Frequently asked questions

No. Grant writing is not a licensed profession, and no law or funder requires the person who writes an application to hold a credential. Nonprofits and clients hire grant writers on the strength of their writing samples, their track record and how well they understand the process. A certification helps most when you have little track record yet, because it gives an employer or client concrete evidence that you have been trained and assessed. Our guide on how to become a grant writer sets out the full path.

No. The Certified Grant Writing Professional (C.G.W.P.) designation is a training certificate issued by the Professional Grant Writing Institute to people who complete the course and pass its exam. It is not a government license, and grant writing does not have one. What it does show is that you have studied the whole proposal process, from funder research to evaluation, and demonstrated it in an exam that includes written answers read by a person. Anyone can confirm a certificate is genuine on our verification page.

With us, there are three steps. Enroll in either course, work through the written units at your own pace, and pass the open-book final exam, which has 30 multiple-choice questions and 4 short written answers and needs 70 out of 100 to pass. Your C.G.W.P. certificate is issued once your written answers are marked. Both the Professional Grant Writing Course and the Advanced course lead to the same professional grant writing certification, so you can start with the smaller one.

Yes. Our course and exam are entirely online, with no classes to attend and no set timetable, and your certificate is issued as a digital document with its own verification id. Online grant writing certification suits the work itself, which is done at a desk, by email and through funder portals. When comparing online programs, look at whether there is a real assessment at the end. A certificate of attendance for watching videos says much less than one earned by passing an exam that includes written answers someone actually reads.

Our Professional Grant Writing Course is $247 and the Advanced Grant Writing Course is $498. The price includes the course, the final exam, up to 2 attempts at it and your certificate, with no annual fee and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Costs vary widely elsewhere. University continuing education certificates are usually priced as several separate courses, and experienced-practitioner credentials charge their own application and exam fees. The courses page compares our two options side by side.

There is plenty of free grant writing training, and some of it is good. Grants.gov publishes free material explaining the federal process, and many foundations and community foundations run free workshops for applicants. What is rarely free is an assessed credential, because marking written work and verifying certificates costs money. A sensible route is to read the free material first, including our guide on how to write a grant, and pay for certification once you know you want evidence of your training to show others.

It depends on where you are starting. If you already have funded proposals to show, your results will usually speak louder than any certificate. If you are new, changing careers or moving from program work into development, a certificate gives you structured training and something concrete to put in front of a hiring manager or first client. It will not guarantee work or a particular income. Our guides to grant writing jobs and what grant writers make will help you judge whether the career suits you first.

No government agency or independent body accredits grant writing certificates as such. When a program describes itself as accredited, it usually means the college or university offering it holds institutional accreditation, which is a statement about the school rather than a license to practice. Our C.G.W.P. certification is not accredited by an outside body, and we do not claim it is. It is a training certificate backed by an exam that we set and mark ourselves, and its standards are published on our certification standards page.

The best one is the one that fits your stage. For experienced practitioners, the best-known independent credential is the Grant Professional Certified (GPC) designation, which requires documented years of grant work before you can sit its exam. For people entering the field, the best choice is a course that teaches the full proposal process and assesses you on real written work. That is what our course is built to do. Many grant professionals take an entry-level course first and pursue the GPC later, once they have the experience it asks for.

The GPC (Grant Professional Certified) is awarded by the Grant Professionals Certification Institute to experienced practitioners. Candidates must first qualify through a points-based application documenting education, several years of grant experience and professional development, and then pass an exam with multiple-choice and writing sections. It is not designed for beginners. The C.G.W.P. has no experience requirement, because it certifies that you have been trained, not that you have years behind you. This course is where people start, and the GPC is a credential you might pursue later. The certification standards page sets the two side by side.

No agency issues a federal grant writing certification, and federal agencies do not require the writer of an application to hold one. The formal requirements fall on the applicant organization, which must be registered in SAM.gov and apply through Grants.gov or the agency's own system. What federal work does demand is skill with long funding announcements and strict compliance rules. The Advanced Grant Writing Course has a full unit on federal applications, covering registration, reading a notice of funding opportunity and building a compliance matrix.

The course is self-paced, with no deadline and no expiry on access, so the timeline is yours. Each unit is a substantial written lesson with worked examples, a practice quiz and written assignments. If you set aside time for one unit a week, the Professional course takes about six weeks and the Advanced course about ten, though some people move faster. The exam is a single sitting, so allow a clear hour, and the written half is usually marked within two business days. You can see the unit list on the courses page.

No particular degree is required. Many grant writers come from nonprofit program work, teaching, communications or research, and what employers look for is clear writing, careful attention to instructions, comfort with a budget and the ability to meet a hard deadline. A degree can help with some in-house roles, but samples of your writing usually matter more. Our step-by-step guide on how to become a grant writer covers building those samples when you have no clients yet.

Income varies widely with the setting, the region, the kind of funder and whether you work on staff or freelance, so a single average figure would mislead you. Staff grant writers are usually salaried, while freelancers charge by the hour, by the project or on a retainer. Our guide on how much grant writers make explains each payment model, and the grant writer income calculator lets you test your own numbers.

Start from the hours a proposal really takes you, including research, meetings with the client, revisions and submission, then decide on an hourly figure that covers your costs, taxes and unpaid time between projects. Many freelancers then quote a flat project fee built from that estimate. The grant writer rate calculator walks through the arithmetic, and Unit 10 of the Advanced course covers scoping work so a project does not quietly double in size.

