Inquiry Letters

An inquiry letter lies somewhere between a request for guidelines and a full proposal. In the inquiry letter, you want to describe your project well enough that the funder can give you the information you require, but you also want to avoid making it appear too much like a proposal. You may ask for a meeting in your inquiry letter, too. (I discuss meetings later in this chapter.)
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If a year has passed since your last contact with a funder, you’ll want to build the relationship almost as carefully as with a new funder. Follow the same steps, but accelerate the process. An inquiry letter might be better than a call if your contact no longer works there or if more than two years have passed since the last grant was made.
Peer-to-peer contact usually works best. You should, when possible, address inquiry letters to a program officer, not the head of the foundation. At smaller funders, there may be no program officer, so you’ll have to start at the top.
If the letter is to a program officer, you or your director of development should sign it. If the letter is to go to the head of the foundation, your director of development or executive director should sign it.
An inquiry letter should include …
• A reference to the newsletters and other materials you’ve been sending.
• A clear request for information about their programs.
• A general description of your project that shows a connection to and your understanding of the funder’s interests (see Chapter 9).
• Easy ways to contact you, especially an e-mail address.
• A list of your board, only if one or more names might be recognizable by the funder. (Having the board list as part of your letterhead design works better than an attachment.)
• A request for a meeting to discuss the project (optional).
• A copy of your organization’s general brochure if you believe your previous cultivation might not have sufficiently paved the way (optional).
• If available, one (and only one) short press clipping to show the prominence your charity has achieved.
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Never send an inquiry letter or proposal to more than one person at the same funder. If you can’t decide to whom to send it, you haven’t completed your research. The only exception would be when you have a connection to one of the funder’s trustees, in which case you would CC the trustee when sending the letter or proposal to the usual contact person.
An inquiry letter usually should not include …
• A direct request for money.
• A budget.
• Supporting materials, such as your tax-exempt letter.
• Annual reports or other bulky items.
Many foundations require an inquiry letter, in which case they typically will specify what information they want in it. Always follow funder instructions exactly.
The purpose of any letter of inquiry is to get the funder to request a complete proposal or to meet with you. To accomplish this, you have to give the basics about both your nonprofit and the project for which you seek funding, including what size grant you would like and what other funding you can draw on. It might look something like the following example.
Ms. Sara Brown
Program Officer, Health and Human Services
Jones Family Foundation
456 Broadway
Anytown, IL 60000
Dear Ms. Brown:
I hope you have found the clinicians’ newsletter from the Counseling Center of Broome County (CCBC) informative about the need for psychiatric counseling to the disadvantaged citizens of Broome County. The CCBC has provided these services for more than twenty years.
The CCBC has made great strides in reaching more people through its mobile facility, reaching clients in even the most remote areas of the county. As you probably know, state funding has been drastically reduced for next year, and we must replace that $25,000 in the next six months to continue this service. We already have pledges for $13,000, and we hope to raise the remainder from one or two foundations, including the Jones Family Foundation.
The speech given by Dr. Phelps, who I understand is your health adviser, at the Illinois Association of Psychiatry on just-in-time services certainly spoke to the types of situations we at the CCBC deal with daily, and that the mobile facility helps so much in meeting.
If you could possibly meet with us to discuss our current programs, we would greatly appreciate it, but I understand the limitations you have on your time. I’ll call you next week to see if we can arrange a meeting, or failing that, perhaps we can speak then about how we might develop a proposal to the Jones Foundation. In the meantime, you can reach me at 312-555-1222 or [email protected]. I look forward to speaking with you.
Sincerely,
Susan Smith
Susan Smith
Director of Development
Procedures differ slightly for a current or past funder:
• For a renewal grant for the same program from a current funder, you would probably just send in the renewal proposal (after making the necessary reports). An inquiry letter would serve no purpose because you know the funder likes your charity and its programs.
• For a grant for a new program from a current funder, you would probably phone your contact at the funder to discuss the new program rather than write an inquiry letter, which might seem too formal given the current relationship.
• If the funder has not given you a grant in more than a year, you might skip the inquiry letter and instead phone before sending the proposal, even if the grant would be for the program they supported previously.
An inquiry letter might be answered with a letter telling you to look elsewhere. In these cases, it’s unlikely that a full proposal would have done any better, but when this happens, you can’t help but wonder what would have happened if you’d been able to state your case directly. For this reason, many grant writers prefer to take the bull by the horns and make an inquiry call.
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