Daily AI grant alerts checked for eligibility and emailed

Daily AI grant alerts checked for eligibility and emailed

An n8n workflow that watches grants.gov for new AI grants every morning. It skips the grants it has already seen, asks an OpenAI model to summarize each new one and to check it against your company details, and saves the result to an Airtable table. A second schedule, a little later, builds an email digest of the new grants marked eligible and sends it to your subscribers through Gmail.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, 24 nodes. Sixteen of them run and eight are sticky notes. It holds no credential.
• README.md: these notes.

What we changed from the original copy

• Everyday @ 9am was set to the hour 8, so the digest could be built half an hour before the 8:30 fetch had started. It is set to 9 now, as its name says.
• The two OpenAI Chat Model nodes named no model, so n8n used the node's default, gpt-5-mini. OpenAI's deprecation page, read on 12 November 2026, shuts that model down on 11 December 2026 and names gpt-5.6-terra as its replacement. Both nodes name gpt-5.6-terra now.
• The system message in Eligibility Factors held another company's name, addresses and profile. It holds the placeholder <YOUR_COMPANY_DETAILS> now.
• The Airtable base and table IDs are placeholders: <YOUR_AIRTABLE_BASE_ID>, <YOUR_GRANTS_TABLE_ID> and <YOUR_SUBSCRIBERS_TABLE_ID>.
• The link to a sample Airtable base is gone from the sticky notes, and the note that held it is rewritten. The email subject had two typos and now reads Daily newsletter of interesting US grants.
• The credential links are gone, and the file's name is ours.
• Nothing else. The requests, the prompts, the table columns and the email template are as the file had them.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• An OpenAI API key.
• An Airtable account with a personal access token and a base that holds two tables.
• A Gmail account for the email credential.

The grants table needs these fields, spelled exactly like this:

• Text: Opportunity Number, Title, URL, Goal, Success Criteria, Notes, Eligibility Notes, Duration, Agency, Agency Email, Agency Phone
• Single select: Status with the options New, Under Review, Interested and Not Interested, and Eligibility? with the options Yes and No
• Date: Posted Date and Response Date
• Number: Funding, Award Ceiling and Award Floor
• Created time: Created

The subscribers table needs Email and Status. Only rows whose Status is Active get the digest.

Set it up

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Open Save to Tracker, Get New Eligible Grants Today and Get Subscribers. Add an Airtable credential, then replace the three placeholders with your base and tables. A base ID starts with app and a table ID with tbl, and both are in the Airtable address.
3. Add an OpenAI credential and select it in OpenAI Chat Model and OpenAI Chat Model1.
4. Open Eligibility Factors and replace <YOUR_COMPANY_DETAILS> in its system message with who you are, where you are based and what you could do with funding.
5. Add a Gmail credential and select it in Send Subscriber Email.
6. Set the two schedules if you want other times. Keep the digest at least half an hour after the fetch.
7. Run Everyday @ 8.30am, check the new rows in the grants table, then run Everyday @ 9am and check the email.
8. Publish the workflow so the schedules run on their own.

What happens in a run

1. Everyday @ 8.30am starts the fetch. AI Grants since Yesterday asks the grants.gov search for the keyword ai, forecasted and posted grants, from the last day, newest first, up to 5000 rows.
2. Grants to List splits the hits, and Only New Grants drops each grant ID that an earlier run already handled. Get Grant Details loads the full record of every grant that is left.
3. Summarize Synopsis returns a goal, a duration, a list of success criteria and a list of good things to know. Eligibility Factors returns the reasons your company fits, based on the agency, title, synopsis and eligibility text.
4. Merge joins the two answers, and Save to Tracker adds one row with the status New. Eligibility? is Yes when the list of reasons is not empty and No otherwise.
5. Everyday @ 9am starts the digest. Get New Eligible Grants Today reads the rows with the status New, Eligibility? set to Yes and a Created date of today.
6. Generate Email builds one HTML newsletter from those rows, with the title, agency, link, synopsis, success criteria and the posted and response dates. Get Subscribers reads the active subscribers, and Send Subscriber Email sends the digest to each one.

What to change

• The topic: the keyword in AI Grants since Yesterday. Its dateRange of 1 is the last day.
• What counts as eligible: the system message of Eligibility Factors.
• The model: both OpenAI Chat Model nodes.
• The look of the email: the HTML in Generate Email. Its subject is in Send Subscriber Email.
• Where the grants are kept: replace Save to Tracker and the two Airtable reads with another store.

Good to know

• Both fetch requests use the grants.gov website's own endpoints under apply07.grants.gov/grantsws/rest. They answered on 12 November 2026. They are not a documented API, so they can change.
• Only New Grants remembers grant IDs between runs, so each grant is processed once. To process everything again, use the Clear Deduplication History operation of a Remove Duplicates node.
• On a day with no new eligible grant, Get New Eligible Grants Today returns nothing and no email is sent.
• Each subscriber gets the same digest as a separate email, and there is no unsubscribe link. Add one before you mail people who did not ask for it.
• The eligibility answer is a model's reading of the grant text against your company details, not a legal or funding opinion. Read the grant before you apply.
• Data goes to three places: the grant text and your company details to OpenAI, the rows to Airtable and the digest to Gmail.
• Cost: OpenAI charges for two calls per new grant, and each call carries the grant text. The Gmail account has its own daily sending limit.