Banned and Trigger Words in Federal Grant Writing in the Trump Administration 2.0

We are moving through a new era in federal grant writing. For access to federal grant funds during this new Trump Administration in 2025, nonprofits need to be more aware of what types of words you are using, and are not using, in your grant applications.

We have always said that grant writing is a word game and the types of words you use play a big part in how you construct a grant. 

With the Trump Administration in 2025, though, we have not experienced the sheer elimination of word usage in federal grant guidance before. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has come out with a list of banned words to use in grants (see below).

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Regular Changes in Words in Grants

To put into context, we’ve been writing grants for more than 20 years, and we have learned to play the wordsmith game of grant writing. 

What is normal in federal grant word usage changes is that words are often added to the federal grant cycles when:

• a new administrations start, 
• when societal movements and norms enter into the federal mainstream, and
• when priorities of the federal government are identified.

Even for foundation grants, we have been training grant writers to connect words with the funding source priority areas, Request for Proposals (RFPs), and website information so that grant writers mimic funding source language.

Then we teach grant writers how to integrate these words into your programs in a way that aligns with what you do.

This ensures that everyone is on the same page with language and what that language means AND helps with consistent language in your grant applications.

This approach also helps nonprofits so they aren’t mission drifting or scope creeping, but are aligning with funding sources for their specific cause areas. 

While we still entirely support this approach, the new wrench in the bucket in February, 2025 is the potential sheer number of words to NOT use for the new recommendations from certain federal agencies (as of 2/10/2025).

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National Science Foundation (NSF) Leaked Word Elimination

The NSF came out with a leaked list of banned grant words. Much of this elimination of language is based on Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing”.

Even if the nonprofit client you have does not have explicit DEI programs, you may have been using certain words that are very common when using grant language or just the English language. 

According to our latest information on releases from federal project officers at National Science Foundation, here are words that will trip a wire for more scrutiny (and potential stop order before reviews):

According to Dr. Darby Saxbe, a professor at the University of Southern California, the following words are considered forbidden and will prompt a review at NSF.

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Do you have to avoid all of these ‘trigger’ or ‘banned’ words?

No. This is a leak from one agency, the National Science Foundation, and may not apply to other agencies.

However, with the breadth of how this is rolling out from one federal agency, we do recommend that nonprofits contact your project officers at federal agencies, if nonprofits receive federal grant funding.

Some nonprofits and organizations might dig their heels down and not change their usage of words as those words embody their values. 

If they choose to do that, they may just realize they will not get funded with certain types of federal agency grants during this current 2025 Administration.

In the future, a different Administration could roll back a lot of these Executive Orders and initiatives.

Some nonprofits and organizations may not even be ready for federal grants, so they may look at applying for foundation or corporate grants at this point in time or sticking with non-federal fundraising and individual donors.

Some nonprofits and organizations may choose to play the federal grant game (some may have to as their funding is already allocated or they are really embedded in federal grant funding) and replace these words with the thought that their missions can continue but they may have to change words and approaches to get funding.

There is no right or wrong way with how organizations may want to approach this. 

If you are looking at how to initially re-word some programs, there are a few different ways you can seek to find the ‘right’ word.

Know that even if your words don’t trip the wire for scrutiny the primary essence of your program might.

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Past Example of Word-Smithing in Federal Grants:

In the past, we have recommended switching out the word ‘marketing’ to ‘awareness’ for your budget categories. With this, there is a shift of how you position ‘distribution materials’ about your programs. 

It’s more of finding synonyms to switch out the approach to language without changing the end result or impact.

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2025 Federal Grant Word Switching Approach

Some nonprofit programs, even if you change words, may still get denied because of the nature of your mission or programs. Even if your program got to the review panel process it might be blocked. 

For example, if your nonprofit provides pro-choice counseling and you replace words to showcase a program that doesn’t get initially flagged, when it reaches the grant review panel, it could get immediately denied because of the overall nature of the grant in opposition to a certain Executive Order. 

This might mean that alternative forms of grants (such as foundation grants) might be a better use of your time than applying for certain federal grants. 

But if you are writing grants, and have been using words that have been prioritized in past Administrations but now will be trip-wired, how do you know what those words are or how to replace them?

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Replace Banned Words Using ChatGPT 

I ran all the words listed in ChatGPT to find alternative words. While this was helpful to get ideas it was not entirely efficient.

What I did was insert the list of ‘forbidden’ or banned words from NSF leaked words into ChatGPT, alongside some of the new Executive Order Against DEI and OMB Memo-25-13. Then I had it list alternate words that did not conflict with the NSF ‘forbidden’ words, EOs, and OMB-M-25-13.

OMB-M-25-13 was rescinded, but I still utilized this into ChatGPT as there is language in that memo that implicates the types of programs and language that the Trump Administration is looking to reduce or erase.

ChatGPT did have a difficult time finding alternate words for many of these banned words. For example, ‘female’ it kept replacing with ‘woman’ and vice versa.

So the fact that two of these descriptor words were included in the banned word list meant that this type of word is hard to communicate. 

But some of these alternative might work, for example going from socioeconomic to financial conditions.

Overall, an erasure of words impacts grant writers abilities to clearly explain or describe simple facts or needs for nonprofit organizations. This results in potentially having to succumb to ‘clunky’ language to get the point across.

Language erasure is overall not a positive trend as reflected in colonialism and the impact on endangering languages of a culture and linguistic imperialism.

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Links Mentioned in the Podcast

Freelance Grant Writer Academy

Download the Trigger Word Replacement Workbook

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