← We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
587. How to Find The Right Grants to Go After + Leveraging AI to Work Smarter, Not Harder - Meredith Noble
00:28:17
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- [00:01]
Becky
Hey, nonprofit leaders, change makers and community builders, this one's for you.
- [00:06]
John
Join us on January 23rd for impact up Multiply, a dynamic virtual gathering by day and an in person local meetups by night happening around the world. It's a day designed to inspire, connect, and equip you to multiply your impact in 2025.
- [00:20]
Becky
At impact up Multiply, we're talking about how community is the force multiplier for your mission. So if you're looking to grow or start a movement or deepen your community engagement in your mission, this day is for you. It's more than a virtual event. It's your space to dream bigger, build smarter, and multiply your impact.
- [00:40]
John
We've already saved you a seat, so join this movement. Visit weareforgood.com impactup to sign up for free today. We can't wait to see you there. Hey, I'm John.
- [00:55]
Becky
And I'm Becky.
- [00:56]
John
And this is the We Are for Good podcast.
- [00:59]
Becky
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more, and be more for the causes that improve our world.
- [01:08]
John
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
- [01:16]
Becky
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers, and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
- [01:27]
John
So let's get started. What's happening, Bea?
- [01:32]
Becky
I need to tell a story about our guests before we get into it. About the moment. I knew we were going to be fast friends. So let's rewind. About a month ago, I met the in San Francisco for the fundraising AI conference. This fabulous woman walks in with this just amazing jacket and I want to know her. And I go over, introduce myself and I say, that jacket is amazing. And she said, thanks. I have a sequence allowance.
- [02:02]
Meredith Noble
It's.
- [02:02]
Becky
She literally has a sequence budget. And that is when I knew that I would be friends with Meredith Noble in this work for a very long time. So, community, it is such a joy to introduce you to Meredith Noble. She's the co founder and CEO of Learn Grant writing. And today we're going to be talking about how to find grants to go after. Plus, we're also going to be talking about leveraging AI to help you work smarter, not harder. But Meredith has got an amazing adventurous bio. I cannot wait to read it to you because her mission is really about inspiring other women to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. And when you look back on her career, she's secured over $45 million in grants before she started to teach others how to build a flexible career in grant writing and book how to write a grant. Becoming a Grant Writing Unicorn is literally a number one bestseller for nonprofit fundraising grants on Amazon. She is a fifth generation Black Angus cattle rancher from Wyoming now living in the mountains of Alaska. She literally told us that she and her one year old son went snow skiing yesterday. Like 6:30 in the morning. That's what you can do in Alaska. And as an Alaskan adventurer, she can be found biking, skiing, hiking. And when she's not on these adventures, she can be found curled up around a cup of green te with a good book. Another reason that I think Meredith Noble and I will be friends for life. So Meredith, welcome to the We Are for Good podcast. We're so glad you're here.
- [03:33]
Meredith Noble
Thank you.
- [03:34]
Becky
I just think there's something about grant writing. We get requests all the time in the community. Can you point us to more grant writing resources? Can you help us figure out how to make this laborious process that much easier? And we're so excited to get all the tips from you. But first we want to get to know you and get to hear more story about this amazing life that you've led. Like take us back, introduce us to little Meredith growing up. How did she fall into this work? And how did you get such a heart for the non profit sector? We'd love to hear that from you.
- [04:07]
Meredith Noble
Certainly. Okay, well little Meredith was a cowgirl running free out on the ranch, so you got that part in my bio. But then when I went to college, I graduated in the thick of the economic recession and I picked up this book called the Charlie Hohens Recession Proof Graduate Guide. And the concept in it was have curious conversations, informational interviews and find needs that organizations have. Pitch yourself to do it for free. Which I was against the for free part because I thought that I have rent to pay so I'm going to charge.
- [04:41]
Becky
There you go.
- [04:41]
Meredith Noble
But I still did everything else that was followed that principles. So I ended up falling into grant writing that way where I had 45 different informational interviews in a span of three months and found, oh hey, a lot of these municipal governments, small towns, they need help getting grant money because they don't have the capacity to do it themselves. And that was how I accidentally fell into grant writing, which is a common story for many. And fast forward, I end up getting a full time job offer writing grants for infrastructure projects, which was fantastic. You become dangerously Knowledgeable about a lot of different topics.
- [05:23]
John
Yes.
- [05:23]
Meredith Noble
Yeah. Like, can tell you about wastewater treatment plants. So. But you're. Yeah, exactly. You know, just enough to be great at a dinner party, but you don't have to be the engineer. And that's what I love about grant writing. Yep. So, I mean, that was sort of the early stages of how we fell into writing grants.
