The Proposal Lab #1: What is Equity-Centered Grant Writing?

Grant writing is often treated as a neutral skill, focusedon polish, alignment, and outcomes. This essay challenges that assumption. It argues that funding systems are shaped by power, history, and politics, and that equity-centered grant writing requires refusing the myth of neutrality altogether. Rather than rewarding institutional polish or deficit-based storytelling, equity-centered grant writing centers community knowledge, ethical accountability, and structural analysis. It asks who defines success, whose risk is prioritized, and what justice-oriented funding could look like if dignity were never treated as a bargaining chip. More than a method for winning grants, equity-centered grant writing is framed as a stance, one that insists funding be aligned with repair, trust, and the collective power of communities to shape their own futures.

— Telisa Nyoka King, M.A.