84% Average Fund Rate

No one who understands grant making will promise you an award — and you should be skeptical of anyone who does. Funding decisions involve reviewer panels, agency priorities, budget availability, and cohort competition that no writer controls. What we can guarantee: a compliant, competitive narrative that accurately represents your work and gives your application the best possible chance. Our 84% fund rate reflects that standard applied consistently. The 16% that didn't fund were almost always competitive second-round losses, not compliance failures.

We work from what you have, not what you wish you had. At minimum, we need: your most recent program data (participant counts, outcomes, geographic reach), your current budget and any existing logic model or program description, the NOFA or foundation guidelines, and 90 minutes of your time across two calls — one discovery, one review. We've written winning proposals from a one-page program summary and a Zoom call. The narrative is our job. Your job is to know your work.

First-time applicants win competitive grants every cycle — including from funders who claim to "prioritize existing grantees." What matters is fit: does your work align with the funder's stated priorities, and can you document that alignment compellingly? We assess fit before we take an engagement. If we don't think your project is competitive for a specific opportunity, we'll tell you that in the discovery call rather than take your money on a long shot.

Standard engagements run 3–5 weeks from signed agreement to submission-ready draft. We've worked 10-day turnarounds when the project was well-documented and the client was available. We don't recommend less than two weeks for a federal application — the compliance requirements alone (SF-424, budget narrative, certifications) require careful attention. If you're looking at a deadline inside two weeks, call us anyway — we'll tell you honestly whether it's feasible.

Yes. We have specific experience with tribal government applications (BIA, IHS, EPA tribal set-asides, Administration for Native Americans) and with Native-led nonprofit applications to foundations with indigenous equity priorities. Tribal sovereignty and self-determination framing require different narrative approaches than standard nonprofit language — we understand that distinction and write accordingly. We do not treat tribal applications as a specialty add-on; they're part of our core practice.