Eternally on the funding-hunt? You can use AI for that!
- Fanie van Rooyen
- Sep 2
- 6 min read
Pretty much all researchers will know the feeling: You’re basking in the warm afterglow of a finally-submitted paper (with gorgeous stats and figures!), and then, when you finally get a moment to catch your breath and review some admin, you realise you only have one year of funding left on your contract! And if you cannot find new funding, it’s ‘Asta la vista, baby’. Then the throat-clenching anxiety sets in, and you frantically begin to Google for open funding calls. Welcome to the never-ending grant hunt. Researchers spend a heroic amount of time (up to half!) trawling online portals, PDFs, and grant pages that still say “opening soon” from three governments ago. And about 90% of applications get rejected. But did you know that AI can do highly specific and tailored grant scouting for you? And even find grants you never would have known about? Scoot closer, this could be a game-changer if you pay attention.
By now, most researchers have kicked the tires on AI for literature triage and writing polish. Tools like Elicit help find and summarise papers at scale, while SciSpace answers questions as you read and explains the tricky bits.
For polishing their writing, academics lean increasingly on the usual suspects like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude (all of which keep getting better and better), but also on more tailored academic tools like Writefull and Trinka to keep prose crisp and journal-friendly. All of these are great, but there is an even more valuable way for researchers to get the biggest bang for their AI bucks (which, for some models, is zero bucks!). That is, scouting for the most relevant open funding calls, tailored to your exact requirements, from everywhere, almost instantly!
AI as your personal grant scout
Think of it like hiring a very keen research assistant who never sleeps, who is a world-class expert in research funding and grant sources, and who just LOVES sorting deadlines and sifting call requirements.
All it will take from you is to paste a structured prompt into your favourite AI assistant, fill in your study domain, region, budget, and constraints, then ask it to search official funder portals first, followed by diverse national, international and discipline-specific sources.
What you’ll get in return is a nifty markdown table of all relevant open or pre-announced calls, sorted by deadline (or whatever you prefer), with links and must-have eligibility. Valuable info? I think so too!
To help your AI grant scout fetch from real places, we nudge it toward public, authoritative portals first, like:
Grants.gov and the newer simpler.grants.gov (for U.S. federal calls).
The UKRI Funding Finder for UK opportunities.
EU Funding & Tenders (Horizon Europe and more), with a public Search API.
Major philanthropies, e.g., Wellcome and Grand Challenges at the Gates Foundation.
Country-specific hubs like Australia’s Research Grants Services).
You can also use AI with existing institutional grant databases like Pivot-RP, Dimensions Grants, or GrantForward, or whichever system your university subscribes to (using AI to design, accelerate and clean up the work you already do in those systems, then looping results back to AI for triage). But even if you aren’t subscribed to any database, AI can do wonders to help you find the right funding-fit. All you need is the right prompt.
Relax, we’ve done the heavy-lifting for you…
We’ve created a super prompt for creating your very own AI grant scout. All you need to do is copy and paste the prompt below into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or your tool of choice, then fill in the bracketed bits as they pertain to your unique circumstances and requirements.
Important point: Remember to use the smartest model you have access to (usually the ‘Thinking’, ‘Reasoning’ or ‘Pro’ models), and to enable ‘web search’ and ‘deep research’ for the most thorough results. And that’s it. Here’s your prompt:
🤖 You are an expert grant scouting assistant trained to identify active and relevant research funding opportunities for academic researchers.
OBJECTIVE
Identify and return currently open or pre-announced funding calls tailored to the following researcher profile:
Discipline / Topic: [e.g. Plant genomics, CRISPR crop improvement]
Career Stage / Role: [e.g. Early-career group leader, post-PhD, tenure-track]
Geographic Base / Eligible Regions: [e.g. South Africa, open to international partnerships]
Typical Project Duration / Budget Needs: [e.g. 2–4 years, USD 100k–500k]
Preferred Funding Types: [list all that apply]
– Research grants
– Mobility / travel / conference grants
– Equipment / infrastructure grants
– Fellowships / training / sabbatical funding
– Seed / proof-of-concept / accelerator funds
Exclusions or Constraints: [e.g. No military/defense funding; must allow ≥20% overheads]
SEARCH STRATEGY
Use a multi-layered search approach to maximise relevance and accuracy:
Start with global funding portals and agencies:
– Grants.gov, NIH, NSF, UKRI, EU Funding & Tenders, CORDIS, Wellcome, Gates Foundation, HHMI, IDRC, AOCR, etc.
