gov2ai MENAPOINT Conference Iraq 718–20 September 2026 · Erbil, Iraq

By role

Grants and operations

You are the one holding the proposal, the report and the budget at the same time.

This is you if the deadline belongs to a donor, the format belongs to them too, and the writing still lands on you.

What your week looks like

A narrative report due Friday, a proposal in a template you have never seen, a budget revision, and a logframe that asks the same question four different ways. None of it is the programme work, and all of it decides whether the programme work continues. This is the lowest-risk place to start, as long as the documents you paste in do not carry other people’s names.

Start with these three tasks

  1. Grants and admin
  2. Drafting reports and advocacy material
  3. Protecting sensitive information

Tools you can actually afford

  • Canva

    Careful with sensitive materialHas a free versionWorks in Iraq

  • Notion AI

    Careful with sensitive materialHas a free versionWorks in Iraq

Never do this

  • Never paste beneficiary lists, staff salaries, or a signed contract into an online tool.
  • Never let a tool write your figures. It will produce a total that looks plausible and is wrong. Numbers come from your accounting file, by hand.
  • Never submit text you have not read line by line. Donors notice generic language, and a report that describes work you did not do is a compliance problem, not a style one.

Your first hour

  1. 15 minutes. Take a proposal you already submitted and won. Remove every name and every figure from your copy of it.
  2. 20 minutes. Ask a tool to restructure that cleaned text into a different donor’s headings. Keep your own sentences; you are reformatting, not inventing.
  3. 15 minutes. Read it back and put the real figures in by hand from your own records.
  4. 10 minutes. Write down which two documents you will never paste anywhere. Tell the colleague who covers for you when you are away.

Case studies

Recipes

Last checked: 2026-08-31