By Toby Claxton, CEO and Co-Founder at GrantGunner
For most charities, startups and researchers, the challenge isn’t just winning funding - it’s finding the time to chase it in the first place.
Every week, founders and funding teams lose hours searching databases, checking eligibility criteria, tracking deadlines, re-entering the same organisation details into different portals, and trying not to miss opportunities that could make a real difference. In many cases, strong organisations don’t miss out on funding because they aren’t a good fit. They miss out because the process is fragmented, repetitive and easy to fall behind on.
That problem is only becoming more important.
As budgets tighten and competition for grants increases, the ability to move quickly on the right opportunities matters more than ever. For lean teams, especially in startups, charities and social enterprises, time spent on admin is time not spent delivering impact, building products, or serving communities.
The real bottleneck in grant funding
When people talk about grant funding, they often focus on the writing itself. But in practice, the biggest drain often happens before a single answer is drafted.
The manual work adds up fast:
● searching across multiple sources for relevant opportunities
● checking whether a fund is actually open
● reviewing eligibility criteria
● tracking opening and closing dates
● managing supporting documents
● navigating multi-step forms and portals
● coordinating submission timelines internally
For many teams, this work happens in spreadsheets, bookmarks, email reminders and half-finished documents. It’s not that there’s a lack of funding out there - it’s that accessing it consistently takes a level of admin capacity many smaller organisations simply don’t have.
That creates an uneven playing field. The organisations with the most time, process and headcount often have a structural advantage over those with the most urgent mission or strongest idea.
Why now is the right time for automation
AI is changing how software handles repetitive work.
We’ve already seen this in customer support, coding, design and operations. Grant funding is another area that is full of structured, repeatable tasks that software can now take on far more effectively than before.
At GrantGunner, we’re building what we describe as a 24/7 AI grant and funding scout. The aim is simple: reduce the manual burden involved in finding and applying for funding.
Instead of expecting users to keep checking dozens of sites and portals themselves, the platform is designed to:
● continuously search for relevant opportunities
● match grants based on sector, geography, size and funding goals
● track deadlines and opening dates automatically
● help handle repetitive form and portal work
● allow teams to choose between assisted review or more hands-off automation
That last part matters. Not every organisation wants full autopilot, and not every application should be fully hands-off. In some cases, human sign-off is essential. In others, teams simply want the repetitive parts handled so they can focus on strategy and quality.
The opportunity isn’t about removing people from the process. It’s about removing unnecessary friction.
What we learned building in public
One of the clearest lessons from the local startup ecosystem - and from programmes like Founder Labs Pre-Accelerator - is that speed of learning matters.
Founders are often told to spend months polishing, waiting for the right moment, or staying in stealth until everything is perfect. But in reality, early-stage companies survive by getting real feedback quickly.
That’s the mindset we’ve taken with GrantGunner.
We built the initial product fast within 2 weeks, we got it in front of users early, and started learning from real behaviour rather than assumptions. The feedback has been consistent: people don’t just want “more grant opportunities”, they want a simpler way to manage the entire process around them.
They want to know:
● what’s actually worth their time
● what deadlines matter
● what has already been applied for
● what still needs input
● and how to avoid missing strong opportunities because of admin overload
That’s a very different problem from simply building another grant directory.
Why this matters for Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland has no shortage of ambitious founders, researchers, charities and social enterprises. What many of them do lack is excess time.
In smaller teams, the same person is often wearing multiple hats: fundraising, operations, delivery, partnerships, reporting, and more. That makes the cost of manual funding work even higher.
If we want more organisations here to access available funding, we should be looking not just at awareness of opportunities, but at the systems around them. How do we reduce the admin barrier? How do we help smaller teams act with the speed and consistency of much larger ones?
That’s where AI can make a practical difference.
Used well, it can help level the playing field - not by replacing expertise, but by giving organisations more leverage. More time to think. More time to refine. More time to focus on the work the funding is actually for.
What comes next
The long-term shift is bigger than grants alone.
We’re moving into a world where AI agents won’t just recommend information - they’ll increasingly help people complete processes. That includes research, administration, scheduling, compliance and submissions. Funding is a natural place for that shift to happen because the workflow is structured, deadline-driven and often highly repetitive.
For organisations chasing funding, the question is no longer whether automation will become part of the process. It’s how quickly they can adopt tools that free them up to focus on what really matters.
Because ultimately, funding shouldn’t go to whoever has the most spare time to wrestle with forms and portals.
It should go to the teams best placed to create value, deliver impact and build what’s next.
Toby Claxton is Co-Founder of GrantGunner, a Belfast-based startup building a 24/7 AI grant and funding scout for charities, startups, researchers and social enterprises. A First Class Computer Science graduate from Queen’s University Belfast, he is also part of the local founder ecosystem and recently took part in the Founder Labs pre-accelerator programme.
https://www.grantgunner.org/en
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