If you are gathering data for the needs or problem statement for your grant proposal, then you might be wondering how to properly cite your research. Citations in your grant proposals showcase credibility for your needs section and will get you more points! 

In this article, we are going to talk about best practices for gathering and citing research sources, statistics, books, papers, websites, etc. in your grant proposal. We will also cover how to follow APA style for your citations.

Grab your free grant research citation tool here.

Start With a Grant Citation Tracking Plan
Having research systems is key when writing grants and gathering citations. 

Having a simple grant citation research tool will help you avoid the rabbit hole of open-ended research. It will also protect you if your computer restarts and mysteriously clears all your cookies before you are able to cite your sources. Believe me, I’ve been there. The world definitely feels like it’s going to end as if Thanos just snapped his fingers and all your research just went *poof.*

So your very first step should be to grab my free Grant Research Citation Tracking Tool! 

Choosing a Citation Style: APA vs MLA 

If a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) requires a specific format for citations, you should always follow that.

However, many RFPs and FOAs do not mention a specific citation style. My recommendation is to utilize the American Psychological Association style or what’s known as APA style. APA style is used across many sectors, such as science, business, and education. It is also the style most familiar to many readers.

The other way to cite a grant, you may have heard of in your English Composition class: MLA style. MLA is most commonly used in the humanities, so if you are writing a grant proposal that has to do with anything in the humanities you may choose to utilize this style. But if you are a firm MLA lover and the grant allows for it, then feel free to use MLA!

Just make sure whatever style you use (APA, MLA, or another style required by the funder) that you stay consistent. So if you are utilizing MLA for one source, use it throughout. The same goes for APA.

Most grant reviewers won’t mark off if you have the last name in the wrong place or other technical errors, but you never know so always check the RFP or FOA. However, if you fail to cite your information, statistics, and reports you could get points marked off your grant.

We are just utilizing APA in this episode and our free downloadable citation tool. 

Get the Grant Research Citation Tracking Tool 

The Importance of Citing Sources in Grant Proposals

You cannot pull statistics out of the sky.

As a former university professor and teacher, I let my students know this right away.

If you haven’t included citations, how do I not know you aren’t just making stuff up? On the other side, if you aren’t using citations, but clearly rewrite something from a source you are plagiarizing.

Eeek. Yes, that counts as an automatic failure for a university course, but it’s important not to plagiarize when writing grants, as well.

It’s safe to say that if you are copying and pasting from somebody else you should use quotation marks and give credit to where you got the information. This would ensure that you are not plagiarizing while giving credibility to outside sources. However, you can also paraphrase, meaning summarizing a source’s information in your own words. When you do this you also need to give credit to that source either through a citation or bibliography.

How to Use Citations in Grant Proposal Text

As you do your grant research you are going to run into awesome information and you need a place to track this information. You may not need all of it for the particular grant you are writing, but it could come in handy.

This is what it would look like:

Mayor Sally Cat stated that “getting transportation to supportive services is impossible without having reliable public transportation. I nearly got hit by a car as there are no sidewalks on the mile-long walk to the meeting house” (2017).

If you wanted to paraphrase you might put something like the following:

The Mayor has even reported that the roads are dangerous in Cat city and that the sidewalks cannot be navigated (Cat, 2017).

Now imagine NOT using the citations.

This would cause these statements (and credibility) to fall flat.

How do I know that what you are saying is accurate?

Utilizing simple reference points by using citations elevates your grants tremendously and also increases the professionalism of you as a grant writer because people know you are doing your research.

Now something fun that you can do in grant proposals is to add footnotes.

We’ll talk about that in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the entire enchilada.

Finding Research Sources to Cite in Grant Proposals

So where am I getting that quote from Mayor Sally Cat or the year 2017?

Well, I may have gotten this in a personal interview, from an online article in a newspaper, or on a blog. In any case, the information you need for a citation changes based on where you got the information.

For our purposes here, we are going to concentrate on the information you find online.

In general you will need the following information for each citation source:

• Contributors’ name (Last Name, First Name)
• Last edited date
• Title of resource
• Main source name
• Retrieved from http://Web address
• Blurb – connects to grant

Contributors’ name is who wrote the article, blog, etc. In this case, you want to put the last name first, then a comma and then the first name. Easy peezy. When referring to the source throughout you can state the full name once and then utilize the last name.

Last edited date: This is because websites, publications, and other sources get updated periodically. Use the date that was last updated. Sometimes there are no updates so just use that date.

Title of the resource: This is the title of the blog, article, etc.

