True North | First Edition
Welcome to Civic North's inaugural newsletter.
Chrysalis Community Wellness just landed their first grant.
A small nonprofit expanding holistic care for veterans and service members in the Snoqualmie Valley, with a big mission and zero grant-writing infrastructure when we met. Founder Elisa Bergquist put it this way: “With Civic North's guidance, Chrysalis Community Wellness secured our first grant opportunity, a huge milestone for our organization.”
We are still smiling about this one.
Your proposal's first reader might not be human.
We spent last month at the APMP conference in Denver (and came home with two APMP Foundation certifications, thank you very much). The theme that kept surfacing in session after session: funders and agencies are increasingly using AI tools to screen proposals before a human ever sees them.
That changes how you write. Three adjustments worth making now:
• 1. Mirror the solicitation's exact language. If the evaluation criteria say “community-based outcomes,” your proposal says “community-based outcomes.” Elegant synonyms confuse screeners. Save the poetry for the narrative sections.
• 2. Answer first, explain second. Screening tools (and tired human evaluators) reward proposals where the direct answer to each requirement appears in the first sentence of the response, not the fourth paragraph.
• 3. Keep the human story. AI screens, but people decide. The winning combination is machine-readable structure carrying an emotionally intelligent story. Precision gets you past the robot. The story wins the room.
We wrote up the storytelling half of this equation, including the Pixar structure we use in real proposals, on the blog.
Read the full breakdown.
Steal This
Before your next submission, run this test: put the evaluation criteria and your draft side by side. For every scored criterion, can you point to the single sentence that answers it? If you have to say “well, it's sort of covered in section three,” so does the evaluator. And the evaluator doesn't have to be generous.
Behind the Scenes
Six months in! April and Sophie survived the Denver altitude, collected APMP certifications, and have been repping Civic North at City of Carnation Chamber of Commerce events. Grant season is in full swing, which around here counts as the fun part.
Wondering whether your next pursuit is actually winnable before you spend three weeks writing it? That is literally what our free 30-minute diagnostic call is for.
Book a diagnostic call
All the best,
Sophie
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P.S. What's the biggest grant or bid on your radar this quarter?
Hit reply and tell us. We read every response, and yes, we will have opinions.