As a freelance grant writer, one of the biggest challenges you may face is pricing your services properly. 

I’ve trained hundreds of grant writers – and have been a freelance grant writer for nearly 20 years – and new freelancers consistently struggle with pricing and fees. There are three big reasons I often see for this: 

1. Accurate data on pricing for freelance grant writing is difficult to come by. Published prices you might see online are usually outdated and don’t take into consideration the five key factors I detail below, which significantly affect pricing. This makes it almost impossible to compare real prices for grant writing services unless you are part of a freelance grant writer community. 
2. Deciding how much to charge clients for your work can bring up a slew of money trauma issues that you will need to face. This includes the very real struggles many of us face to value our own time and skills, and how you feel about charging nonprofits for the full value you provide. 
3. Marketing your services requires that you sell yourself and your value. That means you have to get out of your comfort zone and promote yourself. This means being confident in your pricing can feel very high-stakes. 

Through the Freelance Grant Writer Academy, I regularly coach new and experienced grant writers through different aspects of pricing their services. Here are three steps we work through to come up with fair, value-based pricing. 

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Step 1: Pick Your Grant Writing Pricing Model

There are three primary models for pricing grant writing services: 

Hourly Pricing

Some grant writers prefer to price by the hour. This can be useful when you are new to grant writing, as you may not be sure how long it will take you to write a particular grant or complete a scope of work. However, your clients will still want an estimated time of how many hours it will take you to finish the agreed-upon project. 

Package-based Pricing

When you charge a package price, you are delivering a specific scope of work within a specific timeline. A package could include one grant, or it could include 10 grants. Packages can also include other deliverables, like grant research or a wellness audit. One challenge with package pricing is that you will need a general sense of how many hours the agreed-upon work will take you to complete. 

Retainer Pricing

With retainer pricing, a client pays you a flat monthly fee and, in exchange, you deliver a set number of hours or deliverables each month. Retainer contracts are usually for a year or more. Most of the grant writers I work with love retainer pricing. Retainer pricing for grant writing allows you to work with fewer clients, for a longer period, and get them more results. Plus, you have more consistent cash flow projections compared to hourly pricing or package pricing.

Pros and Cons of Different Grant Writing Pricing Models

It’s possible your pricing model will change over time, as you establish your freelance grant writing business. So if you’re still not sure which model is right for you, we’ve got a free guide that includes all the pros and cons – plus time estimates for different deliverables. Just head over to our full guide to starting a freelance grant writing business. 

Step 2: Work Through My Top 5 Grant Writing Pricing Tips

Be careful not to fall into the trap of just looking at other freelance grant writers to decide YOUR pricing. Too many people make this mistake and end up undermining their own businesses. 

Instead of looking at published rates online, go through these five key considerations – each of which directly affects how much you charge. 

1) Consider Your Experience as a Grant Writer

Your prior experience in grant writing will obviously affect how much you charge. If you are very experienced, you can charge more than if you have written only a few grants. 

But even if you are new to grant writing, you can still charge for your work! You might think that you should write your first grants as a volunteer or intern, but usually, this is just a confidence issue. New grant writers who charge at least a nominal amount for their services are able to boost their confidence, get grant writing experience, get testimonials, and get their pricing and services ironed out.

I’m all about being 100 percent behind your pricing. Sometimes, pricing your services a bit lower when starting out just feels more comfortable – which means you actually start doing more sales calls and marketing your services (instead of staying anxious and silent on the sidelines). That is okay! 

Once you gain experience, you are likely to increase your rates because your confidence goes up along with your ability to win grants and work with clients.

Inside the Freelance Grant Writer Academy, new grant writers love to use features in our programs to back up their experience. For example, we offer unlimited grant reviews inside the Academy, and our coaches have decades of grant writing experience. So even if a student is super new to grant writing, in a sales call, they can say that every single grant they write will be first reviewed by expert grant writers with decades of experience. This gives them, and their clients, more confidence. 

