Learn to find, write, and win grants
The Grant Lab walks you through every stage — from spotting the right opportunities to submitting a polished proposal and stewarding the funder relationship — so you stop leaving money on the table and start getting funded.
"A great project deserves to get funded — and I'll show you exactly how to make that case."— Dawn Olson
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Identify and vet grant opportunities that are a genuine fit for your project or organization
- Write a compelling needs statement and project narrative that funders actually want to fund
- Build a realistic, funder-ready budget with accurate line items and justifications
- Craft persuasive letters of inquiry (LOIs) that get you invited to submit full proposals
- Track deadlines, manage a grant calendar, and juggle multiple applications without dropping the ball
- Follow up professionally after submission, respond to funder questions, and steward relationships that lead to repeat awards
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 15 lessons
Finding Your Fit: Researching and Vetting Grant Opportunities
Before writing a single word, grant seekers must understand how the funding landscape works and how to identify opportunities that are genuinely aligned with their mission, project, and capacity. This foundational module ensures learners enter the research process with the right mental model — so they never waste time chasing the wrong grants.
- 1.1How Grant Funding Actually WorksIncluded
- 1.2Where to Find Grants: Search Tools and DatabasesIncluded
- 1.3Vetting Opportunities: Is This Grant Worth Pursuing?Included
Crafting the Letter of Inquiry (LOI)
Many funders use the LOI as a gatekeeper — only the most compelling submissions get invited to submit a full proposal. This module teaches learners to treat the LOI as a strategic sales document: concise, funder-centric, and designed to earn a 'yes, please send us the full proposal.' Placing this module before the full narrative modules is intentional: the LOI forces learners to distill their project to its essence before they expand it.
- 2.1Anatomy of a Winning LOIIncluded
- 2.2Writing Your LOI: Draft to PolishedIncluded
Building the Case: Needs Statement and Project Narrative
This is the heart of any full grant proposal. Learners master the art of making a funder-credible case for why the problem is urgent, why their project is the right solution, and why their organization is the right team to deliver it. The module progresses logically from problem (needs statement) to solution (narrative) to proof of viability (evaluation, sustainability, and capacity).
- 3.1Writing a Needs Statement That Funders BelieveIncluded
- 3.2Project Narrative: Goals, Activities, and OutcomesIncluded
- 3.3Evaluation, Sustainability, and Organizational CapacityIncluded
Building a Funder-Ready Budget
A sloppy budget kills proposals that have strong narratives. This module teaches learners to build budgets that are accurate, complete, realistic, and internally consistent with the project narrative — so that every dollar is defensible and the budget itself signals organizational competence.
- 4.1Budget Basics: Line Items, Categories, and Math That Checks OutIncluded
- 4.2Budget Narratives: Justifying Every DollarIncluded
Managing the Grant Calendar and Juggling Multiple Applications
Winning individual grants is a skill; sustaining a grants program is a system. This module moves learners from reactive scrambling to proactive pipeline management — building the organizational infrastructure that makes it possible to pursue multiple grants simultaneously without sacrificing quality or missing deadlines.
- 5.1Building Your Grant Calendar and Tracking SystemIncluded
- 5.2Reusing and Adapting Your Work Across Multiple GrantsIncluded
After Submission: Follow-Up, Relationships, and Repeat Awards
The submission is not the finish line — it's the beginning of a funder relationship. This module teaches learners what to do in the silence after submission, how to respond professionally to funder questions and site visits, how to steward awards into repeat funding, and how to learn from both rejections and wins to sharpen future proposals.
- 6.1Following Up After SubmissionIncluded
- 6.2Handling Awards and Rejections StrategicallyIncluded
- 6.3Stewardship, Reporting, and Turning One Grant Into ManyIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Nonprofit founders
You're running a mission-driven org on a shoestring and need to build a real, repeatable funding strategy beyond one-off donations.
Independent artists
You have a project worth funding but no development team — this gives you the exact skills to pursue foundation grants on your own.
Academic researchers
Your work is rigorous and important, and learning to translate it into compelling grant narratives is the missing piece between idea and funding.
Small-org directors
You're often the grant writer, program director, and everything else — this course gives you a system that works even when you're short on time.
Community advocates
You're doing vital grassroots work and learning to write compelling grants means your community's projects finally get the resources they deserve.
First-time applicants
You've never submitted a grant before and want to do it right — this is the structured, plain-language starting point that takes you from zero to submitted.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Dawn Olson
If you've ever stared at a grant portal at 11pm, wondering whether what you're writing sounds credible or completely naive — I get it. Most people who need grant funding have never been taught how to pursue it. They piece things together from old samples, contradictory advice, and sheer determination. Sometimes it works. A lot of the time, it doesn't, and they never find out why.
That's what The Grant Lab is here to fix.
I built this course because the gap between "great project" and "funded project" is almost never about the quality of the work. It's about knowing how to communicate that work to funders in the specific language they respond to. It's about finding the right opportunities before you burn time on the wrong ones. It's about structuring a budget so it doesn't raise red flags. It's about following up in a way that builds a relationship instead of burning one. These are learnable skills — not insider secrets, not things you need a master's degree to understand — and that's exactly how I teach them.
In The Grant Lab, we go module by module through the full grant process: how to research and vet opportunities so you're only chasing grants you can actually win; how to write a letter of inquiry that gets you to the next stage; how to build a needs statement and project narrative that make your case clearly and compellingly; how to put together a budget that's honest, accurate, and justifiable dollar by dollar. And then we go further — into managing your calendar when you're juggling multiple deadlines, and into what happens after you submit, including how to handle awards, navigate rejections, and turn a single funder relationship into a long-term funding stream.
I've written this course for the nonprofit founder who's wearing twelve hats, the independent artist who doesn't have a development office, the researcher who knows their work matters but doesn't know how to make funders see it, and the community advocate who's tired of watching under-resourced projects get overlooked. You are more ready for this than you think. You just need the right roadmap.
Come build it with me.
— Dawn Olson
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- 6 modules, 15 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed