Know what your next grants will take.

Sources reviewed October 17, 2026. Benchmarks and company assumptions are different things. None of this measures Plenary time savings.

• Hours. Andi Kemp / Upward Development (2015) estimated an experienced specialist’s hours from nearly 200 proposals. It isn’t a representative study. LOI 6–8 hours. Small foundation 8–12. Medium 15–25. Complex 30–50. These are historical ranges, not requirements for any listing here.
• Your team’s share. Kemp puts specialist effort at roughly three-quarters of the work, with substantial applicant participation. Our editable 25% share is our planning interpretation, not a measured figure. Recurring in-house hours = stage hours ÷ (1 − your share). Shared prep is added once before that division. Its default is zero so nothing is counted twice, and it’s left out of the time-reduction calculation.
• Writer rates. Real quotes can be lower. St. Wyatt lists writing at $150/hour, and a package at $85/hour with a one-year agreement. Our $150 is not an average or a minimum. It’s one illustrative rate across all specialist tasks. ATM lists $350 LOIs and $1,000 proposal narratives for requests up to $50,000, with budget development listed separately at $350. These are differently scoped services, not equivalent quotes, so don’t multiply one-off prices into annual savings. Use a provider’s actual scope, minimums and retainer terms.
• Staff cost. $72,550 is an editable budgeting proxy, not a grant-writer wage. The BLS fundraiser occupation is broader than grant writing. Annual staff cost = salary × (1 + employer costs). The hourly value divides that by 2,080 paid hours, not productive grant hours. The 40% employer cost is our assumption, not a BLS statistic. Enter only employer taxes, insurance and retirement costs above salary. Don’t add paid leave that’s already in salary, and don’t add BLS’s aggregate benefits percentage to an annual salary. Recruiting, equipment and overhead are left out. Time released is capacity, not payroll savings or proof of an avoided hire.
• Plenary. The annual subscription counts in full for any plan that has a grant in it. The 80–90% recurring time reduction and four onboarding hours are company planning assumptions, not observed results or guarantees. Your remaining work is inputs, review, correction and submission. Your hours = onboarding + recurring in-house hours × (1 − reduction), combining the low baseline with the high reduction and the high baseline with the low reduction. First-year reduction subtracts onboarding ÷ recurring baseline from the reduction percentage. Shared prep is excluded. Fee brackets aren’t automated because their boundaries and attribution need confirmation. A $0 allowance means no awards modeled, not a fee-free service.
• Formulas. Outside writer = specialist hours × writer rate + applicant hours × staff rate. In-house = team hours × staff rate. Plenary = subscription + your hours × staff rate + fee allowance. They are alternatives, not a sum. Annual staff cost is context. An empty plan models zero.
• Left out. The model covers preparation through submission only. Award delivery, reporting, matching funds, specialist services and tax are excluded. Reuse can lower effort, and hard applications can run past these ranges. A listing may not accept an LOI at all. Enter amounts in USD and convert other currencies yourself. Cash requests are not an award forecast, and in-kind benefits are excluded from the cash total.