- [05:43]
John
I love it. Well, I mean, it's taken you, like you said, like, into a lot of different experiences and probably your worldview is just a lot bigger of like, what's possible out there, what kind of grants are available. And so as we start to like this conversation today, like, we've got a lot of change makers listening. We got a lot of nonprofit folks and maybe people that are also like solopreneurs that are thinking they want to do something in the social impact space. How do you really find grants to go after? I mean, what is a good way to like, create this funnel of research that gives you clarity of like, okay, this one feels aligned. We should really, you know, take steps to pursue this.
- [06:16]
Meredith Noble
Yeah, this is a good story. So I had a process for finding grants because I was thrown into really complex infrastructure projects in my early 20s. Like, you all are grown adults that haven't figured this out and you think some 23 year old is going to unravel how to fund this clinic or whatever. Right.
- [06:35]
Becky
I totally believe you could do it.
- [06:37]
Meredith Noble
Well, that's what happened. But it wasn't pretty, it wasn't easy. It wasn't, go get one grant and you're done. It was like, what all do we need to pursue, in what order, what needs to be done to even be ready to go after them. And that formed the basis of what I now teach called the funding strategy, which is when you know exactly what grants to pursue over the next 12 to 18 months ahead of time. And why this is so important is because one, the order of grants you pursue matters, they're like dominoes. We want to knock one over and it helps get over the next. Otherwise we knock a domino over and it has no effect. The second reason is because almost all organizations fall into one of two traps. They either chase grants haphazardly, so they go after whatever slides across their desk and you're volun told to do it, or you're, you're get the email notification and it's due in five days. Right. That is one of the biggest traps for burnout, for ruining a reputation with funders, for simply not getting funded. And real quick, as a side story, I trained a gal that had applied for 40 grants for her Vol for her volunteer fire department. She had won just one of them for $5,000. And as you can imagine that was pretty defeating. I trained her in this funding strategy process. She wrote half as many grants at this time. She's won over 1.5 million and she continues to win grants that are bringing in equipment that is literally life changing. So like that is the power of actually knowing what grants to go after, in what order and how to do it in a way that you actually don't apply for nearly as many, but you increase your win rate. So mistake one, number one was falling into chasing grants haphazardly. The second grant want mistake which will answer your question is well, where do you find these? And the tool that exists today didn't exist when I was building my original online course. So I was training a video on how you get into Google and you find what grants exist. And I stumbled upon a blog post that instrumentl had published and that would and then I started to get into their software and that was the early days, like they were just launching their software and it changed everything. I actually stopped recording and said this is the way to find grants using that tool. And so then I was able to apply my grant research funnel methodology to their software. And now we have a process where you can go navigate 300 grants in less than 20 hours and have a funding strategy on the other side.
- [09:13]
Becky
I was today years old when somebody told me that grant writing was easy. So let's I believe, and I want to believe that this can happen. So you are really this expert and the reason reason that I found you was because you were in this AI for grant writers conversation that I thought was really, really brilliant. And as we're just coming off impact up where we talked about pause and how do we take care of ourselves? How do we utilize our time more smartly? I really believe that AI is the future. But I don't think that many of us know how to flex AI in a way that can help us work a lot smarter. So talk about how you figured this out and what you figured out. And we also want you to dispel any myths that people might have about AI because this could be a tool that literally eliminates processes or speeds them up.
- [10:11]
Meredith Noble
So break it down for us unpopular opinion. It's not going to be saving anyone time if you don't know how to manage your time now. So the problem I see is that if you look at the history of technology, we get all of these things that save us loads of time. Right. But what do we do? We fill that time with more work and then we're still working harder and harder and harder. So the only way that you actually utilize these tools to your benefit is that you learn how to A, charge appropriately for value, not hours. And then B, like you're building the framework upon which you want to build your life and how you want to work and then the tools fit inside of that instead of the tools leading the way. Because otherwise we're just going to fill up the time and we're going to keep working harder and harder and harder. So I just want to share that because item the last person on earth that's going to be telling you that AI is going to save your day and all of a sudden you're going to have nothing to do. We've been saying that for decades and decades.
- [11:05]
Becky
Be honest. Yeah.
- [11:07]
Meredith Noble
So I'm just. But you. But what you can do with it is amazing. But that's why I'm so big on. It's a whole picture of how do we. I don't really care if someone writes grants or if they want to be a graphic designer, if they want to do any number of things. What I care about is the quality of your life. And this can be a vehicle for which you can achieve that. But that underpinning framework and skill and almost a philosophy of life has to come first. So that's that. Now you want to talk about AI, so let's go for it. Here's what we did. I had multiple, I think we all know ChatGPT entered the public lexicon in December of 2020. What? Three? What did we say? Three? I think probably.
