AI Grant Research Assistant

Find grants a nonprofit is genuinely eligible for and summarize each one's criteria and deadline.

Monthly income

$100–$6,000+

Startup cost

$0–$200

Time required

4–12 hrs/week

Time to first $

2–6 weeks

Difficulty

6 / 10

AI leverage

High

AI tools you'd use

Why it works

Small nonprofits lose most of their funding effort to grants they were never eligible for, and eligibility screening is exactly the kind of structured reading that scales - provided a person verifies the deadlines.

How it makes money

Per deliverable + retainer

How to start

Pick a funding area you can learn properly: arts, environment, health, local community.
Build the source list - government portals, foundation directories, sector newsletters.
Record each funder's eligibility, size, deadline and restrictions in one comparable format.
Use Perplexity to find candidates, then open the funder's own page to confirm every detail.
Never report a deadline or an amount from an AI summary; funders change both and the summary lags.
Screen ruthlessly for eligibility - most of the value is telling a client which grants to ignore.
Deliver a shortlist ranked by fit and realistic odds, with the reasoning shown.
Add a calendar of deadlines so the client stops missing them.
Keep writing the application separate from finding the grant - different skill, different fee.
Charge a monthly retainer for the search, never a percentage of funds awarded.
Refresh monthly, since new rounds open continuously.

AI Grant Research Assistant

AI tools you'd use

Why it works

How it makes money

How to start

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