Grantwriting comes with a lot of unwritten rules.

Be polished. Have all the answers. Make the numbers work. Prove the project will last. Use the right language.

After a while, those expectations can make applying for a grant feel like its own specialized skill—one that doesn't always have much to do with how well you actually know your community or do your work.

At the Athens County Foundation, we're trying to be more thoughtful about the difference.

We still need enough information to understand what you're proposing and to make responsible decisions about the resources entrusted to us. But we don't want to mistake a polished application for a strong organization or an imperfect application for a weak one.

So let's unpack five common grantwriting myths and share what we'd rather you know instead.

Some are things applicants can let go of. Others are expectations that philanthropy, including ACF, might need to rethink too.

Myth #1: "I need to have everything figured out."

You don't.

We do need to understand what you're proposing. But clarity and certainty aren't the same thing.

Tell us what you want to do, what you're hoping to accomplish for the community, and why you believe this particular approach makes sense.

Then tell us what you don't know.

Maybe you're testing something.

Maybe you've seen enough to believe an idea is worth trying, but not enough to know exactly how people will respond.

Maybe you've intentionally left part of the plan open because you want community members to shape what happens next.

Those aren't necessarily weaknesses.

The amount of uncertainty we're able to support depends on the circumstances: the project, the organization, our available resources, what's happening in the community, and sometimes our history together.

But one thing makes uncertainty easier to navigate: being rooted in community.

When an organization knows the people it works alongside, listens to them, is accountable to them, and has demonstrated that it can learn and adapt, we don't necessarily need a crystal ball.

We need enough to understand the direction.

And if you aren't sure whether your application communicates that direction clearly, there's a remarkably low-tech solution: Give it to another human.

Ask someone you trust to read it and tell you what they think you're proposing.

Or send it to us before you submit it.

Really. You can do that.

Myth #2: "My budget needs to be perfect."

Have you purchased anything lately? Prices change. A LOT.

So no, we don't expect you to know today exactly what every expense will cost months from now.

Your budget has a relatively straightforward job: help us understand what you expect to spend the grant on.

It isn't a morality test. It also isn't a complete accounting of everything that makes your project possible.

A spreadsheet might say $8,000. It won't necessarily show the neighbor who volunteered all weekend, the organization that lent you equipment, the community member who brought food, or the dozens of relationships that made the project possible.

Those things have value too.

We're also not interested in teaching organizations that the path to funding is making their work look as inexpensive as possible.

Tell us what you actually need.

A reasonable cushion for changing costs doesn't offend us. An estimate being slightly off doesn't suddenly make an organization irresponsible. And not having an elaborate financial system doesn't mean you aren't capable of stewarding resources.

We ask for budgets because we need to understand our investment.

We don't ask for them because we're waiting to catch you buying the wrong box of paperclips.

If something changes substantially, talk with us.

That's far more useful than pretending nothing ever changes.

Myth #3: "AI can make my application sound more professional."

Oh, it certainly can. That's sometimes the problem.

We've read responses that are beautifully organized, grammatically immaculate, impressively formatted and... What are you actually doing again?

AI can produce an extraordinary amount of language without necessarily producing much meaning.

We aren't anti-AI. We use these tools too. They can be genuinely useful for brainstorming, editing, organizing thoughts, or getting started when your brain and the blank page are no longer on speaking terms.

But we've also seen applications where the language and formatting looked like an AI response that went directly from chatbot to application.

That creates an unusual problem for us. We don't know who we're listening to.

If you use AI, use it as a tool. Then go back through what it produced.

Would you actually say this? Is it true? Is it specific? Does it tell us anything about your organization, your experience, or Athens County?

Or did your simple sentence about running an after-school program somehow become: "Our innovative, community-centered initiative leverages holistic stakeholder engagement to foster transformative outcomes..."

Please give us the first sentence back.

We're not grading your grammar.

We want to hear and understand you.

Myth #4: "If we can demonstrate a community need, that's enough."

Understanding a need is important. But we also want to understand the relationship between the proposed work and the community it hopes to benefit.

Athens County is more than a set of statistics or needs. Like any community, it's shaped by its people, history, relationships, culture, strengths, tensions, and accumulated experience. People who live and work here carry knowledge that can make a good idea more relevant, responsive, and effective.