- [11:51]
John
I think three.
- [11:53]
Becky
Yeah, it was like. I think it might have been two in December, right?
- [11:56]
Meredith Noble
Yes, December of 2020.
- [11:58]
Becky
I just remember John having to explain to me what it is like in January. And I was like, what is this? Yes.
- [12:05]
Meredith Noble
Like I knew it was something when my husband and my father told me about it before I knew what it was. You know what I mean? Like that' when it's entered. Right. I know it's an old time rancher. He's like, I think you need to get into this. So anyway, had multiple false starts, three in fact, of trying to figure out what does this mean for the grant writer to the point that I kind of was like, okay, whatever, like we're going to figure it out as it comes. And I'd almost kind of given up on being hyper proactive when I ran into someone who was in Canada by just complete chance using AI technology as a technologist to write grant applications with no background in nonprofits, no background in grants, none of that. And what they achieved was getting to a point of writing 40 grants with just 2 grant writers a month, 750k in revenue in their first year. Again, no prior experience. They were getting applications that took 60 plus hours to write down to five. So you can imagine that all of a sudden everything I thought I knew, including the funding strategy process I just described, was being called into question. And so we started working very closely together because they again, like we were really their grant writing expert, like teaching them on how this all works. But they, they had a test. Like every assumption I had, every single one of them they were testing. And I was okay with that because I thought, thank goodness someone's coming in from an outside perspective. And essentially like, this is the punchline. These tools like ChatGPT, et cetera, are open. Like they basically, like as soon as the developers are making innovations, often those innovations are just being replicated in house. As soon as you're innovative, like, and you're spending all that money doing that R and D, it can just be copied internally to the tool. So there comes a point where the reality is you're better off using the handful of tools that we have, Claude, Perplexity, chatgpt, and using those directly than trying to build and use your own all in one software for grant writers. And that was really like the big aha that came through this in the last couple weeks even. And so now I'm committed. And that's what we've been sharing is how do you actually use all of these tools effectively because no one can do them all. And in training you in how to actually build your own custom GPT and how do you use multiple AIs and how do you get it to write better? And so we're going all in on building what we're calling your AI bestie and hope to roll that out in early January where it'll be like, here is everything you need to use AI very effectively. As a great writer, what would you.
- [14:51]
John
Say are some of the limitations that A.I. you know, currently has? Because I think, you know, a lot of people are using this tool that are one person shops or they're like in a nonprofit and they're tasked with doing this. What are some things that you should be mindful of to make sure that you're not getting bad data, perpetuating that by putting it into a grant application or something like that, yeah, yeah.
- [15:11]
Meredith Noble
I can give you probably three quick answers. So one would be one of the biggest struggles people have, and I can super relate is you're like, what is the hype? This thing writes terribly. So if you're struggling to get a high to write well, you're like, what do I do? Because it also can't focus, it doesn't have a memory, it can't remember that you've trained it yesterday on everything about your organization. So how do we overcome that? And that's why it's really important to build funder context who you're pursuing the grant money from. In fundee context, you, the organization and the fundee is going to get you 80% of the way to a really good draft. The funder is going to be final, 20% that gets you a great draft, but it takes 80% of the effort. So in those two pieces, when fit together, will get you a great writing assistant. But most people don't know how to do that. And so they get frustrated because you expect AI to remember what you thought you told it already. Right? So that would be probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people have and then their frustration. Another example would be AI can't do novel. And the thing about grants is that often what's most funded are new and novel concepts. So if you're a, I don't know, like a nonprofit leading the way in some form of science innovation, and that science has never been done before, there's nothing that the AI can read and help like rework, because it's trained on information in the past that's publicly available. So in there's a variety of like National Science foundation grants or even SBIR small business innovation research grants. Like really, you're better off doing it Healthcare innovation grants, you're better off doing it the old school way, writing by hand, than wasting your time trying to get AI to do it for you. Also were learned through hard experience, right? Like learned this. Trying to write a grant for a really innovative healthcare company in Europe was how we learned that, like literally it was a disaster. Had to write it by hand is the only way. So that would be another one. I'm sure I could give you more examples, but that's like a good starting point in terms of like what it can and can't do. I mean, I think the biggest bit of what it can do is it is your writing assistant, it is your buddy, it's your thought partner. It can help you and with citations, like it can help you with research. But the oh, this would be the other major mistake I wanted to share, which is you think one tool can do it all. And I think 90% of people, when you think of AI, you think of chat GPT because it was certainly, like, the loudest, you know, largest tool we think of. But the reality is it will make up citations, it will make up data that does not exist. So that's why we love Perplexity, because Perplexity is, like, far better than Google Search, and it will give you really, really good data. So now I need to learn how do I plug those two together so my writing assistant can get good data and blend those into, like, into being an actual helpful thought partner. So it's sort of like thinking about how do I employ multiple assistants that are specialists versus thinking you're going to have one generalist.