It is widely treated as improper. Professional bodies, including the Grant Professionals Association in its code of ethics, reject commission or percentage-based pay, and many funders do not allow grant money to pay a writer's success fee. The reasons are practical as well as ethical. Grant funds are restricted to the project, a percentage rewards inflating the request, and it ties your pay to a decision nobody controls. Charge an hourly rate or a flat fee instead, as explained in our guide to grant writer pay.

Staff roles are often titled grant writer, grants manager or development associate, and they are advertised on nonprofit job boards, general job sites and the careers pages of universities, hospitals and larger nonprofits. Freelance work more often comes through referrals, local nonprofit networks and community foundations. Our guide to grant writing jobs covers the kinds of roles available and how to present yourself for each.

Build evidence before you ask anyone to pay you. Volunteer to write a small grant for a local organization you already know, write a sample proposal from a real funding announcement, and ask for honest feedback on both. Small community foundation grants are a good place to start, because the applications are short and the decisions are quick. Our guide on becoming a grant writer sets out a sensible order, and the final unit of the Advanced course covers finding and scoping client work.

Registration belongs to the applicant organization, not to you. An organization applying for federal funding must hold an active SAM.gov registration, which gives it a Unique Entity ID, and must have people authorized to submit through Grants.gov or the agency's own system. Registration can take weeks, so check it before accepting a federal deadline. Our article on how to read a grant announcement explains where these requirements appear in a notice.

Read the funder's guidelines and scoring criteria first, then write the statement of need, the goals and objectives, the approach, the evaluation plan and the budget, keeping every figure consistent across them. The summary and cover letter come last. Our guide on how to write a grant walks through each stage, and the grant writing templates explain what each document needs to contain.

Yes, and it is one of the best ways to start. You already understand the programs, you know the people who will need to sign off, and a funded grant gives you a real result to show. Agree in writing whether the work is voluntary or paid, and who owns the finished proposal. Our guide to grant writing for nonprofits explains how nonprofits find funders and organize their grant calendar.

The entire course is online, so you can study from anywhere at any time. There are no in-person classes or meet-ups, and nothing is scheduled, which suits people fitting the training around a job or around grant deadlines of their own.

The course is written, not video, because grant writing is a written skill. Each unit is a read-through built around worked examples of real proposal sections, followed by a practice quiz and a short set of written assignments. You get instant access to your student dashboard the moment you enroll.

The Professional Grant Writing Course includes six core units covering the funding landscape, funder research, proposal structure, narrative writing, budgets and supporting materials, and logic models and evaluation. The Advanced Grant Writing Course adds four further units on federal grants, foundation and corporate funding, the review and submission system, and building a grant writing career.

No. There are no education requirements and no experience is assumed. If you can write clearly in English and have a device with internet access, you are ready to enroll. People who already work in a nonprofit will recognize much of the material, and people new to the sector will find it explained from the start.

We offer two options depending on how far you want to go. The Professional Grant Writing Course is $247 and the Advanced Grant Writing Course is $498. You can compare both on the courses page.

Low overhead. Everything is delivered online as written units, with no classrooms and no live sessions to staff, and the technology that tracks your progress and runs the exam keeps our costs down. We pass that saving on rather than charging for the course one module at a time.

No hidden charges, subscription fees or annual renewal fees for the certificate. You pay once for your course, and the exam, your resit if you need it and your certificate are included.

Both courses come with a 100% money-back guarantee. If you decide the training is not right for you, just email us within 30 days and we will refund your payment, no questions asked.

You take an open-book online exam of 30 multiple-choice questions and 4 short written answers. You need at least 70 out of 100 to pass. You get up to 2 attempts and a resit costs nothing, with no waiting period in between. The exam is one sitting rather than something you save and come back to, so give yourself a clear hour.

The multiple-choice half is scored the moment you submit. The written half is read by a person, usually within two business days, and your result arrives by email. If you do not pass, you get notes on what would have earned full marks rather than just a number.

Yes. Once you complete the course and pass the exam, you receive a personalized digital certificate with your name, the date you finished and a verification id, naming you a Certified Grant Writing Professional (C.G.W.P.).

You resit it, at no cost, up to 2 attempts in total. Your result email tells you your score, splits it between the multiple-choice and written halves so you know where to focus, and includes any notes your marker left. You can sit it again as soon as you are ready.

There is no password. Enter your email address on the sign-in page and we send you a six digit code that lasts ten minutes. The code only works in the browser that asked for it, so request it on the device you want to use. If it does not arrive, wait a minute before asking for another one, and check your spam folder.

Payments are confirmed by our payment provider a moment after you pay, and access opens automatically when that lands. If you sign in during that gap you will see a page saying we are confirming your payment, and it opens your course by itself. If it has been more than a few minutes, email us with the reference on that page.

Sign in and open your account page. Every purchase is listed there with its invoice number, and the "Open billing and receipts" button takes you to our payment provider where you can download the receipt itself.

Yes, and you only pay the difference, currently $251, rather than the full price. The option is on your dashboard once you are signed in. It charges the card you enrolled with, and if that card no longer works you can complete it at the normal checkout instead.

No. They are yours to work through and nobody marks them. They matter for a different reason, which is that the written half of the final exam is drawn from the first assignment question in units 1 to 4, and your own answer is already in the box when you sit it.

No. Each unit quiz is practice, your score is not reported to anyone, and it has no effect on your certificate. It exists so you can check something landed before building on top of it. The final exam is the one that counts.

No. Access does not expire, there is no schedule, and nothing is lost if you put it down for a few months. Your progress is saved as you go.