2) Freelance Grant Writers Often Have Deflated Rates

Many freelance grant writers I have trained and coached have deflated rates. They charge far less than their services are worth. This is important to keep an eye on both for your own mindset AND if you are comparing your rates to the rates others are charging. 

According to our friends at Global Development Solutions and their Grant Professionals Pricing Survey Report (2023), many freelance grant writers aren’t sure how to price their services, aren’t confident in their pricing, and don’t account for all their hours worked.

Surveys also show that around 82 percent of freelance grant writers are women. Research shows that female grant writers struggle with pricing and continue to face pay disparity in the sector. 

Mindset and learning to value your time and work can be an especially difficult hurdle in pricing, and one we do not talk about enough. Many freelance grant writers transition into freelancing from the nonprofit sector. They are used to being overworked and underpaid in their nonprofit jobs – and unintentionally bring those practices into their freelance grant writing businesses.

If you are basing your rates on averaging what other freelance grant writers are charging – without understanding how they arrived at those numbers – you increase the likelihood of undercharging for your services. 

So if you happen to find freelance grant writers who publish their prices on their websites, take a beat before comparing yourself. How do you know that those grant writers know how to price equitably? You don’t! 

3) Stop Trying to Compare Online: Most Freelance Grant Writers Don’t Publish Their Rates

Even if you wanted to just get a baseline for what other freelance grant writers are charging, you will have a hard time finding published prices. 

Most freelance grant writers don’t publish their rates and instead just ask client prospects to contact them. This is very normal, as many grant writers 1) don’t understand how to price, so aren’t confident in publishing prices, or 2) want to get a feel for the exact services organizations are looking for and then give them pricing. 

4) Different Geographic Areas = Different Grant Writing Rates

A freelance grant writer living and serving clients in New York City versus El Paso will most likely charge quite different rates! 

The costs of living are very different between these two places, so your costs and what the market will bear will be different. 

A mistake I see is that newbie grant writers will just find an ‘average’ grant writer rate of something like $150 per hour and charge that rate, even if they have no experience and live in a rural area. They likely will not get any clients because they are overpricing, and the market will know it. 

On the flipside, if someone in New York City only charges $35 per hour, they might not be able to pay the rent, AND their market might think they must be very inexperienced if they are charging such a low rate. 

5) Some Grant Writing Services Cost More

Not all freelance grant writers offer the same services or serve the same clients. For example, federal grants can take, on average, 100 hours to write, whereas foundation grants, on average, might take 20 hours to write. 

So if you are a freelance grant writer who mainly writes federal grants, you might be charging $7-$10K per month on your retainers. 

Conversely, if you are a foundation grant writer, you might be charging $1,500-$3,000 a month for a retainer. 

It really depends on everything included in your scope of work, such as: 

• The number of grants you are writing
• The type of grants you are writing
• If you are doing funding prospect research
• If you are doing monthly or weekly meetings

Step 3: Use Our Formula for Values-Based Pricing 

All of the elements we’ve covered so far are part of the formula to figure out your pricing. Now, it’s time to put it all together with a focus on value-based pricing. 

Here’s OUR formula for value-based pricing:

1. Track your time to understand your real costs 
2. Add up all hard costs (office space, computer, admin, etc.)
3. Get clear on your offers (i.e., types of grants and nonprofits you work with)
4. Define a duration of time you will set a retainer or package for (i.e., 3 months vs 12 months)
5. Know where your nonprofits are (are they geographically-focused or not?)
6. Look at other professional services in your area if you are serving your geographic area (i.e., bookkeeping, lawyer, etc.)
7. Take your experience into consideration 

One of my favorite things to do is to help grant writers get clear and confident on their pricing based on their services and value, instead of grabbing some ambiguous price they find on someone else’s website. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to start your own grant writing business, check out our Freelance Grant Writer Academy. Our program is one of the fastest and most reliable ways to learn how to replace your full-time income with part-time hours by writing grants from home. 

Links Mentioned in the Podcast

Freelance Grant Writer Academy

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