If you're a grant writer, then you know both how important it is to stay on character and word counts, and how annoying it is to keep measuring them. It can be difficult to keep track of whether or not you've answered all the questions, especially when you're working with several collaborators, or on several grant proposals at once. That's where Grantable's Granules come in.
This innovative feature makes it easy to stay on track with your character and word counts, transfer answers into submission portals, keep track of questions, and make reusing content easier in the future. In this blog post, we'll give you a brief overview of Granules and show you how they can help streamline your grant writing process!
What are Granules and why do they matter for writing grants and proposals?
Granules are a feature unique to Grantable that allows a user to highlight a question in a grant proposal and transform it into a document section that tracks character and word counts, adds it to the document outline, makes the question visually distinct from the rest of the text, and helps with submission to grant portals. It also makes searching for similar content easier.
Character and Word Count
A real-time character and word count per question save grant writers time and hassle by eliminating the need to constantly highlight answer text to measure word and character counts.
Document Outline
When a user creates a Granule, it is automatically included in the document's outline, which is like a table of contents that allows users to see an overview of the grant proposal, and to quickly navigate to specific sections. This can be extremely helpful, especially in particularly long grant applications where it can be easy to overlook or lose track of a question by mistake.
Visual Cues
Often, when grant writers transfer a grant proposal into a document editor to work on it, the text is poorly formatted, making it difficult for the eye to visually identify sections of the grant. Creating Granules makes it much easier to see what is instructional text and what is a question that requires action.
Grant Portal Submission
Many grantors use submission portals that require applicants to copy and paste each answer into fields within the portal. This is a time-consuming process that often means switching back and forth to highlight, copy, and paste each question. Granules help users achieve the same results with just one click.
How do I use Granules to stay on track with character and word counts
When you encounter a question in a grant proposal you wish to turn into a Granule, simply highlight the question text and click the Granule button at the top of the page in the toolbar.
You will see the highlighted question text appear within a box with an answer field beneath it.
Tips for using Grantable's Granules to streamline the grant-writing process
The best time to implement Granules is at the beginning of the grant writing process. Once you've added the RFP to your project, carefully read through the document. Whenever you encounter a question that requires an answer, the best practice is to highlight it to make a Granule.
Even if the answer is short, using Granules will make it much easier to navigate throughout your document using the Outline, and will help to ensure that you've addressed all the questions posed by the grantor.
Using Granules will also make it easy to turn any answers you wish to reuse in the future.
Conclusion
Granules are a great way to make sure you're staying on track with character and word counts, but they also streamline the grant-writing process. By using Grantable's Granules, you can save time and energy while writing your next proposal. So go ahead and try them out - we promise you won't be disappointed!
