Leveraging GenAI helps an agency secure critical federal funding

The agency piloted EY Impact for its application to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s State Opioid Response (SOR) grant, which funds the majority of opioid abatement activities across the state. Faced with a two-month deadline to develop and submit a detailed 25-page proposal, the team took several strategic steps to enhance the tool’s utility.

They expanded EY Impact’s analytical reach by integrating 85 distinct data sets from authoritative entities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Survey on Drug Use, and local health departments. Additionally, they incorporated 42 pages of SOR grant guidelines, which detailed the precise formatting, numbering and structuring requirements, along with the specific criteria for each application section. To ensure the tool was well-versed in the expected writing style, they uploaded successful grant applications from the past three years.

A multi-agent framework was introduced to seamlessly automate the grant writing process by collecting data—both public and proprietary—along with behavioral health strategies and ODMHSAS’s past responses, efficiently generating the content needed to meet the SOR grant requirements. Finally, the team engaged experienced grant writers to test the platform and provide feedback, which was instrumental in refining the tool’s performance and enhancing the user experience.

“The EY Impact tool transcends typical software and offers a context-aware system that adeptly handles grant-specific prompt nuances. Its effectiveness lies in the way our RAG [retrieval augmented generation] models integrate with multiple large language models. This ensures that each proposal is not only compliant but also deeply aligned with the grant’s unique requirements,” notes Amy Jones, Principal at Ernst & Young LLP.

“We designed EY Impact to streamline the federal grant application process for organizations like ODMHSAS,” explains Fanny Ji, Manager at EY. “Our collaboration with their team focused on refining the tool to enhance their chances of winning grants, speed up the application process, and discover new opportunities.”

EY Impact has streamlined the grant application process for ODMHSAS, enabling the quick production of a personalized and data-driven SOR submission. The integration of emerging technology with experienced writers increased efficiency and effectiveness. Advanced analytics and AI improved the quality of the initial grant application draft, illustrating the significant benefits of this innovative approach. EY Impact transformed the traditional processes and created impactful outcomes that will resonate well beyond this single agency.

“We are unwavering in our commitment to enhancing EY Impact,” says Jones. “Our goal is to continually foster trustworthy and seamless collaboration between people and AI and adhere to the principles of responsible AI. We are dedicated to further safeguarding the privacy of source material and we vigilantly monitor output for biases to prevent potential GenAI hallucinations. This approach helps to ensure both the ethical integrity and reliability of our AI systems, thereby boosting confidence and enabling responsible transformations.”