposals that are not only technically sound but also compelling and impactful. This partnership ensures that technology enhances—rather than replaces—human efforts.

Safeguarding Sensitive Data

Omdena prioritizes the security and privacy of client data. When using large language models (LLMs), sensitive data security is ensured through:

Data Anonymization: Sensitive or identifying information is removed or masked before being processed.
Encrypted Communication: Secure encryption protocols are used to protect data in transit.
Provider Policies and Compliance: Partnering with providers who comply with strict global data privacy regulations and ensure no retention of client data without explicit permission.
Open-Source Options: Utilizing open-source LLMs like GPT-NeoX or LLaMA, which can be run locally, ensuring full control over data processing.

Omdena also limits the sharing of sensitive information, using only the data necessary for tasks, and integrates robust security protocols into its AI solutions. By taking these precautions, Omdena ensures that sensitive company information is protected at all times.

Need More Resources?

Download Omdena’s free resource guide on leveraging Generative AI and AI agents for NGOs and discover actionable strategies to enhance your funding and operational success.

Results That Matter

Omdena’s AI solutions deliver measurable outcomes:

50% Faster Turnaround: NGOs can submit proposals in under a week, compared to two or more weeks.
Improved Success Rates: High-quality, well-aligned proposals increase chances of approval.
More Time for Impact: Teams can focus on mission-critical activities rather than administrative burdens.

Success Story

An NGO partnered with Omdena to tackle its grant challenges. Leveraging AI, the organization:

Identified 20+ relevant grants in a single week.
Drafted proposals 60% faster, saving over 100 hours.
Secured $500,000 in funding within six months.

Example Client Case Studies

Case Study 1: Empowering Diverse Businesses with RFP Access

The Problem: Minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses faced challenges in accessing government and commercial contracting opportunities. The decentralized and inefficient RFP discovery process limited their ability to compete effectively and hindered their growth.

Omdena’s Solution: Omdena developed a centralized RFP platform with key features including a web scraping engine for efficient data collection, an ETL pipeline for structured data management, and an interactive web application with advanced search and filter functionalities. Security protocols and geo-fencing capabilities ensured a secure and localized user experience.

Impact:

Simplified RFP discovery, reducing time spent on manual searches.
Increased accessibility to opportunities, helping businesses scale and innovate.
Enhanced participation of underrepresented businesses in federal and commercial contracts, promoting economic inclusivity.

Case Study 2: Streamlining NGO Grant Access with AI

The Problem: Traditional grant-finding methods were time-intensive and costly, limiting NGOs’ ability to secure funding critical for social change.

Omdena’s Solution: In collaboration with the social enterprise Our Community, Omdena developed AI-driven tools leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP), web scraping, and automated APIs. The project featured:

A data processing pipeline analyzing over 1,200 PDF documents, social media feeds, and web sources.
A user-friendly visualization dashboard displaying grant distributions across six countries.