Ron, I'm Director of Grants & Research for a small (5,000 FTE)
comprehensive university.  The Grants Office here consists of me and a
half-time person.  Part of our charge is to write proposals which have
institution-wide impact; another part is to assist faculty/staff with
proposals.  Our expertise is limited in the various disciplines of the
university, so we face a situation somewhat like the one your grant
writer will face.

We have found that collaborative models of proposal writing work well.
The basic principle is, each collaborator does whatever s/he is best at
and the Grants Office does the rest; the Grants Office coordinates the
effort.  For instance, an education professor can write an excellent
research plan but always starts too late and hates budgets.  We'll
organize a meeting a month or two before the deadline, ask him to get us
a draft of a research plan well before deadline, which we'll use as the
basis for constructing the budget.  It's worth it to him to meet our
schedule.  Or for an academic support program I'll ask the director of the
project to write the objectives and I'll do everything else.  I frequently ask
the different players to each write a piece and I'll put it all together.  That
means rewriting so that the proposal is in one voice, but the ideas come
from the collaborators.  In other words, the grant writer can serve as
facilitator, doing some of the writing him/herself; your net production can
still increase substantially.

In order to make these models work you have to hire a grantwriter who
can work in a team, of course--not everyone can do that.  S/he has to be
able to teach the faculty how to write collaboratively also.  Few faculty
are familiar with that way of doing things.

If the demand for a grantwriter is coming from faculty, I think you can
make it work--with a grantwriter with the right skills, of course.  If the
demand is coming primarily from management, I think you may have
problems.  At the least I would consult at length with faculty before I
proceeded any further.

Regards, Bill Campbell
Director, Grants & Research
University of Wisconsin-River Falls