Exercises — Chapter 18: Foundation Grants

Work these with a real or planned project and a real organization in mind (yours, or one you know). Foundations are the lifeblood of small and mission-driven organizations, so even researchers whose primary funders are federal should do Parts A and M — most careers eventually touch foundation money, and the relationship skill transfers.

How to use these: Part A checks recall; Part B applies the chapter to concrete foundation decisions; Part C asks you to create at the level a real applicant must (a prospect list, an LOI, a cultivation plan); Part M interleaves earlier chapters. Answers to selected exercises (★) are in the back matter.

Part A — Recall and Understand

A1. ★ Name the five types of foundations in the chapter and give a one-line distinction for each. Which two are usually a small local nonprofit's best first institutional funders, and why?

A2. State the chapter's threshold concept in your own words, and explain how it changes what you do before writing a proposal.

A3. What is a letter of inquiry (LOI), and what is its role in the common foundation process?

A4. ★ What is the payout requirement, and why does it mean a well-matched organization is "a solution to the foundation's own need," not a supplicant?

A5. Define: program officer (foundation), board of trustees, cultivation, stewardship, 990-PF, operating foundation.

A6. Why is a foundation's 990-PF often more useful than its website for deciding whether to apply?

A7. Name the three things a foundation proposal wins on (per Section 18.5), and contrast them with what federal reviewers prioritize.

Part B — Apply

B1. ★ Match the foundation type. For each, name the most promising foundation type(s) and say why: - (a) A grassroots nonprofit seeking \$40,000 for a local youth program. - (b) An organization wanting flexible, unrestricted operating support from a funder that already trusts it. - (c) A project that aligns with a large company's community-relations interests and offers visible local benefit. - (d) A request to a funder that, you discover, runs only its own programs and makes no grants.

B2. Read the "no." A well-matched family foundation declines RYCC's first LOI with a brief, kind "not this cycle." Give two plausible reasons that have nothing to do with proposal quality, and describe Denise's best next three moves.

B3. ★ Cultivate, don't cold-pitch. You've identified a strong-fit community foundation but have no relationship there. Write the concrete sequence of steps (first contact through first ask) you'd take to become known before you ask, and explain why each step builds trust.

B4. Spot the generic letter. Here is an opening: "To Whom It May Concern: Our organization seeks funding to support our important work in the community." List everything wrong with it for foundation fundraising, and rewrite the opening for a specific named funder.

B5. Operating vs. project. Your nonprofit needs to cover core salaries and rent, but you're tempted to package everything as a discrete new "project." When and how should you ask for general operating support instead, and what makes a funder likely to say yes?

Part C — Analyze and Create

C1. ★ Build a foundation prospect list. For your organization/project, build a short list (3–5) of well-matched foundations by type, size, geography, and priorities, and for each note the evidence of real fit (from its 990-PF or published grants) and your current relationship status. This goes in your "My Proposal" document.

C2. Write a tailored LOI. Draft a one-to-two-page LOI to your top prospect, built on story, outcomes, and trustworthiness, and tailored to that specific funder (referencing their priorities and your reason for approaching them). Use the structure modeled in Section 18.4.

C3. ★ Design a cultivation plan. For one prospect, write a 6–12 month cultivation plan: research done, first contact, relationship-building touchpoints (events, a site visit, updates), the ask, and the stewardship that would follow a grant. Show that you're treating the proposal as one move in a relationship.

C4. Translate a federal project to a foundation. Take a project framed for a federal funder (yours or RYCC's) and rewrite its core pitch for a family foundation: shift the register toward story and outcomes, scale the ask appropriately, and tailor it to a specific (real or composite) funder. Note what you changed and why.

C5. Stewardship plan. Imagine your top prospect funds you. Draft the stewardship plan that would earn a renewal: reporting cadence and content, how you'll communicate challenges (not just wins), recognition, and how you'll keep the program officer a partner. Explain how this reduces the funder's risk (Section 18.6).

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Review

M1. ★ (Ch 17 + 18) Contrast how a funding decision is made at the NSF versus a foundation board, and explain what each difference implies about how far the relationship can carry you.

M2. (Ch 3 + 18) Walk through how you'd use the Chapter 3 prospecting method — including the 990-PF — to qualify or disqualify a foundation before investing in an application.

M3. ★ (Ch 2 + 18) The program officer is central at foundations. Connect cultivation (Chapter 2) to the "program officer as champion in a room you can't enter" idea (Section 18.2), and describe the right way to make first contact.

M4. (Ch 7 + 18) How is a foundation LOI related to the executive summary (Chapter 7)? Why must both let a busy reader grasp and want to fund the project on their own?

M5. (Ch 8 + 10 + 18) A foundation proposal wins on story and outcomes. Show how the needs-as-argument craft (Chapter 8) and the outcomes-not-activities discipline (Chapter 10) combine in a foundation request, in a warmer register.

M6. (Ch 14 + 18) Connect stewardship and the path to general operating support (Section 18.5–18.6) to the sustainability theme of Chapter 14. Why is a well-stewarded foundation relationship a sustainability asset, not just a grant?

🪞 Metacognitive check-in. Did any exercise make you uneasy — the cultivation steps, the relationship plan — as though building a funder relationship is somehow less honest than writing a great proposal? Sit with that. Foundations are designed to fund through relationships of trust; cultivation done with genuine mission and reliability is not manipulation, it is the work. If the discomfort persists, ask whether it's really about integrity, or about stepping outside the comfort of the written document into the harder, more human work of being known.