Blog
Social Sector Knowledge Sharing: A Manifesto for 2015 and Beyond
Within the last six months, three of the world’s largest foundations—the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Ford Foundation—have all announced that they will require open licensing and knowledge sharing for all grant-funded products and content. In…
April 20, 2015
Where Can I Find a Nonprofit’s Form 1023?
Lately, I've been getting a lot of Ask Us visitors who want to see a specific nonprofit's Form 1023, also known as its exemption application. This question usually comes from would-be nonprofits that want to refer to Form 1023 samples…
March 6, 2015
Document Checklist for Grant Proposals: Part 3
Part 1 listed documents to collect during the prospect research stage; Part 2 listed those to collect when you submit your letter of inquiry or proposal. Part 3 will look at what to keep when you've been notified, and suggest…
December 29, 2014
Document Checklist for Grant Proposals: Part 2
Part 1 listed documents to collect during the prospect research stage. In Part 2, we'll continue our checklist with content to collect when you are submitting your letters of inquiry or grant proposals. Letter of inquiry. Grantmakers are increasingly asking…
December 17, 2014
Document Checklist for Grant Proposals: Part 1
A Foundation Center South visitor was trying to organize paperwork related to grant proposals and asked if we knew of a checklist that listed every document that might have something to do with a grant proposals. We couldn't find one,…
December 15, 2014
What Can I Do If a Nonprofit Isn’t Following Its Bylaws?
This is another question that visitors often have for our Ask Us team. Curiously, I've had a hard time finding a succinct answer to this seemingly simple question. Corporate attorney Paul Davis Fancher of Troutman Sanders presented a free webcast…
December 9, 2014
Top 5 Tips for Successful Grant Proposals
Crowd-sourced from Foundation Center trainers, here are our top five tips for developing successful grant proposals: Do your homework! Research, research, research. Conducting targeted research helps you find the right funders to partner with and support your organization's work. Sending…
October 30, 2014
Philanthropy’s Data Dilemma
When McKinsey & Co. released its seminal study Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity, the firm confidently predicted that the world was "on the cusp of a tremendous wave of innovation, productivity, and growth, as well…
July 11, 2012