How Black Veg Society Turned Persistence Into a $25,000 Win

Black Veg Society · Baltimore, MD · founded 2015 · Vee client since January 2025

Products used: Grant (AI grant writing) · Maggie (AI social media)

Result: $25,000 won — Kindred Abundance Infrastructure Grant, August 2026

Renewed for a second year at full price, January 2026

Black Veg Society has spent a decade doing quiet, unglamorous work: teaching Baltimore's Black community that plant-based living is accessible, joyful, and theirs to claim. It's the kind of mission funders say they want to support. Getting them to actually say yes is another matter.

Executive Director Naijha Wright-Brown runs the organization largely on her own, which means grant writing competes for time with everything else a nonprofit needs from its one indispensable person.

Since partnering with Vee in early 2025, she's leaned on Grant — Vee's AI grant-writing tool — to do the work she couldn't otherwise get to: researching opportunities, drafting applications, and flagging when a match wasn't actually a fit.

That last part mattered more than it sounds. When Grant surfaced funding tied to Tyson Foods and KFC, Wright-Brown turned both down without hesitation — neither aligns with an organization built on a cruelty-free, plant-based mission. It's a small moment, but it says something about the kind of matches Grant needs to make: not just "money available," but money that fits.

For over a year, the fit was there but the wins weren't. Applications went out steadily. Rejections came back steadily too. It's the part of grant-seeking nobody puts in a highlight reel — the long stretch where the work is happening and the payoff isn't, and a small nonprofit has to decide whether to keep going.

Then, in August 2026, an invite-only opportunity landed with a 24-hour deadline: the Kindred Abundance Infrastructure Grant. Grant drafted the application recommending a $7,000 ask. Wright-Brown looked at the opportunity's actual ceiling and raised it herself — to the full $25,000 available. It was submitted within the deadline. Black Veg Society won the entire amount.

Wright-Brown didn't downplay what it meant on the team's next monthly call:

"I'm happy with the service... this is an investment. When people talk to me or ask me about how Vee is... I'm like, yeah, it's great, and it's a good investment. It's like I would say it's like a salary — like if you had somebody on salary. So if you're gonna pay, this is — you get a big bang for your buck. Got the social media, you have the grant writing, and I know we're working on donor management."

That comparison — to staff, not software — is the throughline of the relationship. Black Veg Society isn't using Vee as a single tool for a single task. Grant handles the research and drafting that would otherwise require a grant writer on payroll. Maggie handles the social content calendar (a partnership covered in an earlier case study). Together, for less than the cost of one part-time hire, Wright-Brown gets a small team.

Black Veg Society renewed its partnership with Vee in January 2026 — before the $25,000 win, on the strength of the work already being done. Nineteen months in, they're still applying, still adjusting, and still winning.