upwork.com is a site to match clients with contractors providing many different services. They offer extensive options for Grant Writers, and can pair you with an experienced professional. In order to search the different options, you must create a free account with a job posting for grant writers to consider. Here’s the video walkthrough, and written steps below to help you get there!
Go to upwork.com and review the different contracting options
If you’d like to review individual Grant Writer profiles, you’ll have to create an account and a job posting. Here are the following steps:
Click “Sign Up” in the top-right corner
Select “I’m a client, hiring for a project”
Enter your account information, create account, and verify your email address.
Select the business size appropriate for you
Draft a job posting in 8 steps
Write a headline for your post
For instance, if you are applying for the Value-Added Producer Grant (VAPG), you could write “Narrative-based grant writing for value-added product”
For the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) grant, you could write “Narrative-based grant writing for agricultural research project”
Select Skills required for your job posting
Search skills or choose from suggestions for Grant Writing
Good examples include: Grant Writing +, Grant Application +, Market Research +, Budget Proposal +, Agriculture+, or anything specific to your grant application!
Select your Scope of Work
Options include Small, Medium, or Large. Most grant applications are considered Medium, well-defined projects with a clear deadline. However, if your grant program requires constant research/writing support through the implementation of your project, you may want to consider selecting Large.
Estimate how long the work will take. Most applications only take 1-3 months.
Decide your preferred Level of Experience. This depends on the complexity of your project and application. For projects requesting under $10K in funds, Intermediate to Entry level should suffice. We recommend Expert level experience for grants over $10K. However, Expert experience is useful for any project size.
Select your Location
We recommend U.S. only options
Select your Budget
You can select an Hourly rate or a Project budget. For Hourly Rates, we recommend $50 to $100/hour. Project budgets allow you to select a maximum that you’re willing to spend. Here is a rough estimate of the hours per grant program we’d expect:
SARE: 20-30 hours
VAPG: 80-100 hours
REAP: 100 hours
LFPP: 100 hours
For VAPG, the total project cost could be between $5,000 to $10,000.
Write your job description
It’s up to you how detailed of a description to provide. The more details the better a Grant Writer can gage the cost of their services.
Almost all grant applications have a Request For Proposals (RFP) or Application Toolkits, documents that outline the application process. We recommend using language from these resources to assist in drafting your description. Adding details specific to your project and expectations in a grant writer are helpful. We recommend attaching that RFP or other related documents to the job description, by selecting “Attach file.”
Here’s an example: “Looking for a Grant Writing to support the narrative-based sections of a Value-Added Producer Grant application. I am applying for $5,000 to expand the honey processing operations on my farm. The narrative-based portion of the application has 8 open-ended responses concerning market research and product development, as well as a budget proposal. Please read the Application Toolkit attached to this posting for more details.”
Review your Job Post
You can add addition “Screening Questions” such as:
Have you had experience with VAPG or other USDA grant programs?
Please list your recent, relevant experience.
How do you incorporate feedback and edits into your work?
You can also add “Advanced Preferences” such as:
Hire by February 1st
Capacity for 5-10 hours per week, 2 weeks
Your Job Post can always be edited as you learn more about the application process, or you want to better filter for specific tasks or attributes from a grant writer. Your job post doesn’t have to be perfect!
Post your job!
Once you’ve posted your job, you can invite “Talent,” individual grant writers, to review your job post.
Upwork will prompt you to complete your account profile by:
Adding a billing method to your account. Doing so will speed up your grant writing search, but isn’t necessary.
Select an industry associated with your profile such as: Agriculture & Forestry, Education, Food & Beverage, or Travel & Hospitality
Select how many people are in your company
Connect with Grant Writers by:
Inviting freelancers - review profiles of possible grant writers and invite them to consider your job post
Reviewing proposals - grant writers will reach out with offers for your job post, even without inviting them
We recommend waiting a couple weeks, depending on your timeline and the application deadline, to let job proposals build up and giving you options in cost and quality.
Hiring a Grant Writer
Once you selected the right choice for you, you can hire them through UpWork!
Select “Hire Freelancer” which will bring you to a separate page where you can finalize your payment, job description, and any other details of your contract.
You must upload a payment method through UpWork to finalize your offer