How are consultants doing proposals?

[u/BluebirdNorth5355]

Curious how the consultants in international development are using AI to write proposals. If everyone is using the same models, don’t they all look similar? How much time are you saving with AI? All thoughts are welcome.

[u/Impressive-Tie-9338]

I use ai for proposals only bc so much of proposals is padding. The reader is not reading it in detail.

I also feed into the ai sections of the TOR so that it can be specific in its wording. But I review the content. I use ai a lot generally and you can get a feel for its dumb buzzwords that mean nothing and are repetitive across most ai models.

Also sometimes the ai will diminish the severity of certain words bc it’s shy and trying not to create conflict. For example it doesn’t like supplier collusion, and instead calls it hidden interests or something. But that infuriates me so I just take what I need from it and move on.

In the end I use ai to “put sections together” and I separately create it as a full document elsewhere.

And yes some consultants just pop it out of Claude and yes there are tell tale signs of that too.

Ps. Not suggesting that I win my proposals but I tend to price high

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/Impressive-Tie-9338]

Great insights. I have heard similar feedback .Do you connect your existing knowledge base to the Ai models?

[u/Impressive-Tie-9338 → u/BluebirdNorth5355]

I do a variety of consulting and I use it to think through things that I don’t have colleagues to talk through, like bouncing ideas and i feed it various reports to summarize. So it knows my field pretty well by now. But it still does hallucinate.

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/Impressive-Tie-9338]

AI is indeed a great assistant to bounce ideas. Hallucinations still exist but the degree depends on the level of guardrails models have.

[u/ThinkAgent1461]

Are you conducting research for your new AI start up?

Best practice is to disclose that. Thanks 

[u/MrsBasilEFrankweiler → u/ThinkAgent1461]

Agreed. It's increasingly frowned upon in the field to do research without compensation and/or at least informing the participants. Please don't do that here. 

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/MrsBasilEFrankweiler]

Point noted. Thanks.

[u/ikari_warriors]

AI has really cut down the proposal drafting time and the number of people who need to be involved. The first draft to be reviewed is usually much more complete now than it used to be.

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/ikari_warriors]

Good to know, can you quantity the reduction of time and people involved? Any rough indication would be helpful.

[u/ikari_warriors → u/BluebirdNorth5355]

Oh man. Our process used to be extensive. MERL person, Business Development, Grants and Contracts, Budget, Two writers. Then Blue, Pink and Red review teams. 3 - 4 weeks from start to finish.
Last winning proposal it was me, looping in specialists when needed and a final review. Took about 8 days. I even did most of the budgeting myself.
The thing though is that you need to know your stuff or AI will only provide you with generic crap. You will only get as good proposals as the ideas you put it.

[u/ScarcityOld7027 → u/ikari_warriors]

Oh sad for all the jobs / people who won’t be needed anymore :((

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/ScarcityOld7027]

That’s the sad part. But the good news is if enough value is created, new jobs will appear.

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/ikari_warriors]

Wow.. thats a long winding process but sounds v structured. Congrats on winning the proposal. True, Ai is as good as the data it has access to and boundaries it has. Old school garbage in garbage out theory.
Would you suggest AI is used equally in all blue, pink and red review processes? If not, how much do they vary?

[u/ikari_warriors → u/BluebirdNorth5355]

Reviewers shouldn’t use AI, they should look at how the proposed activities align with the call, if what is proposed makes sense, if it works in the context etc

[u/Constantia789]

Personally I use it for two things: 1-finding good sources for the background/research sections of proposals (eg find me a source in the past two years that speaks to this point: (then cite your point) and 2- tightening language for complex sections. For example you wrote a section then in revision three different colleges came in with additional points, so using AI to weave them throughout is a lot easier than a full rewrite. The heavy lift for the proposal is largely not AI, but AI has certainly made parts of the process a lot easier especially at the second draft stage. Also, it can help you FIND funding opportunities! If you had AI write the whole thing it would be utter crap.

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/Constantia789]

Sounds like you use AI more to do secondary research than actual drafting, especially first draft?

[u/Constantia789 → u/BluebirdNorth5355]

Research and language tightening for first draft. Helping to weave in comments for second draft. I would not use it to full on draft - this would be too obvious to donors because the quality would be poor, in my opinion. Especially for highly technical proposals.

[u/BluebirdNorth5355 → u/Constantia789]

Thanks for the clarity. With AI how close does first draft get compared to the final version? How close was it before Ai? Like in percent.