Soon after you start talking to someone about hiring you to write grants, you’ll be asked the tough question—How much will you charge? Many grant writers treat this issue as a trade secret, but setting your fee really is just common sense. You want to be paid fairly for your time and expertise, and the best way to achieve those goals is to bill by the project or on an hourly basis.

Professional fundraising associations all discourage or forbid grant writing based on a percentage of the grant. There are good reasons for this. First, funders wouldn’t make the grant if they knew that was how you were being compensated. They’re making a grant to fund a program, not the charity’s fundraising efforts.

Also, professionals get paid for their knowledge, skill, and time. As I explained earlier in this book, your skill in crafting the proposal is only one reason among many for a proposal’s success or failure.

Finally, it’s usually no harder to write a grant for $50,000 than one for $5,000, and there’s no reason you should be paid differently for proposals requiring equal effort.

I strongly encourage you to work for a fixed fee rather than on an hourly basis. This will serve you and your client best. The client will know up front what your services will cost, and you’ll know how much time you can devote to the project based on how much you know you’ll receive.

To figure out how much to charge, take into account an estimate of the number of hours it will take to complete the project. This is based on who the potential funders are and what each requires in an application. Another consideration is the condition of the nonprofit’s grant readiness—that is, does it have the existing documentation you’ll need to work with. Before bidding on a project, be sure to find out if …

If the charity cannot provide the first two items, you don’t want them as a client. Grants are made, with few exceptions, only to recognized 501(c)(3) organizations. And no matter how good the existing documentation may be, without access to the person who runs the program, you won’t be able to produce a convincing proposal.

If items 5 through 7 are missing, factor in the time it will take you to create them. Item 8 is important, because charities with established relationships require less research on your part. Not only will you know that those particular funders have an interest in the charity, but this will lead you to other funders with similar interests.

Be clear with the client up front how many iterations of the proposal your price includes. If you encounter a compulsive editor, you’ll be doing endless rewrites. Three drafts—that is, two drafts and the final version—should be your maximum.

Charging for the research phase should not be based on coming back with “X” strong prospects. There might be fewer than “X” strong prospects for a particular client or program. Instead lay out for the client how you’ll research all possible funders, including their current ones, funders to similar organizations, and other funders with an interest in the client’s area of service.

After deciding how many hours it will take me to do the project, I tack on a couple more hours for profit and a hedge against it taking more time than expected. Then, I multiply that number by my hourly rate to get the fixed fee.

What, you might ask, should your hourly rate be? That’s determined by your level of experience and what the market will bear. Few grant writers work for less than $25 an hour, and the most experienced charge as much as $150 an hour. With that range of rates and the range of hours required to complete different proposals, a grant proposal can cost a client from a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. For more about fees, see the article at The Grantsmanship Center at tgci.com. (Type “fees” in the search box, and the article you want will pop right up.)

Chances are, you’ll submit nearly identical proposals to several funders. You can’t charge the client for creating the same proposal for each funder, but you can tack on a charge for customizing existing proposals for a new funder. If you charged $500 for the template proposal, maybe you’ll need $75 to $100 to customize it for the second funder. (Because you, of course, having read Chapter 14, know you cannot submit identical proposals to different funders.)

The client doesn’t need to see your entire fee calculation, but do break down the fee enough so the client can see what different parts of the process will cost.