The second draft and exporting

A grant application isn’t a stack of separate answers — reviewers read it as one document. The second draft is a whole-application pass that makes your answers read that way.

Where the controls live

Everything that moves an application forward sits in the bar at the top of the Application Workspace, and it stays there as you scroll. The bar shows three things:

• Which stage you’re in — Setup, First draft, Review answers, Second draft, Final review — along the top.
• How far along you are — a progress bar and a count of the answers you’ve marked Complete, on the left of the row below.
• The one thing to do next, as a single button on the right of that row. When there’s more than one reasonable move, the others sit quietly beside it. If the button can’t run yet, the reason is written out right beside it.

You don’t need to hunt at the bottom of the page for a row of buttons. There isn’t one.

What the second draft does

Click Generate Second Draft. PowerGrant re-reads every answer as a single document and rewrites them to work together:

• Removes repetition. The same statistic won’t be re-explained in three answers — it’s stated once and acknowledged after that.
• Keeps names consistent. Organization names are written out on first reference and kept consistent after that, following any naming rules in the funder’s guidelines. A name that appears only once is written out in full, with no acronym.
• Enforces length limits. Answers with a word or character limit, stated in the question or set under it, are trimmed to fit.
• Flags facts it can’t find. A number, dollar amount, date, name, or outside organization that isn’t in your knowledge base is highlighted with the note “Not found in your knowledge base, please confirm.” The claim stays in the answer for you to check.
• Respects your words. Sections you marked as a Unique Answer are treated as authoritative: the AI is told not to add facts to them or flag them. It can still adjust their wording so they read well with the rest of the application, and shorten one that runs over a stated limit. Undo on that answer brings your exact words back.
• Follows your house style. Any Writing Guidance your organization has set applies to this pass too. When it is set, a Writing Guidance applied note sits next to the Generate Second Draft button.

Each section shows its progress while the second draft runs, and your formatting — bold, lists, paragraphs — is preserved. As with everything in PowerGrant, version history keeps your previous text one click away.

Running it clears the Complete mark on every answer it rewrites, so you re-read what changed. That’s the point: the second draft is new text, and it deserves the same look the first one got. Answers it leaves as they were keep their marks, and an answer you edit while it runs, such as one of your Unique Answers, keeps your edit.

Long applications, and leaving while it runs

A second draft of a long application can take several minutes. The progress bar shows which answer it is on, and the work happens on our servers, not in your browser. If you close the tab or your laptop goes to sleep, the second draft keeps going.

When you open the application again, PowerGrant picks it up:

• Still running? You see its progress, right where it is.
• Finished while you were away? A notice at the top of your answers says the second draft is ready, with an Apply second draft button. It is never applied without your click.

If you edited any answers after starting the second draft, the notice tells you how many have changed. Applying replaces what is there now, and Undo on each answer brings your text back. Choose Not now to keep your answers as they are.

When to run it

Run the second draft once your answers are in good shape individually — after you’ve refined the sections you care most about. It’s the “read it top to bottom” pass a good editor does before submission.

You don’t have to mark every answer Complete first. Marking answers is a way to keep track of what you’ve already been through on a long application, not a gate — if two answers are still unmarked, the bar will say so and the button will still work. Run it whenever you’re ready.

Your draft score

Once you have run a Final Review, a score out of 100 appears above your answers. It is built from the review’s own findings: what the review found strong counts in your favor, and every open suggestion holds the number down.

Each suggestion gets its own row, marked Open, Addressed or Dismissed. Click a row to jump to that answer, where the full suggestion and its actions are. Refine the answer, edit it, or dismiss the suggestion, and the score moves the moment you do. Dismissing counts as dealing with it: deciding a suggestion does not apply is a legitimate call, and it is yours to make.

Suggestions you have acted on count for a little less than a clean result, so the only way to 100 is to run Final Review again and have it find nothing left to fix.

Export your application

Click the download icon in the top bar, on the right next to Close:

• DOCX (a Word document): formatted and ready to paste into a funder’s portal or send for board review. Your numbered lists, bullets, and bolding carry over, and the document uses Arial throughout.
• TXT (plain text): for portals that reject rich formatting. Lists keep their numbers, bullets, and indentation as plain characters.

Your draft also stays saved in PowerGrant, so the version you submitted is always there to build on — next year’s renewal starts from this year’s win.