One page that earns the invitation

Three names get used for the same first step, and they are not interchangeable.

Share the same acronym and the file names stop helping. Use the funder's word and the funder's structure, and when a funder publishes an outline, that outline replaces everything below.

Length is set by the funder too. One-page letters and two-to-three-page letters both exist, and some grantseekers are told to write one to three pages with no guidance at all. Sending a three-page letter where one page was asked for is a cheap way to be declined.

Two checks, in this order.

First, the filing. On Form 990-PF, Part XIV line 2 asks the foundation to describe how to apply, list deadlines, and note restrictions. In a batch of 5,447 foundations that reported grants in their 2025 filings, only 1,436 (26.4 percent) entered any application information at all, 1,411 gave a deadline, and just four mentioned a letter of inquiry. The filing tells you who got money. It mostly does not tell you how to ask. If you are still choosing which funders to write to, how to find grants for nonprofits walks through building that list.

Part XIV line 2 also carries a checkbox for foundations that fund preselected organizations only. If it is ticked, an unsolicited letter is not a long shot, it is a waste of a day. That checkbox does not appear in the IRS electronic filing data at all, so this is one more reason to read the PDF version of the return.

Otto Bremer's own filing still points applicants to its published grant guidelines, while its FAQ says the door is closed. The filing is a lead, not an answer.

Second, the funder's site. Three patterns cover most foundations:

Invitation-gated. A.V. Hunter Trust in Colorado tells applicants that if they have not been invited to apply they should review the eligibility guidelines first, and that invited organizations receive an access code to the portal. Its first-year organizational grants are $10,000, general operating only, for organizations with an annual budget under $1 million.

Closed. The Otto Bremer Trust's own grantmaking FAQ states that it no longer accepts direct grant applications: strategic grants go to organizations its staff identify, and its Community Responsive Fund regrants through intermediaries. An excellent letter sent here changes nothing.

Filing-only. Catholic Human Services Foundation in New Jersey and the Bryan Jacobson Foundation in New York publish no website process. Their filings say to send a letter of inquiry requesting the application package, and both disclose their review rhythm, quarterly and annual. Here the letter is the only door, and the filing is the only map.

Seven blocks, in this order. Each one answers a question the reader is already asking.

Three constraints hold: one page, no attachments unless asked, no boilerplate mission paragraph. If the funder publishes its own questions, answer theirs instead and use this list as a checklist against gaps. When you need a funder's median grant to size the ask, the operational grants guide publishes medians taken straight from filings.

One page of prompts for the seven blocks, plus a filled fictional example. No email required.

The template includes a full letter for an invented organization, Riverbend Family Services, asking an invented foundation for $40,000 of general operating support against a published median of $50,000. The structure is the point:

• The first sentence quotes the foundation's stated priority, so fit is argued in their language before ours.
• One number carries the need, with a source, and one sentence explains the timing.
• The ask is sized to the funder's median and translated into something concrete: about three weeks of payroll and rent.
• The close asks for a specific next step and states when the follow-up happens.

Every figure in it is invented. Copy the order, never the wording.

• A mini-proposal: budget attachments, logic models, letters of support nobody asked for.
• The ask buried in paragraph three, after the mission statement.
• An amount far above the funder's own median grant, with no explanation.
• Fit argued from your mission instead of their priorities.
• Sent to a funder whose filing or site says preselected organizations only.

An LOI is a stage, not a task. mission360's grant pipeline carries LOI planned and LOI submitted as stages before full proposal, so the letter has a status, an owner and a date instead of living in someone's sent folder. When the invitation arrives, the same record carries the full proposal, and the reporting dates that follow an award sit with the grant.

If you are tracking several open letters at once, the free grant tracking spreadsheet keeps deadlines, stages and reporting dates in one place.

The letter itself is short. What takes the time is the evidence behind it: the number you can source, the program description that matches this funder, the budget line that survives a question.

In mission360's grant management software for nonprofits, each funder's requirements are recorded against the application with their own prompt, page or word limit, and status, so the LOI is drafted to the funder's constraints rather than to your last letter. AI Draft drafts from the organizational narratives and evidence your team has already approved. Your team reviews and approves; nothing is submitted automatically, and mission360 does not decide which funders you approach. That judgment stays with you. The drafting method behind a full proposal is covered in AI grant writing.