Write Epic Grants × HelmDocs
Help us build the future of grant writing.
HelmDocs came out of novel-writing software, where a draft runs a hundred thousand words and has to stay coherent over months. That writing engine is already built and already good. What we’re adding now is everything managing grant operations puts on top of the writing, and we want you in the room while we do it.
Free for the first two months for Write Epic Grants readers.
Tell us where it falls short, and keep 50% off forever.
Full HelmDocs, unlimited documents
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No card
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We set it up with your real grant calendar on the call
helmdocs.app / documents
Fall 2026 applications
9 open · 2 in report
Kresge · Arts & Culture LOI
In progress
City of Duluth · Youth Services RFP
Delayed
Bush Foundation · Community Innovation
Not started
Mardag · Q2 interim report
Completed
Otto Bremer · general operating
In progress
The writing lives inside each one. This is the part that keeps them from slipping.
For the first two months
Free. The whole thing.
Full HelmDocs, unlimited documents, unlimited applications, no feature held back for a paid tier. No card on file, so there is nothing to remember to cancel.
After that
50% off forever.
If you engaged with us while it was free, whether that was a call, a bug report, or a workflow you shared, the discount is yours. If HelmDocs isn’t for you, export everything and walk. We’ll still have learned something.
What we’re confident about
We can tell you it’s compliant. We can’t tell you it’s good.
HelmDocs came out of software built for long documents. What we’ve added for grants is the part we think nobody else is doing.
01
Drop in the solicitation
Upload the NOFO or RFP. That’s the entire setup step.
02
We build you a draft
Every section the funder asked for, written from your own documents, before you type anything.
03
You start from something real
Not a blank page. A draft that already answers the requirements, in your own words and numbers, ready for your judgment.
Every requirement, verbatim
It reads the solicitation and pulls out each requirement, quoted exactly, with the section reference it came from.
The structure they asked for
It builds the response outline the funder specified, at the page limits they set.
Grounded, and checkable
It drafts from your files and the solicitation, and every claim links back to the sentence it came from. Where the support is thin, it says so instead of writing around it.
Scored against the rubric
It scores the draft on the published review criteria and names the section that’s going to lose the point.
It drafts, it cites, and it flags. It does not submit. You read it, you correct it, and you are the one who signs.
That’s the half we’re confident about. The other half is yours. We can check that a requirement was addressed and show you where it came from. We can’t tell you whether the need statement lands, whether the theory of change holds, or whether a program officer reads paragraph two and believes you. You can, and you know it the moment you read it. That judgment is the thing we can’t build, and it’s why this is free rather than discounted.
So run a real application through it and take a red pen to what it gives you. Tell us where the draft is confidently wrong. That’s more useful to us than a bug report, and far more useful than a testimonial.
Why we want your opinion
Grants aren’t won on the writing alone. They’re lost on the logistics.
The narrative was strong. The 990 was the wrong fiscal year. The deadline was Friday at 5, not Monday. The ED’s edits were in a file called FINAL_v3_ED_edits.docx. The board bio you needed was in an email from March.
None of that is a writing problem. It also isn’t a discipline problem.
It’s what happens when one application lives in six systems that don’t talk to each other. That part we think we can just fix.
What you get on day one
Four things you shouldn’t have to hold in your head.
01
Every deadline in one place.
“Wait, is the Kresge LOI due this Friday or next? And when is the Mardag report?”
Application deadlines, report deadlines, and the internal dates that come before them all sit on one board, instead of across three calendars, a spreadsheet, and your memory. Move a submission date and every review date in front of it moves with it.
Nothing sneaks up on you.
This week
Kresge LOI
Budget from finance
Duluth RFP
Program narrative
Next two weeks
Otto Bremer
ED review · Sep 24
Bush Foundation
Attachments due
Reports
Mardag interim
Filed Aug 30
Saint Paul & MN
Final report · Dec 15
Organizational boilerplate
used in 14 applications
Mission statement · 62 words
Riverline Youth Alliance builds long-term academic and social supports for students in the East Side corridor…
Need statement · 250 words · edited today
In the 55106 zip code, 71% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and only 34% read at grade level by fourth grade…
Updated in 14 applications automatically
Evaluation methodology · 180 words
Outcomes are tracked against a pre/post assessment administered in September and May, with attendance…
02
Write the boilerplate once.
“Which version of the mission statement is the current one? The 200-word or the 150-word?”
