Strategies for Connecting with Invite-Only Funders

I’m thrilled to hear that so many of you found the spreadsheet of 40+ social impact funders committed to upholding justice helpful. I hope you can continue to use this information to keep pushing forward as you serve your communities in this incredibly difficult time. I see you and I hear you.

However, I found something troubling in the spreadsheet, and you probably did too—I’m sure you noticed that that the application process for a large number of these funding institutions was some variation of “invitation-only.”

This is problematic for many reasons— starting with if the FUNDER does not “discover” you, and THEY do not choose to connect with you, even if you’re work is a 100% aligned, your pathway to connecting with them is as clear as mud.

To me, this is an issue of equity and access.

If you find yourself in that situation, here are a few strategies and resources to try to crack that door open.

1.      Find a Way to Connect

If the funder has published their email and phone number or provides a ‘connect with us link’ your first step is done.

If there’s no visible way to get in touch (or even if you’ve got that covered), time to do some detective work:

• Check out their social media: Can you find their social media profiles on LinkedIn, Face Book, and Instagram etc.? Can you identify a staff or board member to potentially connect with?

• Look for recent press releases and news articles.

• Sign-up to receive the organization’s updates and newsletters—these can be give you valuable insights into the institution.

•  No luck? Check out their 990 and find their listed contacts.

2.      Find your Synergies

      Assuming you’ve been able to find a personal contact and have some intel.,  take some time to write up a short synergy report on areas of alignment;

• Which of your programs/activities are a great fit based on the funder’s stated priorities and recent giving history?

• Take time to create a short pitch-intro that represents your authentic work and voice:

  Version 1: A few talking points for a phone call

  Version 2: A 1-2 paragraph written introduction.

  Remember, you will need to tweak and customize this for each funder.

• Be clear on your ask to connect. Be ready to answer questions.

 3.      Reach Out

Barring any requests for **privacy, try to connect directly with a program contact or decision maker. Depending on your individual situation, plan out your outreach approach:

• Telephone call or email intro? Follow-up plan? No pushy messages. Respectful request to connect.

• Consider having a mutual contact or affiliated colleague make an introduction on your behalf.

• Evaluate whether a short direct messaging via the organization’s public social media with request to connect would further your case.

** ONLY use publicly and officially listed contact information. Do not contact people via their personal emails or phone numbers found on the internet. Also, if the entity specifically requests not to be contacted at all, or requests not to be contacted via a specific method i.e. no phone calls, respecting that request is key.

 If you’d like to dive deeper into this topic, check out these resources:

1. How to Engage with Invitation-Only Funders: from https://fundingforgood.org/how-to-engage-with-invitation-only-funding-foundations/

2. How To Have Conversations with Foundation Program Officers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0YmTZkbkTE&list=PL7KMjiEftADzyVpEkrucjWNLYIrDquGlj&index=5

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Are you a social-justice focused or community-serving nonprofit looking for grant support? Let’s Connect! Schedule your free grant consultation.

Meet the Justice-Focused Funders

This is a spreadsheet of 40+ funders who are actively committed to advancing justice in 2026. In fundraising terms, think of this as your prospect research list—funders who have publicly stated their support for justice in the U.S. and are backing up those commitments by funding economic, social, racial, gender, environmental, and other justice- and DEI-focused work.

• Create your own copy of this spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

• View & download the spreadsheet in a new tab.

*One Community Grant Consulting, LLC kindly requests written acknowledgment of Sharmila Sitther as the original author of this document, in the event it is repurposed, adapted, or shared.

How to Use This Research for Your Organization

Follow the steps below to make the most of this research and tailor it to your organization’s grant-seeking needs.

1. Create a Working Copy

Create a “save-as” copy of the read-only file. This will allow you to modify the sheet as needed without altering the original.

2. Screen and Narrow Down Potential Funders

Review the list and identify funders that may be a strong match for your organization by considering:

• Geographic focus

• Issue areas

• Funder eligibility criteria

Next step: Delete funders who are clearly not a good fit. For those that remain, add funder contact information for easy reference.

3. Personalize and Organize the Sheet

Add columns or apply filters to customize the sheet for your internal use. For example:

• Identify whether opportunities support general operating funding or project-specific funding

• Filter by a minimum grant threshold

4. Find Deeper Synergies

Review funders’ public-facing materials such as annual reports, impact pages, and social media to learn more about their priorities. Look at past grantees to identify areas of alignment and potential synergies between the funder and your organization.

5. Add Notes

Edit or add notes in the “special notes” section to capture insights, questions, or follow-up actions.

6. Manage Long Lists Effectively

Large funder lists can become overwhelming. Consider funneling this information into a full-cycle grant management software or creating a custom workflow using a tool like Asana.

 And for folks who are curious about how this list came together, keep reading.