- [18:32]
Becky
I think that's really helpful tone setting. And I want to get extremely tactical here. Like, we have a lot of, like, tiny non profits that listen to this podcast. They're spinning all the plates, doing all the things. I know you have compassion for them. But it's like, we want to talk about, like, how can AI help us with our grant writing in terms of, like, what are some key takeaways? What are some, like, tactical strategies that people could take today to help them, like, get started in this process differently?
- [19:05]
Meredith Noble
I mean, hands down, the simplest thing they could do that would serve them really well is build a custom GPT because they can train it once to write in their voice, to be, you know, to understand the fundee, the organization itself, and what it's trying to get funded. So if you take, you can literally build it in 20 minutes. I mean, realistically, by the time you, if you have to write out a lot of information, maybe we're talking two hours. But it could take you two hours to build yourself a writing assistant. And now you've got someone. And just to give you an example of how useful that is, I followed the custom GPT training that we provide to build a custom GPT, like email writing assistant. I called her Nora writes. So Nora now helps. I'm rewriting our emails. I have 52 of them to write. She is helping me write them. She's helping me do it. And it's going so much better. Like, I still have the ideas, but we're just going back and forth. And I'm like, oh, girl, that was a good line. I wouldn't have thought of that one. You know, like, we're just having fun writing. Because the thing about writing is that it's best done in collaboration with others. And often these really small non profits don't have that. They are the one woman or one man show that's trying to carry all of that. So thinking of this as like you are the project manager of many assistants and you don't. And the thing that's kind of interesting and cool about learning how to use AI is like, like you can be, you don't have to be some die hard technologist. You don't need to become a prompt engineer. Like there's so much language out there that's just really confusing. And I like to think of it as a spectrum. Like you can do the AI beginner route, you can go kind of mid tier or you can go full on nerd and wherever you feel you fit is fine. Like and you. And it's. You're still going to be getting benefits over saying basically I'm not even going to touch that.
- [20:55]
Becky
This is like a muscle. AI is very much going to be a muscle for you. And if you could even set aside to Meredith's point, 20 minutes a day. P.S. i'm trying to work this out on my own as well as someone who writes all the time and just pour 20 minutes or even five minutes or two minutes into that a day, it's going to start to build that wealth of knowledge that is uniquely you, that is uniquely your voice, that is uniquely your organization and the recall that you can pull out of that really could be transformative.
- [21:26]
John
Yeah, well, let's, let's throw out some ideas of like where to start. So if someone's listening today and they're like, oh my gosh, I gotta get in this, I gotta, you know, lean into these tools. I'm coming at it. With this growth mindset that you're describing, where do you start? Like how can we make this process more efficient for someone listening today?
- [21:42]
Becky
Sources.
- [21:43]
Meredith Noble
Yeah, I guess what my advice would be just go to our YouTube channel and search AI and then there's some trainings that are there that you could watch. Specifically the one that was in October like 20th or so. That one would be like, it's titled what AI can and can't do for Grant Writers. And that's a re that gives us several demos of showing how you link up multiple AIs and really distills the nine lessons that we learned the hard way, which I've touched on multiple of those while speaking here. But that will put it in a logical order to help you understand exactly what you can use it for and what you wouldn't use it for. And we are very all about being tactical.
- [22:23]
Becky
Meredith. We love story here at We Are For Good. And I wonder if there's a story of philanthropy or generosity that has just sort of resonated and stayed with you over the years.
- [22:36]
Meredith Noble
Yeah, there is. The story that comes to mind is there was this young boy that worked really hard. He had put little flyers on people's vehicles that, like, I'll plow your driveway for $5. You know, hand drawn flyers, because he was saving to buy a bike, a mountain bike. And that mountain bike was stolen from him. And then he didn't have a bike to get to school. He didn't have this bike to go ride the trails. And as you can imagine, it was crushing for a kid that worked all year to save up for a bike. And so I didn't have enough money at the time. I had just started my consulting business to go, like, buy him a new bike. But what I did was I made a kind of a public Facebook group. And I said, if you guys all have parts, because everybody that rides bikes has parts coming out of the Yazoo, like, you got parks everywhere. So I was like, let's put this kid a bike together. Which is when I then got an education on how hard it is to actually put bike parts together. Definitely I don't have those skills.
