The Ginger Garlic Paste of Grantwriting

Tucked behind a small hill of 25 lb rice bags at Costco Wholesale, you can find two-pack jars of Shan Ginger Garlic Paste — 700 grams each. Some purists might turn up their nose at cooking with paste, but when you’re slinging weeknight curries as much as I am, you can’t be too precious with your ingredients. Turns out, grantwriters do the same damn thing! The most effective grantwriting operations know when to reuse material, how to buy time, and critically, what to make from scratch. Oftentimes, it’s the difference between a grant submitted and a grant opportunity you pass up.

In this metaphor, ginger garlic paste is your boilerplate language. Having your answers to common grant application questions honed and ready to go means that you can focus more of your energy on complex, specific questions like, “why are you the right fit for this opportunity?” or “how are you planning to use these funds?” — resulting in a stronger, more compelling application overall. But most importantly, it puts you in a position of confidence and ease when you come across a new opportunity. Suddenly, a dizzying array of required materials and narrative questions transforms into a simple checklist — with half the boxes already ticked off.

when to reuse material

The short answer? Reuse material often and strategically. “Copying” may have had a bad rep in school, but in the context of grant applications, reviewers don’t expect you to write every answer from scratch. In fact, grant apps are often so long and labor intensive that applications with reused material are the ones that stand out for their depth and precision. Like an overnight marinade, there’s no way to achieve the depth of flavor that your dish (application) needs without prep and planning.

Here are some staples you can expect to see again and again, and are worth keeping tucked away on a shelf (folder):

• ❤️‍🔥 Mission/Vision: The philosophical heart of your organization — why you exist, what world you're trying to create
• 🧳 Organizational History/Bio: Where you've been, how you've evolved, and who's in charge now — your origin story, basically
• 🦾 Capability Statement: Funders are looking for a positive track record of commitments kept and things created. How do you demonstrate expertise and reliability? This is your "we've done this before and we're good at it" section
• 💡 Project Descriptions: Keep a running menu of ideas and aspirational projects — ideally, write a mini proposal for each one to have ready when an opportunity arises
• 🧪 Evaluation Methods: Gathering attendance data, measuring satisfaction, tracking retention — have a plug-and-play paragraph ready to demonstrate how you're evaluating your work (or planning to)
• 💸 Budget Narratives: Your standard cost breakdowns and financial philosophy. Yes, you'll need to adjust the numbers for each grant, but the explanatory language about why you budget the way you do? That can be pre-written and waiting
• 📊 Organizational Impact/Outcomes: Your greatest hits compilation — the numbers that make you look good. How many people did you serve? What changed because of your work? Keep these stats updated quarterly like you're checking the expiration dates on your pantry staples.
• 👥 Staff/Board Bios: Keep short bios of key players chopped and ready to toss into any application.
• 🤝 Letters of Support/Partnership Descriptions: Your organizational Rolodex in paragraph form. Who do you work with? Who vouches for you?

The beauty of having all this prepped and ready? When a last minute grant opportunity comes across your radar, you're not starting from a cold pan. You've got your ingredients measured out, your mise en place organized, and you can actually focus on the custom elements that'll make your application sing. It's the difference between scrambling through a Sunday farmers market at 5pm and calmly reaching into a well-stocked fridge. Both can result in dinner — but one of them will also result in you stress-eating animal crackers over the sink at 9pm.

how to buy time

Reader, let this be your permission slip to finally hire a grantwriter for your boilerplate language. No, you don’t (necessarily) need them on retainer, or have to use everything they write. But sitting down with an expert and getting a custom Google Doc of concise, clear answers to common grant application questions buys you precious time for actual artmaking. Admin, marketing, grantwriting can all be outsourced, but your creative vision cannot. And if grantwriting both confuses and frustrates you, you’re also buying back your emotional bandwidth and peace of mind — invaluable resources in this day and age. So don’t be a purist who scoffs at the Costco ginger garlic paste, and instead enjoy sniffing your clean, garlic-less fingers while the curry (grant application?) simmers away.

what to make from scratch

Like most things, boilerplate language has a harrowing dark side. If you take the strategy too far and aren’t customizing any part of the grant application, I can almost guarantee that the reviewers will 1) notice and 2) be unimpressed. A grant application should still be a home cooked meal, not takeout disguised as such.

So how do you know what can be reused and what needs to be made from scratch? I like to start with a narrative skeleton based on the grant application guidelines. Open them up or print them out, with a blank page at the ready. Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, identify and list out the required sections and details. The end result should be a bare bones, 100% accurate skeleton of your grant application. Then plug in your various boilerplate answers (the meat!), and see what’s left to write or adapt. Our grantwriting team (ok, fine, it’s just me and Geo) likes to use different colors to distinguish between new language and boilerplate language up until the very end, so that you can ensure your ingredients are well mixed and end up reading smoothly.

the not-so-secret ingredient

The organizations that win funding aren't necessarily the ones grinding fresh spices with a mortar and pestle at 2am — they're the ones who know which shortcuts free them up to focus on what actually matters: making a clear, compelling case for why their work deserves support.

So stock your pantry with the essentials. Hire help when you need it. And when that perfect grant opportunity lands in your inbox at 4pm on a Friday with a Monday deadline? You won't be the one panic-ordering takeout (or worse, letting the opportunity pass you by entirely). You'll be the one who calmly opens the fridge, pulls out your prep, and gets to work on the only thing that really needs your attention: telling your story in a way that makes funders say yes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some animal crackers calling my name.