Center for Rural AI Releases Open-Source Grant Writing Assistant for Nonprofits

The Center for Rural AI (CRAI) released the Grant Sourcing and Writing Assistant, an open-source AI tool that helps nonprofits identify and research new grant opportunities, determine eligibility, and produce first-draft applications without any technical background required. Today, the assistant fully powers CRAI's grant activities and is deployed in multiple nonprofits.

Jason Strickland, Head of Technology at CRAI, and Jackson Berridge, CRAI's Grant Writer, built the tool, and CRAI has been benefiting greatly from it.

Although the Grant Writing Assistant was originally built for small nonprofits, the tool is designed to scale to fit the needs of larger organizations as well.

The tool runs inside Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant. Organizations download an installer skill from GitHub that automatically sets up all other skills and dependencies, with grant data and search results stored directly in Airtable. Those skills handle everything from prospect scanning to first-draft writing. Organizations start by completing a thorough questionnaire to create a profile that captures their mission, programs, and budget. That profile drives every grant search, evaluation, and draft the tool produces.

For Berridge, the results were immediate:

“In less than an hour, we went from no grant database in Airtable, no skills installed, to a completely workable grant management platform and an agent doing its first search for new grant opportunities.”

The tool now saves him hours each week that would otherwise be spent manually searching for opportunities. An Audit Log records every decision the tool makes, tracking what was searched, what was scored, and why.

“The audit log is the system's memory. It's what makes this accountable rather than just fast.”

The audit log helps users understand what the tool is doing under the hood so they can be confident in its results, and even detect gaps or fine-tune their search parameters.

The Grant Writing Assistant is live on GitHub at github.com/RuralAI/grant-assistant at no cost. The team also encourages users to share feedback to support future development.

About the Center for Rural AI

The Center for Rural AI is a fiscally sponsored project of SW Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3), based in Durango, Colorado. CRAI helps rural communities, institutions, and businesses build practical AI capacity through hands-on training, real-world pilots, and open playbooks. Learn more at ruralai.org.

Media contact: press@ruralai.org