We have the good fortune at GRIN of regularly featuring topical blogs by Sarah Taragon and Stephen Woollett of Clarity CIC and Emma Beeston of the Emma Beeston Consultancy on issues that are currently relevant to the charity sector.
Today’s blog comes from Sarah and considers the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in writing grant applications. Sarah would love to hear your views on this subject. Please email any comment to us at info@grin.coop to pass on to Sarah, or email Sarah directly at sarah@claritycic.org.
“AI and Bid Writing“
“Charity Excellence Framework (an excellent resource if you haven’t already used them), are currently trialling using AI (artificial intelligence).(Go to Charity Excellence AI Services Tech Bunnies.)
“Their 1st GPT3 service is Funding Bid Writing. The aim is to provide free bid writing. Charities answer a series of questions, then the AI will draft a bid. As long as the charity has the information needed to hand, it should take no more than 5 minutes.
“This has got me reflecting on the impact this could have. If all Charities can get AI to write their bids (which will therefore all be of a similar quality), how are funders going to make decisions? Will they use AI to make those decisions? It makes a bit of a mockery of the whole grant application approach. Definitely time for some reflections by funders on how to handle this change.
“The potential for time saving for organisations is enormous. There is the potential that the playing field is levelled – small charities being able to compete with the better resourced ones who have paid bid writers. There is also a risk that the tech will be expensive and could create larger differences between the capacity of the smaller charities and those with resources to invest. Hopefully the Charity Excellence Framework (CEF) will ensure access for the smaller charities.
“We’d love to hear your views (funders, and charities) on the impact you see from AI on the sector.”
Formed in 2014, Clarity CIC‘s mission is to enable social purpose organisations, including community groups, charities and social enterprises to be effective, sustainable and well-run. Clarity helps organisations solve everyday problems, build their own capability, think and act strategically and demonstrate the value of their work.