Yep... that does seem to be the current way of the world. I hate doing that game-playing... and we are sort of in a lucky situation, where the grant money is nice... but not existential. So, we can just choose to answer the questions as we want to... instead of as we are "supposed" to.
Oddly enough, we also have a much higher grant winning rate than others... but not as good as the large orgs that have professional and dedicated grant/philanthropic teams.... but that is a different form of corruption.
Ah yes, the "virtuous" circle