Main source: For example, if you got the article from a newspaper this would be the name of the newspaper. 

Retrieved from website: This is the direct URL link.

Blurbs to connect grant: This is for you as a grant writer or if you are a freelance grant writer. Maybe you would just copy and paste what the mayor said into that area or any other information you think may be relevant to your grant. If you are doing research on a few different objectives for a grant, for example, poverty needs in the community, high suicide rates among teenagers, and high pregnancy rates among teenagers in your community, you may want to have different excel sheet for each category and track your citations that way. You can refer to the free downloadable excel sheet for a sample.

Using AI or ChatGPT for Grant Proposal Citations

With the release of ChatGPT and other AI tools, grant writers are increasingly asking if AI is a shortcut to great research. You think: “This would save me so much time!” 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. As of 2025, I continue to strongly recommend that grant writers DO NOT use ChatGPT or other AI tools to find research to cite in grant proposals. Why? Because the citations provided by today’s AI tools are frequently fabricated. As in, the research books and papers AI suggests DO NOT EXIST. The quotations and research findings suggested by AI are often completely invented. 

Instead of saving time, getting research sources and citations from ChatGPT often sends you down a rabbit hole of trying to find which sources are real and which are imaginary. That’s precious time you could otherwise be using to find real-life resources to cite, including books, research papers, statistics, studies, and more. 

You may have just asked AI to create a list of citations for you and it looks beautiful. You might think, “Holly, are you sure these are no good?” 

Go ahead and click on the URLs. Chances are many do not exist. These are called AI hallucinations. They look so real, but they are not. For now. AI will probably get to the point where it can pull up accurate citations, but for now, it only looks like it does…but it doesn’t. Don’t be fooled.

Use ChatGPT to Create the Citations for Your Research

With all that said about NOT using ChatGPT to find your research, you can utilize it to take your URLs and turn them into APA or MLA citations for your Works Cited or Bibliography page.

For example, if you did all your research online and found articles, blogs, YouTube videos, online books, etc., you can take all those URLs and drop them in ChatGPT.

Then you can ask ChatGPT to turn them into APA or MLA citations. This can save you time from doing it yourself.

Adding Grant Citations as You Write

As you are writing your grant, you can easily copy and paste your blurbs and put them into the grant and then use a direct quotation with a citation or paraphrase and use your in-text citation.

The other thing that this can help with is if you have some information, but the blurb isn’t quite right. Go ahead and click on the URL and see if you can find anything else. This is way better than Googling it over again to try and find the right link you clicked on.

It can also be helpful to create a browser bookmark category or each grant you work on and save relevant pages under that bookmark. But do not rely on this as browser bookmarks are affected by things beyond your control. For example, your browser may update, you may change browsers, or you might change the email account tied to your browser bookmarks.  Having electronic files is a more sure way to keep your data.

Footnotes vs. Bibliography for Grant Citations

I love footnotes. I use these a lot, especially when writing letters of support and when I can’t attach a bibliography.

Many grants, especially foundation grants, may not allow added attachments to your grant narrative. If you only have a couple of pages, then you don’t want to use one of those pages for a bibliography. However, you can insert footnotes to still show your sources. 

So in the above example you would utilize the same quotation from the mayor and could include the last name and year, but directly after that in your Word document, click ‘References’ in your menu and click ‘Insert Footnote’ under footnotes. This will automatically include applying a tiny little number in your document and then include the same number in the footer portion of your Word doc. I recommend that you change the font size to 8 or 10 pt. if you are pressed for space. This is awesome as it basically creates the bibliography for you within the Word document.

So what would you put in this footnote? You would put the same reference as you have in your grant citation research sheet: Contributor’s name, year, the title of resource, main source, and URL. If you are including a bibliography, works cited, or literature page, you don’t necessarily need a footnote. But if you are not including a resource, utilize footnotes.

Recap: 7 Top Tips for Using Citations in Grant Proposals

• You must use citations to provide credibility for your words and to ensure you are not just plagiarizing!
• Before doing research, create a system to track your sources and your findings. To make this easy, use my Free Downloadable Grant Research Source Tracker.
• Do NOT use ChatGPT or other AI tools for research purposes, as they are still prone to inventing fake research sources, statistics, and quotes. 
• You can utilize MLA, APA, or any other style but be consistent. If you have the choice, I advise APA for most proposals.
• Make sure to include the last name, year, title, source, and URL for APA. 
• Use footnotes when you cannot add a bibliography.
• Use a bibliography and make sure it is in alphabetical order