Some practical advice for ice-cold foundation fundraising.
Foundations have a nearly unparalleled ability to make transformational gifts to your organization. Their coffers are large enough that their gifts can have a massive impact on the growth of your mission. That payoff doesn’t come without some elbow grease, though. Foundations are much harder to connect with than a major giver: far more levels of bureaucracy lie between you and decision-makers, and due to the volume of communication they receive, they can be very selective.
But difficult doesn’t mean insurmountable. You can get through to foundations, but you have to be tactical about how you approach them. So, where do you start?
1. Find the right contact.
As a first step, you use the foundation’s 990 to find contact information, contact names, or giving history (or other research tools like Foundation Directory) for board members or directors listed with addresses or PO boxes. Armed with this information, you then prepare a letter of inquiry that outlines your organization’s history, mission, alignment with the foundation’s grantmaking patterns, and invites them to join with you in your noble work.
Uh oh. When you begin your diligent follow-up by sending emails and making phone calls, you find that the person you addressed the letter to rarely comes into the office, is ninety years old, and has never been seen by the gatekeeper you end up speaking with. This poses a problem: How do you get your letter in front of the right person? The simple answer: It doesn’t really matter what name you slap on your letter. It matters that you sent it and are doing the tenacious follow-up. As you follow up with the foundation and make your way through the labyrinth, you’ll find that gatekeepers and secretaries connect you to contacts who are not public-facing but who make your case to the foundation’s leadership. Your original contact who was found on the 990 might sign the eventual check, but the program officer, grant manager, or other foundation administration are the contacts that will make or break your application.
2. Navigate the phone tree.
If you call the phone number located on the foundation’s 990, one of three possible parties will pick up: the foundation itself (great!), the firm—a bank or attorney’s office—that manages the foundation (not so bad), or another phone number that is likely somehow related but the gatekeeper who answers the phone can’t help you so it may as well be a wrong number (it probably goes without saying: not great).
In the first two cases, you may have to adjust on the fly. You might be a bit startled when you’re calling for the Smith Foundation and the secretary answers the phone as “Scrooge & Marley Accounting.” Best practice here is to say, “I’m trying to reach the Smith Foundation, do I have the right number?” Most of the time, I find that you do indeed have the right number, and all you have to do is clarify whom you’re trying to reach. The secretary will usually forward you to the right staff member or administrator.
This gets back to point #1, above. The person whom you’re about to speak with (or leave a voicemail for) is really the person you were trying to reach all along, even though their name wasn’t on the 990.
Sometimes, when you call a huge organization like a foundation managed by a massive bank, you’ll have to navigate a phone tree managed by a robot. You can either hunt through the phone tree to determine the right extension for the person you need or you can press “0” until you connect with a real person. If you’re persistent, you can usually get some good information, like the desired foundation contact’s personal extension.
3. Don’t let them off the hook easily.
You have finally located the right contact, navigated the phone tree, gotten a real person from the foundation on the phone, and then they say, “Thank you for your interest but we’re not interested at this time.” Drat!
So should you just hang up the phone, sigh, and move on? No! You’ve worked hard to get to this point, so don’t let them go without a bit of a fight. Unless someone outright says, “Your organization does not align with our strategic funding choices. Please don’t call us again,” you should not write them off. I always respond by thanking them for their transparency and then ask if I can send them regular updates or approach again in a year. Regular updates are preferred for two reasons: one, it shows them that you want to build rapport even though they weren’t an easily acquired funder; and two, this is the perfect opportunity to confirm that you have a good mailing and email address. Always be asking for something, even if it’s not a gift or the opportunity to apply for a gift! Ask if you can put them on your newsletter list. Confirm that the email address you have is the correct one or get a new email address. Update your CRM. Email addresses are gold because you now have a confirmed direct line of communication with the organization that you don’t need to navigate a phone tree for. (Any opportunity not to climb a phone tree is one to be snatched immediately.)
4. Provide regular updates.
At AmPhil, we like to say that “foundations are people too.” This sounds a bit odd at first, but it really is true. Treat your foundation relationships, even the cold ones, how you would your connection with a prospective major donor. Even if you spoke to someone at the foundation and they said that it wasn’t a good time to consider your request, or the grant cycle was closed, or even that your mission wasn’t a strategic priority right now, that doesn’t shut the door! You shouldn’t sigh and assume they’ll never give. How will they learn that your work really is aligned if you don’t tell them about it regularly and guide them to that conclusion? Send cultivation mailings and newsletters to your contacts at the foundations you are pursuing. It can only help you by keeping you top of mind, showing that your mission is aligned, and demonstrating that you are growing in your field—all of this while you are doing great work! Stories that communicate the impact of your mission go a long way here. I’ve sent many emails to foundation contacts that simply read, “Hi, [NAME]. This story from one of our programs just landed in my inbox and it made me think of you and the XYZ Foundation. I thought I would share!” These go a long way and start organic conversations. It’s much easier to work towards a grant opportunity when the foundation staff can tell you’re genuinely interested in seeing their mission and philanthropic vision come true because you treat them like a real person and not just an animatronic wallet.
Bonus: Even if you finally break through at a foundation and they say, “We’re not interested, please don’t call us again,” you should breathe a sigh of relief! Your list of follow-up prospects has gotten shorter, you’re getting more efficient, and you aren’t going to waste your time navigating robot-managed phone trees for people who are not going to partner with your organization. Essentially, you’re refining your ore down to 24k gold. That can only help you in the long run, so don’t hesitate to filter uninterested prospects out of your list. (Don’t delete them, just filter them out or tag them as “Not a fit.” Otherwise, you might reach out to them again a year later when you or a colleague is doing follow-up because they didn’t show up on the list and appear to be a new prospect. Then you really will have wasted your time, and possibly annoyed them in the process.
To sum things up, winning over foundations can feel like chipping away at a giant immovable glacier. However, with a little time, consistent follow-up, and some tips on how to work your chisel, you can begin to shape those foundations into a true mission partner. Don’t be discouraged by the seemingly impenetrable façade of the foundation’s website or 990. Take your first swing and you’re likely to see a faint crack appear that you can begin to widen.
