Every new Great Grants organization runs into the same handful of questions in its first week: How do I get my colleague in here? Why is my account restricted? Why don’t my search results feel right yet? This guide collects the onboarding essentials — accounts, sign-in, team setup, and the fixes for the most common early snags — in one place.
Signing up and signing in
Create your account at app.greatgrants.ai/create-account using either Google (one click, nothing to remember) or email and password.
Two things to know from day one:
- Verify your email promptly. If you signed up with email and password, a verification message goes to your inbox. Accounts that aren’t verified within the allowed window become restricted, and you’ll see an account expired screen until verification is completed. If the email isn’t in your inbox, check spam; if the link has expired, contact your Servant account contact to have a fresh one sent.
- Sign in the same way you signed up. This is the number-one login issue. If you created your account with Google, use Sign in with Google — don’t type a password. If you used email and password and forgot it, use Forgot password on the login page (or go to app.greatgrants.ai/forgot-password) to get a reset link. Password reset only applies to email/password accounts.
Bookmark app.greatgrants.ai so you always land in the right place. Great Grants runs entirely in the browser — Chrome, Edge, Safari, or Firefox — with nothing to install.
One more preparation tip before your first real session: have your organization’s details handy — legal name, EIN, mailing address, mission statement, focus areas, and key contacts. You can fill these in over time, but arriving with them ready turns setup into a single sitting, and the more complete your profile is, the better your matches and drafts will be from day one.
Organizations: how Great Grants keeps things together
Everything in Great Grants happens inside an organization. Your organization’s profile, saved grants, programs, and applications all live in that shared workspace — visible to your teammates, separate from every other organization on the platform.
The first person to set up an organization becomes its administrator. During sign-up, you’ll either create your organization (enter its name and the administrator email) or accept an invitation from a teammate who’s already in — in which case your organization and email are shown pre-filled, and you just finish creating your login.
Inviting and managing your team
Grant work is team work, and Great Grants is built for it. Because everything is shared at the organization level, a teammate can pick up where you left off: review a draft application, add a program’s outcome data, or vet the grants you saved last week.
Roles are simple: admins manage the organization’s profile, members, and settings; members work on grants and applications. Invite the people who will actually touch grant work — your grant writer, your program director who knows the outcomes data, the finance person who reviews budgets.
Your account settings
Open Account Settings from the account menu (or go to app.greatgrants.ai/account/settings). Settings are grouped into three tabs, where you can update your name, email, and phone, manage your password, and view your organization’s subscription and billing details. Note that changing your email requires verifying the new address — until you confirm it, the pending email is shown but not active.
The setup sequence that pays off
Once your account works and your team is in, invest one focused session in this order:
- Complete the Organization Profile — six tabs of organizational essentials. Prioritize mission statement, focus areas, and headquarters location; they drive search relevance.
- Create at least one complete program — the detailed record of an initiative you run. This is what makes AI application drafts specific instead of generic.
- Run your first searches — plain language, described the way you’d tell a colleague.
- Start your first application — from any grant that fits.
Each of these has its own full guide in this help center. Do them in order; each builds on the last.
Common questions and quick fixes
“I can’t sign in.” Use the same method you signed up with. Google users: click Sign in with Google, don’t enter a password. Email/password users who’ve forgotten: use Forgot password on the login page.
“My account says it’s expired or restricted.” Your email wasn’t verified within the allowed window. Contact your Servant account contact to have a fresh verification email sent, click the link, and you’re back in.
“My search results don’t feel relevant.” Relevance depends heavily on your Organization Profile. Fill in your mission, focus areas, and headquarters location, then run the search again. The improvement is usually immediate.
“The AI draft is thin or generic.” The AI draws on your organization profile and your programs. Add at least one complete program — detailed summary, supporting documents — then start the application again.
“I can’t edit a submitted application.” That’s by design: submitting freezes the application so it can’t be changed accidentally. If you need to make changes after submitting, contact support.
“Where are my deadline reminders?” Not here yet — the current platform does not include in-app notifications, email alerts for new matching grants, or grant-deadline reminders. These are planned for a future release. For now, keep an eye on due dates yourself from the Applications list, which shows every application’s deadline. Many teams add key deadlines to their shared calendar as a backstop.
Good habits for grant teams
A few working practices that pay off once your whole team is in the platform:
- Decide who owns what. Grant work has natural lanes — one person vets and saves opportunities, another drafts, a third reviews budgets and financial answers. Because saved grants, programs, and applications are shared, lanes prevent two people from unknowingly working the same opportunity from different directions.
- Make program upkeep someone’s job. Program records are the fuel for AI drafts, and they’re best maintained by whoever is closest to the work — usually a program director, not the grant writer. Assign it explicitly.
- Review before submitting, always. The AI produces first drafts; a human produces the application. Build a norm that a second person reads every application before the submit button gets clicked — remember, submitting freezes the form.
- Keep contacts and staff current. When someone leaves or changes roles, update Key Contacts in the Organization Profile the same week. Stale contact information on a submitted application creates real friction at award time.
Getting help
If you’re locked out, stuck, or just unsure about something, email your Servant account contact — that’s the fastest path for account issues, questions, bug reports, and feature ideas alike. Everything you send gets routed to the right team.
Nearly every early hiccup — login trouble, restricted accounts, lukewarm search results, generic drafts — has a two-minute fix listed above. And when in doubt, your Great Grants account contact is an email away.