Structural Foundation Proposals: Why they are important to major gift fundraising
by Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru
A reader asked what I meant by a structural foundation proposal. It's a great question.
Many foundation proposals go to family foundations and therefore need to be very brief. Other philanthropic foundations (defined as highly staffed foundations with a rigorous, formal review process) require an in-depth proposal, a structural proposal, that covers all aspects of the project and your fundraising for it.
A U.S. national foundation that puts you through this process is the Kresge Foundation of Michigan. In the American Pacific Northwest, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, is one of the toughest and most thorough. Serving Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana the Murdock Trust has a long and storied history of kind, but tough-minded trustees and program officers.
After a letter of inquiry (LOI) to Murdock, a full proposal can take up to 20 pages to complete. Staff reviews your proposal over 6 to 9 months and will come for a site visit of several hours to interview team members involved with the project. Follow up questions and clarifications are all part of their due diligence.
I've had another foundation give a client a million dollars for a project then go to the Murdock Trust with an updated proposal only to find we had to do 15 drafts to get all of the details in place. After two sets of written questions with 10 pages responses each, we finally had our act together and eventually got funding.
While the Murdock Trust asks for 40% of the project to be funded before approaching them (and the Kresge Foundation 65%, although this may be changing now with new leadership), I always encourage my client to start drafting these "structural" proposals early in the campaign as they force the organization to be thorough. These proposals can be used for donors who want the whole story and as a template for shorter, less rigorous foundation proposals.
Let me know if this answers the question.
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http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/07/structural-foundation-proposals-why.html
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