Add country-specific and regional sources for [insert country], including:
– National science councils, local universities, funding agencies, private sector R&D funders, regional development banks, etc.
Check discipline-specific societies and major philanthropic/industry funders:
– Examples: Bayer CropScience, Corteva, Rockefeller Foundation, CGIAR, etc.
Use topic-relevant keywords and synonyms to expand the search net.
Only include calls that are currently open or pre-announced with deadlines within [insert timeline, e.g., next 9 months].
When budget info is not specified, infer based on similar past grants and label as estimated.
OUTPUT FORMAT
Return results as a Markdown table, sorted by soonest deadline first:
Funder / Agency | Call or Scheme Name | Deadline (YYYY-MM-DD) | Funding Range | Relevance Summary (≤25 words) | Key Eligibility Criteria (w/ Match Strength) | URL |
Then add (below the table):
Top Three Matches: One-line rationale for why each is an ideal fit.
Upcoming Calls to Watch: High-potential schemes not yet open but likely to launch soon.
Limitations / Data Gaps: Any known blind spots (e.g. “IDRC 2026 cycle pending”).
List of Information Sources Used: Include links to each.
QUALITY RULES
Omit expired or inactive opportunities.
Limit to 15 best-fit results; put others under “Additional Opportunities”.
For paywalled databases, only share publicly accessible summaries.
Mark match strength as: High / Medium / Speculative in the eligibility column.
Ask clarifying questions if any critical profile input is missing.
ETHICS & ACCURACY
All data must be real and verifiable. Do not fabricate deadlines, funding amounts, or eligibility info.
Clearly mark missing or uncertain info as “TBC”.
Respect funder-specific rules and regional compliance standards.
BEGIN.
Next steps
Look, we can’t do everything for you. Now, you’ll need to turn positive hits into applications:
Verify on the source page. Treat AI output as a lead list, not gospel. Click through to the official portal, confirm dates, budget, and eligibility. Double-check everything to make sure the call is relevant to you.
Set up alerts. Many portals let you save searches or subscribe to updates. If the AI has pointed you there, you might as well subscribe to be alerted of relevant calls that may pop up in future. Grants.gov even provides APIs and XML/RSS, so your team can pipe opportunities into Slack or email.
Localise your net. Add your country’s major grant agencies first. For instance, in Australia the NHMRC and ARCpublish scheme pages and calendars, with open calls listed on GrantConnect.
Pair with institutional databases. If your university has Pivot-RP, Dimensions, or GrantForward, look for the identified or similar grants there to avoid blind spots, then reconcile results against funder pages.
Caveats to keep you honest, funded and sane
AI is a brilliant bloodhound, but it often still barks up the wrong tree. As already mentioned, treat everything it finds as a lead list, then click through to the official funder page to confirm dates, budgets, and eligibility.
Expect blind spots, especially where paywalls and logins are involved, since AI often cannot get around those yet (and tools like Pivot RP, Research Professional, and Dimensions often sit behind institutional access).
Also, as with everything, read the fine print carefully for citizenship requirements, host institution rules, ethics approvals, and indirect cost policies.
Finally, protect your calendar! Grant scouting should be a morning coffee ritual, not an all-day doom-scrolling detour from your actual research. So, let the AI do the work and focus only on what is relevant, rather than letting the AI pull you into a fund-hunt frenzy.
The key benefit here is that you will be saving loads of time and most likely will discover lesser-known opportunities you never would have known about.
Dive even deeper
If you want to see what else you can do with AI, take our online course, AI for Researchers, where we walk you through practical tools for every step of the research process and set you up with lots more ready-to-use templates.
Once you’ve found relevant open funding calls, you can of course use AI for tailored, advanced grant writing as well. For a focused deep dive, our upcoming live workshop, AI for Grant Writing, will show you how to best use AI along the whole grant writing process. You will learn how to build your own custom grant writing AI assistant expert in your specific grant scheme.
Oh, and pssst! You can get 25% off until 5 September with the code EARLY_BIRD_AI_FOR_GRANTS.
