Grant Budget Narrative Builder

Enter your grant budget line items below. This tool calculates your totals and your indirect cost, and writes a first-draft narrative paragraph for each budget category from the numbers you enter.

How this works, and what it is not: this is a calculator with fill-in-the-blank sentence templates, not an AI writer — nothing here is generated by a language model, and no data you enter is sent to a server, saved, or shared. Everything runs in your browser tab and disappears when you close or reload the page. The narrative it produces is a first draft: review it, fill in the bracketed prompts, and match it to your funder's specific budget narrative requirements before you submit anything.

Project details

Project name (optional)

Project period (months)

Personnel

Annual salary, the share of full-time (FTE) this project uses, and the number of months on the project. Cost is calculated as salary × FTE % × (months ÷ 12).
Role / position	Annual salary ($)	% FTE on project	Months on project	Remove

Fringe benefit rate (%)

Travel

Purpose or destination, and cost for that line.
Purpose / destination	Cost ($)	Remove

Equipment

Tangible items above your funder's capitalization threshold (often $10,000 per unit for federal awards since the 2024 Uniform Guidance update, formerly $5,000 — check your funder's definition).
Item	Cost ($)	Remove

Supplies

Consumable items used directly in project activities.
Item	Cost ($)	Remove

Other / contractual

Contracted services, subawards, or other direct costs not covered above.
Item / vendor	Cost ($)	Remove

Indirect costs (overhead / F&A)

Indirect cost rate (%)

Apply this rate to

All direct costs (personnel, fringe, travel, equipment, supplies, other) All direct costs except equipment (a common restriction — many federal and foundation funders exclude equipment from the indirect cost base; check your specific funder's rules)

Results

Budget category	Amount
Enter budget line items above to see totals here.

Draft narrative

Fill in the [bracketed prompts] and match this to your funder's format before you submit anything.

Your draft narrative will appear here once you enter budget line items.

Want the full narrative, not just the budget section?

This tool drafts the budget narrative from your numbers. The Freelance Grant Writer's AI Toolkit ($34) includes 30 AI prompts and 7 templates covering the rest of the proposal too — needs statement, project description, goals and objectives, evaluation plan, executive summary, and a pre-submission compliance check — built for freelance grant writers who already use an AI assistant.

Prefer to write the narrative yourself instead of starting from a calculated draft? The free Budget Narrative Template gives you the same categories as a blank outline to fill in by hand, or use the Grant Budget Template for just the numbers in a simple table.

Need to double-check the indirect cost line specifically — the 15% de minimis rate versus a negotiated rate, applied to the right MTDC base? Try the free Indirect Cost Rate & De Minimis Calculator.

Also managing the business side of freelance grant writing — rates, engagement letters, client intake, multiple clients? The Pro tier ($79) includes everything above plus that module.

See the full toolkit — $34 Try the free 5-prompt sample