Grant Rfp Writer

# Grant and RFP Writer

Find the opportunities worth pursuing, kill the ones that are not, and draft the rest from what the organization has actually done.

The workflow this comes from is specific and demanding: filter a daily solicitation feed, qualify fast, and get to a defensible volume — up to 50 bids a week in under two hours a day. The bottleneck is never writing. It is deciding what not to write.

## Step 0 — Name the audience, then follow the owner

This skill is built around nonprofits, government contractors, and education. Check the stored business context before anything else. When it shows a for-profit with no government-contract work on file, say so in one sentence and offer the choice — **never refuse to run**:

> "This skill is tuned for grants and government solicitations. For a > commercial RFP or bid, `proposal-builder` is usually the better fit — or I > can run this one for you. Which would you like?"

If the owner says run it, run it: for-profits can and do pursue grants, government work, and formal solicitations. The eligibility screens in the go/no-go handle entity-type fit case by case; a mismatch surfaces there as a finding, not here as a refusal. The one thing this step must never do is stall the owner with a lecture about who the skill is for.

## Step 1 — Understand the organization once

Before searching or drafting anything, build the profile that every later step reads. Detail in `reference/org_profile.md`.

What it holds: legal entity type and status, registrations (SAM.gov, UEI, CAGE, state charity registration), NAICS or NTEE codes, certifications (8(a), HUBZone, WOSB, SDVOSB, minority-owned), service area, program areas, budget size, audit status, insurance and bonding capacity, and past performance.

**Past performance is the asset.** Past submissions, awarded and lost, are the single most valuable input to every future draft — the language, the outcome data, the staff bios, the boilerplate. Gather them from Drive, M365, or uploads and index them properly.

**Confirm whose Drive it is before the first read** (`../../shared/tenant-scope.md`). A document store attached to the session is not the organization's by default: match the account to the business name or domain in the `## Business context` block, or have the owner name the folder, and search by the organization's name — never browse recent files. No match, or no business context yet, means stop and ask; an upload is always a complete path.

## Step 2 — Find opportunities that fit

Search the sources that match the organization type. `reference/opportunity_sources.md` lists them: SAM.gov and agency portals for federal contracting, Grants.gov and foundation directories for nonprofits, state and municipal portals, and prime-contractor subcontracting pages.

**Those portals are US ones.** Read `Country` from the `## Business context` block first (`../../shared/currency-and-locale.md`). If the business is not in the US, say so in one line, ask where the owner finds opportunities today (a national tender portal, a funder directory, a prime's supplier page), and search those instead. The filter, the go/no-go, and every drafting step below run unchanged; only the sourcing list is US-specific.

**No feed connector means web research or a paste, never a document store.** There is no SAM.gov, Grants.gov, or DIBBS connector today: fetch the public portal pages the owner names, or take the day's feed as a paste or upload. Drive and M365 hold past submissions (Step 1), not opportunities — a missing feed never falls back to reading whatever files are connected (`../../shared/tenant-scope.md`).

**Filter hard on the way in.** The point of a daily feed is that most of it is not for you. Screen on eligibility, NAICS or program area, set-aside status, dollar size against capacity, geography, and deadline feasibility before anything reaches the owner.

Surface a short list with the reason each one made it, plus a count of what was filtered and why. The count is what builds trust in the filter.

## Step 3 — Go/no-go, before a word gets drafted

**This step is mandatory and it comes first.** Writing a response the organization is disqualified from wastes an evening the owner does not have, and it is the most common failure in this whole area of work.

The disqualifying checks, run in this order and detailed in `reference/go_no_go.md`:

1. **Eligibility** — entity type, registration status, certifications, geography, size standard. Any miss is a hard no. 2. **Mandatory qualifications** — required past performance, licenses, bonding, staffing, facility clearances. Read the exact wording; "shall" and "must" are disqualifiers. 3. **Compliance mechanics** — deadline, submission format, page limits, required forms, portal registration lead time. 4. **Capacity** — can the organization actually deliver if it wins. 5. **Fit and odds** — incumbent presence, scope of the ask, cost of bidding against realistic win probability.

**Say no clearly an