The Back Story: How I Created This List

1. I crowdsourced funder recommendations on LinkedIn
I gathered ideas for funders that met the following criteria:

·         Organizations with a publicly accessible website that clearly retains language about their commitment to justice and DEI

·         Funders that are actively supporting economic, social, racial, gender, environmental, and other forms of justice and DEI

·         Funders that support work in the United States

·         Funders with non-functioning websites or without clear descriptions of grant support for U.S.-based organizations were excluded

2. I excluded information that varies widely
To keep the list usable and manageable, I did not include funder deadlines, detailed eligibility criteria, or types of support. These details often vary by program—for example, deadlines and funding types can differ across a single funder’s portfolio.

3. I used ChatGPT to build the spreadsheet template and populate the initial data.

4. I fact-checked everything
Every cell was reviewed, corrected, and edited by me to ensure accuracy.

Important Notes

·         Unless specifically noted, the “giving history” column does not refer exclusively to grantmaking. Grant dollar amounts do not necessarily reflect total charitable disbursements; some funders include other forms of giving, such as investments.

·         Every effort was made to verify accuracy at the time of research. That said, this information is not static. Funder priorities change. Giving methods change.

** If you choose to use this information, please note that you are solely responsible for verifying its accuracy at the time of use. Sources are included as comments in each cell, please check the data for yourself.

Friends, this is truly a labor of love, born out of my distress at the injustices that keep piling up. It’s my give-back. Share it, use it, and pass it along so it can help as many people as possible. Make it work for you, add it to your research, or modify the document in whatever way best supports your work.

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One Community Grant Consulting, LLC kindly requests written acknowledgment as the original author if this document is repurposed, adapted, or shared.

If you are looking for grant support, send me a message or schedule a time to chat.

The Art of Pithy Storytelling—Advice from Petey the Cat

Grant writing is about telling your stories effectively — showing the heart and impact of your work. And sometimes, you’ve got just a tiny bit of space to convey something deep and meaningful. Sometimes it’s just a 100 words. That’s when your writing needs to be pithy.

Do you recognize this gem?

“Ya gotta avoid repetition… shun redundancy… eschew reiteration… resist recapitulation… And also stop telling the same joke over and over!”

Sound familiar? Then I’m guessing you have a 7–10-year-old in your life who’s obsessed with Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man series. This particular moment is from Lord of the Fleas.

Petey’s advice isn’t just funny. It’s actually really good guidance for writers. Whether you’re trying to land a joke, write a grant proposal, or craft a social media post, clarity and conciseness are your best friends.

Pithy Writing Takes Practice

Combining brevity with depth is a skill that takes time and practice. But since we’re talking about keeping things short and sharp, I’ll keep this list of tips brief too:

• Know your stuff. The more familiar you are with your subject, the easier it is to write clearly.

• Frame it fast. Sum up the issue in a few sentences, then dive right in.

• Don’t muzzle your first draft. Write long if you need to, then edit later.

• Cut the clutter. Ditch clichés and extra adjectives.

• Don’t overuse punctuation. It helps keep sentences crisp.

• Experiment with phrasing. Try a few different versions of tricky sentences.

• Stick with the active voice. It’s more direct and engaging.

• Swap in synonyms. It keeps your writing colorful.

And above all — avoid repetition, shun redundancy, eschew reiteration, resist recapitulation. 😄

It Matters in Grant Writing

Funders read a lot. The clearer and tighter your writing, the more likely they’ll truly hear your story. Pithy writing doesn’t necessarily mean cutting emotion — it means focusing on what matters most.

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P.S. Dav Pilkey might be all about goofy, gross-out humor, but there’s a lot of heart there along with the silliness. Petey and Li’l Petey’s conversations often sneak in reflections on pain, forgiveness, and love — remember, even the lightest stories can hold deep truths.

Your Turn

What strategies or tricks help you write sharper, pithier prose — whether in grants, emails, or everyday writing? I’d love to hear what works for you.

Voting-Style Grant Competitions Are Unfair By Design

A metal slide bolt fastened across the seam of two dark wooden door panel (Image Credits: Unsplash Images, Zoshua Colah

I ran into a spot of trouble with a grant competition some years ago. It took me a few more years to realize the justice issues in the broken system that I was participating in. 

Here’s what happened:

My non-profit client wanted to participate in a corporation sponsored grant contest offering grants of $25,000 to fund “neighborhood need projects.”

The application process looked easy enough:

·  It had four short narrative questions asking about community needs, and how we’d use the grant to meet unmet needs.

·   Applicants could include up to three pictures

·   The first 2,000 submissions would be accepted.

·   200 finalists would be chosen

·    A public vote would decide which 40 community causes would win $25,000 each

We decided to go for it;

 So while the application was straightforward, it still required time and effort to:

·    Strategize how we could use $25k to maximum benefit for a group of young people

·   Create a budget based on actual costs

·   For the communications team to look through the photo archive and pull together pictures to fit our pitch

·  To draft a tightly worded response that fit within the very limited character count

·  For the ED’s edits and feedback

Together, we easily spent 10+ hours of our time on a ‘simple’ application

  Here’s where I made my mistake.

