Written by: Nicole K Sowers
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a powerful ally for public health agencies, streamlining the often-arduous grant application process and helping agencies secure much-needed funding. Nightingale Notes by Champ Software, is an EHR system dedicated to public health.
At Champ Software, we’ve been exploring AI’s potential to complete local public health grant applications. Those experiments yielded promising results, particularly in generating comprehensive and well-structured outlines for grant responses.
The landscape of local public health is constantly evolving, and in times of budget constraints, securing funding for vital individual, family, and community services becomes more critical than ever. As budgets tighten, many public health agencies find themselves scrambling to maintain essential programs. Utilizing AI isn’t about replacing the human touch, but rather augmenting it, allowing dedicated public health professionals to focus their expertise where it matters most – serving their communities
The Grant Gauntlet: A Familiar Challenge
Grant writing is time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring thorough research, persuasive narratives, and strict compliance with guidelines. For understaffed public health departments facing budget cuts, dedicating time to this process is often a luxury, leading to missed opportunities and reduced critical services for vulnerable populations.
What We Tried: Tools Using AI for Grants
There are new tools everyday. We looked at just a few like, https://www.grantable.co/ which is one of many paid tools. When thinking about what AI tools could do for our clients who need to apply for grants, we started simple at Champ Software. Our clients usually don’t have funds to acquire software. We started with a free version of Google Gemini.
To illustrate what a Gemini prompt response can give you, we used a prompt of “write a brief paragraph describing how a person can use the free Google Gemini prompts to create a grant response by feeding the grant application into the prompt and explain what a prompt means to someone who hasn’t used Gemini before.” The following paragraphs are the result from Gemini:
You create a grant response by strategically feeding the grant application’s various sections into the AI prompt. A “prompt” to Gemini is essentially an instruction, a question, or a piece of information you provide to the AI, telling it what you want it to do or what kind of output you’re seeking.
For instance, you can copy the problem statement or program description from the grant and prompt Gemini by saying, “rewrite this to be more concise and compelling for a funder,” or “strengthen the emotional appeal of this paragraph to align with our mission.” You can also prompt Gemini to summarize lengthy guidelines by copying the text and asking, “summarize this grant’s guidelines, highlighting key funder priorities.”
Additionally, you can provide a funder’s website URL and prompt it to “identify the key funder priorities from this website.” You can even draft initial responses for specific questions, using your organization’s existing data and reports as context, by prompting it with something like, “Draft a response to the question ‘Describe your program’s impact,’ using the following outcomes data: [paste your data here].”
Remember to review and refine Gemini’s output thoroughly to ensure accuracy, alignment with your organization’s voice, and adherence to all grant requirements.
That’s a pretty good way to help us understand the basics of using Gemini prompts and applying it to a grant application.
How Did AI Do for A Grant Application
We found a grant on grants.gov that aligns with grants our local health departments may apply for. Each section of the grant was copy/pasted into the prompt with some instructions like: Leave placeholders to customize the agency name, be genuine and concise. Here’s are two examples of the results:
STEP 1: The instructions for the Executive Summary section of the grant were put into the prompt with instructions to write a personalized, genuine, clear summary including placeholders for an agency to put their name into the summary. Here’s the result:
Executive Summary
[Your Local Health Department] is seeking funding from the Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program to implement a comprehensive substance use prevention and intervention program. This program will leverage cutting-edge software to track substance use trends, intervention outcomes, and identify effective strategies to reduce substance use among youth in [Your Community]. By utilizing data-driven insights, we aim to strengthen our community’s capacity to prevent and reduce substance use, ultimately creating a healthier and safer environment for our youth.
STEP 2: Next the Project Activities instructions from the grant application were copied into the Gemini prompt with instructions to be clear and concise, focus on software acquisition, community collaboration, data analysis and documenting outcomes. Here is the result:
Project Activities:
- Software Acquisition and Implementation: Purchase and implement a comprehensive substance use tracking and management software system.
- Data Collection and Analysis: Collect and analyze data on substance use trends, intervention outcomes, and risk factors using data collected in acquired software.
- Community Collaboration and Capacity Building: Strengthen partnerships with local organizations and provide training and technical assistance on evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies.
- Evaluation and Reporting: Conduct ongoing evaluation of the program’s effectiveness and submit regular progress reports to the DFC Support Program.
Each section of the grant was copied into the Gemini prompt. The results did need some editing to make them unique and tell the story of the agency but it was a good start!
In part 2 of this blog series, we discuss AI as a Strategic Partner in Grant Acquisition and AI as a Growing Trend.

Side note: The illustration at the top of this blog post was generated by Google Gemini with a prompt of “draw an image illustrating how AI can help public health”. The first attempts had odd and misspelled text on them, so we asked it to “remove all text”.
Citations:
- Danaher-Garcia, N. (2024, June 4). Using Artificial Intelligence to Decide Which Research is Worthy of Funding. MGH IHP. Retrieved from https://www.mghihp.edu/news-and-more/news/using-artificial-intelligence-decide-which-research-worthy-funding
- fundsforNGOs. (n.d.). How AI Is Revolutionizing Grant Proposal Writing in 2025. Retrieved from https://www.fundsforngos.org/how-to-write-a-proposal/how-ai-is-revolutionizing-grant-proposal-writing-in-2025/
- Spark the Fire Grant Writing Classes. (n.d.). Using AI for Grant Proposals. Retrieved from https://sparkthefiregrantwriting.com/blog/tag/Using+AI+for+Grant+Proposals
- Tighe, P., Gale, B. M., & Mossburg, S. E. (2024, March 27). Artificial Intelligence and Patient Safety: Promise and Challenges. PSNet. Retrieved from https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/artificial-intelligence-and-patient-safety-promise-and-challenges