That's something we value whether an organization is based here or somewhere else.

Organizations from outside Athens County can bring valuable ideas, experience, resources, and perspectives to our community. In many cases, they already have staff, partners, participants, or longstanding relationships here. In other cases, they may be newer to the county and still building those connections.

Either is okay.

What we'd like to understand is how you're getting to know the community and allowing what you learn to inform the work.

Maybe you've been working alongside a local organization for years. Maybe members of your team live here. Maybe residents helped identify the opportunity you're responding to. Maybe you're building relationships now and your approach is still evolving because of what you're hearing.

There isn't one correct way to demonstrate community connection.

And we don't expect every project to have a long list of partners or letters of support. Collaboration can be valuable, but only when it makes sense for the work. We'd rather see a few meaningful relationships than partnerships created simply because an application seems to call for them.

What matters most is that the community isn't treated as an afterthought.

When people will be affected by the work, we hope their experiences, knowledge, and perspectives have a meaningful place in shaping it. That might look different depending on the project, the organization, and the people involved.

If your organization is newer to Athens County, you don't have to already know everyone.

Start where you are.

Tell us what connections you have, what you're learning, and where you might need help. ACF can be part of that process too. One of the benefits of being a community foundation is that we know many people and organizations doing good work across the county, and when it's useful, we may be able to help make connections.

Ultimately, we're less interested in where your office is located than in whether the work reflects care for, connection with, and respect for the community it's intended to benefit.

Myth #5: "We need to prove this project is sustainable."

We need to talk about this one.

For years, philanthropy (including us) has asked organizations: "How will you sustain the program after the grant ends?"

It's such a familiar question that we rarely stop to examine what we're asking.

Consider this: A funder agrees that a piece of work requires resources. The funder provides those resources.

Then the funder asks the nonprofit to explain how the work will continue once the resources disappear.

That's...interesting.

Maybe we need a different question.

Not: How will you make this last forever?

But: What happens next?

Those are very different conversations.

Some projects should continue.

Others shouldn't.

A pilot might teach us that an idea doesn't work. That's useful.

A temporary intervention might address a temporary circumstance.

A one-time event can create relationships that continue long after the event itself disappears.

An organization might learn enough to completely redesign its approach.

Sometimes stopping is the responsible thing to do.

We also need to resist importing a for-profit expectation that healthy organizations should continually grow, generate more revenue, expand, and perpetuate themselves.

Community organizations exist because there is work to do.

In a better world, some of that work would eventually become unnecessary.

So sustainability isn't solely a question applicants need to answer. Funders need to answer it too.

If we believe an organization is doing valuable work that requires resources, then perhaps we should spend less time asking, "How will you survive without funding?" and more time asking what role philanthropy should play in sustaining the people, relationships, organizations, and community infrastructure doing the work.

That's our question too.

Maybe the Application Isn't the Most Important Thing Here

Grantmaking requires judgment. There's no getting around that.

ACF has finite resources and a responsibility to steward them carefully. We won't fund every proposal, and there will be times when something in an application gives us pause.

But we want to be careful about what we interpret as evidence.

A messy paragraph isn't evidence of a messy organization.

An estimated budget isn't evidence of financial irresponsibility.

Uncertainty isn't evidence of incompetence.

A project ending isn't evidence of failure.

And an organization that doesn't know how to speak fluent Grant Application isn't necessarily less capable than one that does.

Sometimes the organization with the beautifully polished proposal has simply had more access to professional grant writers, consultants, technology, education, time, and fundraising infrastructure.

We don't want access to those resources to become a proxy for worthiness.

What interests us much more is whether an organization understands its work, has meaningful relationships with the community, uses resources responsibly, learns from what happens, and tells us what it knows—and what it doesn't.

So, yes, make your application clear.

Check your budget.

Read whatever AI helped you write.

Help us understand your relationship with the community.

Think about what happens after the project.

But don't confuse any of that with needing to prove that you are a perfect organization.

We aren't one either.

We're two organizations trying to figure out whether resources held here can help good work happen here.

That's a much more interesting conversation than whether you filled out the grant application perfectly.

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updated: 8/26/2026

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Shayne Lopez
Program Director,
Grantmaking and Community Impact