The competition officially opened its portal at 1pm. Now, the grant guidelines had said “spots fill up fast” and “Be quick! We are only accepting 2,000 submissions!” That should have been enough of a red flag.

I had figured, I’d get it done on the first day the portal opened—just to be on the safe side.

My plan was to finish up another writing project that afternoon, and then incorporate the edits from the nonprofit ED before submitting.

At 5pm, I logged into the portal, ready to upload my narrative and pictures.  

“We are no longer accepting submissions.” The portal was closed.

We had not missed a deadline—there was none. But 2,000 others had just beaten us to the entrance, and we were locked out.

One of the worst feelings as a grant writer is to feel you have failed your client. There was nothing to do but accept responsibility—and then move forward.

Reflecting on this experience, I know I could have done better. I could have been poised and ready to go at 1pm. 

Still, this competition held by a large corporation with vast resources was no merit-based competition at all. It was a popularity contest where winning relied on how good your marketing was and how many supporters you can mobilize to vote for you.

Despite good intentions, this kind of ‘competition’ is inherently flawed; the structure of the competition is set up so that the majority of applicants will inevitably fail. It is also biased against smaller nonprofits with limited resources.

Consider:

·         2000+ applicants -> pre-determined that only 40 will be selected

·         No public review or scoring criteria -> a lack of transparency about finalist participant selection

·         More robust marketing and mobilization systems + larger supporter base to ‘vote’-> more likely to win.

 Philanthropy is riddled with structural inequity, and this is prime example of how funders, unwittingly (giving them the benefit of the doubt here) perpetuate bias, limit access, and frankly waste a whole lot of nonprofit staff time.

How many small non-profits are devoting 10+ hours only to find the gates and gatekeepers shut the door before they even get there?

Nonprofits, I encourage you not to participate in funding processes that perpetuate unfair and unjust practices. Don't be complicit. Know your worth, and persist in building partnerships with funders who show respect through their processes and practices.

Cutting Through Budget Confusion

How do you submit a grant proposal budget for a special project that’s planned for the NEXT fiscal year, when your board has only approved this year’s budget—and next year’s budget won’t be finalized before the grant deadline?

Does this sound confusing? Familiar, perhaps?

Train tracks in Sri Lanka with tropical foliage on either side. Photo credit: Unsplash Images: Raissa Lara Lütolf (-Fasel)

Here’s a real-life budget conversation with a client:

[Timeline]: It’s mid-January.

Client:

The Situation: “Our fiscal year ends on June 30. The board will not approve the budget for the next fiscal year until the end of May. However, the grant proposal deadline is in mid-March.

The Problem: Foundation X is requesting organizational and project budget figures for the next fiscal year.

Complicating Factor: Our board chair believes foundations don’t want to see unapproved budgets and suggests we submit this year’s budget instead, along with an explanation of our fiscal year timeline, and then provide the new budget once it’s finalized.

What do you recommend we do? Please advise”

Recap: It’s January. The grant application deadline in March requires budgets for the next fiscal year; but the client’s next fiscal year’s budget won’t be approved until May. My client needs to provide realistic and compliant budget information to the foundation, but the board chair’s suggestion is throwing things way off track!

My Dilemma: Should we:

• Submit this year’s approved budget numbers, which are official but won’t reflect next year’s reality, or

• Provide next year’s projected numbers, which are not yet board-approved, but are based on program projections and likely to be more accurate?

Sigh.   

 What I Did:
I told the client that, based on my reading of the RFP, the funder is asking for budget numbers that align with the grant period. I encouraged my client to check with the foundation’s program officer about their preference for how we should present the budget numbers, given the realities of the nonprofit’s fiscal year and budgeting process.

Let me say that I loved working with this client for many reasons, namely their heart and soul was 100% in the work for the right reasons, and I was well supported on every application which was a total team effort.

But this type of “complication” where we lacked clarity repeated several times.

Reflecting back, I still believe that my advice to request guidance from the funder was the right thing to do in the moment. But it should not have ended there.

There was a deeper challenge. One of misalignment. Without a time frame adjustment on the budgeting process, this situation would keep repeating every year—and I did not call it out.

Non-profit leaders;

This all goes back to basics. Step back. Reflect. Plan.

You DO know when your fiscal year ends (no surprises here), please don’t wait for the last week of your fiscal year to get your next year’s budget approved.

If you know that grant application deadlines for the next fiscal year take place 3-6 months before your fiscal year ends, plan your budget board approval process accordingly.

Also, if your board really DOES need to be involved in grant writing, please have an established process for engagement and approval. Ad hoc ‘support’ from those who don’t understand the budget timeline process is not really helpful.

And most of all,  dear non-profit EDs; please don’t put your grant writers in this position of playing detective or chess grand master—where we are rubbing our eyes, trying to figure out how to wangle a budget and make it fit into a shape it’s not cut out for.