Your mission, need statement, evaluation plan, board list, and standard budget notes live as reusable blocks, at the word counts funders ask for. Update the block and every application using it updates too.
No more copy-paste from the last one you won.
03
Hand off the pieces you don’t write.
“I’ve asked finance for the audited financials twice. I don’t know if the ED read the draft.”
Assign the budget to finance, the outcomes to program staff, and the sign-off to the ED, each with the date it’s needed by. Each person sees only their piece and its deadline. You see what’s still outstanding without sending a fourth email.
The follow-up is the software’s job now.
Otto Bremer, general operating · who owes what
DR
Audited financials FY25
Delayed
MK
2026 outcome numbers
Completed
JL
Executive sign-off
Not started
You
Narrative · 8 pages
In progress
Required attachments · Bush Foundation
IRS determination letter
on file
Board of directors + affiliations
on file
Organizational budget FY26
on file
Form 990, most recent
FY24, needs FY25
Letters of support (2)
requested
Attachments carry across applications. Replace the 990 once and every open application picks it up.
04
Every attachment checked before you submit.
“Did we send them last year’s 990? Is that why we never heard back?”
Each funder’s attachment checklist sits next to the application, and stale documents flag themselves. Your determination letter, board list, budget, and 990 come from one library, not from whichever folder you opened last.
The packet is right, or it tells you why not.
What we’re asking for
It’s free because your opinion is worth more than the license fee.
Those four are built. What comes after them is the part we want you to shape. Tell us what you actually think, in whatever form suits you, and the 50% off forever is yours after 2 months.
Talk to us
Thirty minutes, once over the season if that’s all you can spare. You show us how you actually work. We shut up and take notes.
Red-pen a draft
You get the grant-specific features first. When the draft is wrong, tell us the sentence. Where it overclaimed, where it went generic, where a reviewer would have flagged it.
Tell us what’s missing
The thing you went looking for and didn’t find. One line is enough, and it goes straight onto the list.
Answer the survey
A few questions, now and then. Answer the ones you care about and skip the rest. It sets what we build next.
Before you book
What grant writers ask us first.
“I’m mid-season. I can’t learn a new tool right now.”
That’s what the 45 minutes is for. We put your live applications and their deadlines in on the call, with you watching. You leave the call with it already set up, not with homework.
“My documents are in Word and Google Drive.”
Drag them in. Headings become sections and formatting comes along. Everything exports back to clean Word and PDF at any time. Nothing you write here gets locked in here.
“My funder submits through Grants.gov or Submittable, not Word.”
Then you’ll be pasting into their fields, and the useful part is that what you paste already fits. When the funder sets a limit, in pages, words, or characters, it comes out of the solicitation and the section is built to it. Clean Word and PDF export covers the attachments that need a file. HelmDocs does not log into a portal for you and it does not submit.
“I can’t get my whole organization to adopt something new.”
You don’t have to. Run your own applications in it and invite nobody. When you need the budget from finance or a sign-off from the ED, you invite that one person to that one piece, and they see the task and its deadline rather than a new system to learn. Nobody has to adopt anything to answer the one thing you asked them for.
“Does my funder data train an AI?”
No. Your applications, financials, and client work are yours. The only thing we learn from you is what you tell us on a call or in a survey.
“I don’t want AI writing my grants.”
Reasonable, and you don’t have to use it. But if you’re willing: run one section through it and tell us exactly where it’s wrong. We’d rather ship a drafter that a grant writer signs off on than one that impresses people who don’t write grants.
“What if it makes something up and I certify it?”
That is the right thing to worry about, and nothing here is fire and forget. Every factual claim has to trace to a verbatim passage in the solicitation or in your own documents. A number with nothing behind it fails the check rather than getting written around, and comes back to you marked as needing a source. The software does not submit anything and it does not certify anything. You review it, you correct it, and you sign it, the same as always. What changes is that checking a claim takes a moment instead of an afternoon.
“What happens if I don’t want it after two months?”
Nothing charges, because there’s no card on file. Export your documents and go. The discount sits there in case you change your mind during the next cycle.
Yours not on the list? That’s the more interesting question. Send it over and you’ll get a real answer from someone who built this, usually the same day.
×
Forty-five minutes now, and the fall cycle runs on one board.
We’ll set it up with your real applications while you’re on the call. It’s free until November either way. The only thing we want in return is to hear what grant writing actually needs.
No card · Unlimited documents · Export to Word and PDF whenever you like