What a foundation's tax return tells you before you apply

Almost everything that matters except whether they will like you. A private foundation's 990-PF is its annual tax return, and it is public. In it you can read how much the foundation gave last year and the two years before, who received it and for what, the typical grant size, whether it accepts applications at all, who sits on the board, and roughly how much it must give away next year. If you know how to read a 990-PF, you can decide in 20 minutes whether a funder belongs on your list and what to ask for.

Four places, all free:

• IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search: the official copy, searchable by name or EIN, PDF and e-file data.
• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: the same filings with the numbers extracted, plus the raw XML for e-filed years.
• Candid (GuideStar profiles): 990-PF PDFs on the free tier; grant-level search needs a paid plan. See how mission360 compares with Candid.
• The foundation's own website, if it has one. Many small foundations do not.

Expect a lag. A filing covers a fiscal year and usually appears 9 to 18 months after that year ends, so the newest 990-PF describes giving from one to two years ago.

A 990-PF runs 13 pages plus attachments. You need six places on it. The references below are for the current form; filings before 2020 label the last section Part XV instead of Part XIV.

1. Part I, line 25: contributions, gifts and grants paid. Write down the figure for this year, then open the two prior filings and do the same. Growing, flat or shrinking tells you where the foundation is headed.

   

2. Part II, line 16, column (c): fair market value of total assets. Private foundations must distribute about 5% of their net investment assets each year (the minimum investment return in Part IX, with the resulting distributable amount in Part X). Five percent of assets is a quick guess at next year's giving.

   

3. Part VII: officers, directors, trustees and foundation managers. Names to search for a connection to your board or your community. Part XIV, line 1a lists any managers who are also major contributors, which usually means the founding family still decides.

   

4. Part XIV, line 2: application information. One checkbox matters more than anything else on the form: "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests." Checked means move on. Unchecked, with a contact, a format, deadlines and restrictions in 2a to 2d, means there is a door.

   

5. Part XIV, line 3a: grants paid during the year. Recipient, address, purpose and amount, one row per grant. Sort by amount. Count the recipients. Look for names that repeat from prior years and names that are new. Read the purposes and the cities. This is the funder telling you what it funds.
6. Attachments: When line 3a says "see statement" or the list is cut off, the grants are in an attached schedule at the end of the PDF. For e-filed years, the same list exists as structured data, which is how tools extract it without retyping.

   

The list is long. Four numbers make it usable.

• Median grant: sort the amounts and take the middle one. Your ask should sit near it, not near the largest.
• Range: the smallest and largest grants, and the share going to the single biggest recipient. One recipient taking most of the money means the rest is pocket change.
• Repeat-grantee share: the share of this year's recipients who also appeared in either of the two prior years. High means a settled slate.
• First-time-grantee share: the share of this year's recipients absent from both prior years. This is the room for you.

Put the funders that pass into your tracker with the deadline from line 2c. The free grant tracking spreadsheet has a column for it.

A red flag is not a verdict. A board connection can open a preselected funder. But without one, spend the 20 minutes on the next filing.

Reading one 990-PF well takes 20 minutes. A shortlist of 30 takes a week, and by the time you finish, the first ones are stale. Grants360 reads the filings and produces a funder briefing for each foundation on your list: the giving pattern, typical grant size, openness signals and recent grantees, drawn from the same lines this guide walks through. Each briefing starts from the filing, so your team can open the 990-PF and check any figure. The briefing is a starting point for your judgment, not a decision. Whether to approach, what to ask for and who makes the call stays with you. See how grant management in mission360 works, or book a demo and bring a funder you are researching.