- [23:27]
Becky
Yeah, no clue.
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Meredith Noble
Yeah, it was. It was very humbling. I'm like, what? Like, rear hub sizes are different, you know, so. But there were like 50 people that contributed to building this kid a new bike. And not only was it that successful, they got him a second one so he would have a less nice bike to get to school and then a nice one for mountain biking. And I know that that's, you know, that's not a dedicated, like a nonprofit or anything like that. But when I. What was so cool to me was seeing the power of what community can do when called upon. And often all we need to do is have someone willing to make the ask, because. No, someone, like, all I needed to do is make the ask. And I gave an opportunity to a lot of other people to channel their frustration around theft into something positive. And so I think, as people, nonprofits are rolling into the rest of the year, like, think about what is the gift of opportunity I can give to someone to be involved, to feel good right now in a time when we need it more than ever. And you'll. I think you'll be really surprised at what, you know, some sort of a short reason to rally for something can really Move mountains.
- [24:35]
John
Yeah, I agree. I mean we love celebrating those kind of stories around here because whether it goes through a 501C3 or not, like it's about generosity and like the human experience of like what that does within us, you know. So I love that story. I see the little kid with his happy two bikes and just riding off into the sunset.
- [24:52]
Meredith Noble
How beautiful.
- [24:54]
John
So, Meredith, as we close out, we're going to ask for your one good thing. What's a piece of advice that you have? Maybe a secret to success? What's something that's lifted for you in this conversation you want to share?
- [25:04]
Meredith Noble
I think my one thing to success is building the muscle for a planning cadence in your organization. So we have a quarterly planning process where we have three rocks. There's two rocks that are maintenance rocks and one rock is a new rock. The maintenance rocks is something in your business that's already or non profit that's already in happening. But you're going to do some improvement. You're going to give it a little, maybe an oil change and then the new rock is that one new thing you're going to go all in on from beginning to end and finish it. And what is very challenging about this process is that it's brutal to pick three rocks, just three, because really it's only one new one and two maintenance ones. And you probably have about 15 rocks that need your attention or want them or are vying for it. But if you can have the discipline to truly choose only three, it is amazing the mountains you will move. And I do feel that is one of our competitive advantages. And it's a tool that anyone can use where you just build that nice little planning cadence to. This is how we get things done. So think about what are my three rocks going to be per quarter or per season, however you plan.
- [26:16]
Becky
Three rocks, John, that's all it takes. Grab me one from Moab please while you're there. Yes, plenty of them lying around. Yeah, us. Well, Meredith, we love getting to meet you and getting to learn from you. Tell people where they can connect with you. Where can they connect with Learn Grant Writing and tell us where you hang out on socials.
- [26:36]
Meredith Noble
Yeah, absolutely. All right, so the website's pretty easy to remember. Learn grantwriting.org and we're on Instagram at Learn Grant Writing as well. And then you can find me on LinkedIn.
- [26:46]
Becky
Meredith Noble, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your interest in this area that I think is so confounding and so laborious for so many. You give us hope that there is a much easier way in the future. So thank you for bringing that and Godspeed to you on your work.
- [27:04]
Meredith Noble
Thank you. Likewise.
- [27:08]
John
Hey friends, before we wrap today's episode, we wanted to tell you about an incredible new tool designed for mission driven organizations like yours. It's designed to help you save time, reduce your workload and even help you raise more money for your mission.
- [27:20]
Becky
Meet Kadiatou Cadenza, an intelligent, AI backed hub for your organization's knowledge, storytelling and impact. Nonprofits use Cadenza as their source of truth by training the tool with their own impact data, relevant content, storytelling and more. Then Cadenza securely uses this knowledge to help you work smarter and with more ease.
- [27:41]
John
Cadenza can also help you identify aligned funding opportunities, but even better, it helps you efficiently craft grant applications and your unique style and tone and of course your impact and stewardship reporting becomes so much easier with just a few clicks.
- [27:54]
Becky
With Cadenza, your org can move at the speed of AI. Sound like Cadenza might be a fit for your organization? Take a test drive with our friends today and experience how Cadenza can help you grow your mission's impact this year.
- [28:07]
John
So schedule your free demo by visiting getcadenza.com or follow the link in this episode's description. Be sure to tell them we are for good. Sent.