The First Dance: Building Relationships Between Foundations and Nonprofits

What Foundations Really Look For

When I lead workshops on grantseeking, I often tell people that sending a letter of inquiry is a little like asking someone to dance for the first time.

Over the years, however, I've realized that even that analogy begins too late.

Something almost always happens before anyone asks. One organization becomes curious about another. Sometimes a nonprofit studies a foundation's mission, priorities, and recent grants to determine whether the two organizations share a common purpose. Sometimes a foundation notices an organization long before it ever receives a proposal. It may hear about its work from community leaders, visit one of its programs, meet its staff at a conference, or simply observe its reputation over time. Increasingly, the first formal contact may be nothing more than an online application or a brief letter of inquiry submitted through a grant portal. However, it begins, one or both organizations have often begun asking the same question:

"Is this an organization we'd like to know better?"

Only then does the letter of inquiry become something like asking another person to dance. You're not proposing marriage, and you're not even asking for a date. You're simply asking whether the other organization might be interested in beginning a conversation. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no, and sometimes it is simply "not now." But when the answer is yes, both organizations hope that first conversation will eventually become something much more meaningful: a relationship built on shared purpose, mutual respect, and trust.

That is one reason I've never been comfortable when people describe fundraising as "asking for money." After more than forty years in philanthropy and consulting, and after reading well over 10,000 grant proposals, I've learned that the best fundraising is not about asking for money at all. It is about building relationships between organizations that discover they can accomplish more together than either could accomplish alone.

Foundations Have Missions Too

One of the biggest misconceptions about philanthropy is that foundations exist simply to give away money.

Every foundation exists for a reason. That reason may reflect the values and interests of a founder or family, a corporation's business philosophy, the needs of a particular community, or some combination of these. Tax law establishes the rules under which foundations operate, but it does not explain why they exist. Foundations make grants because grants are one of the principal ways they pursue the mission they were created to achieve.

Once you understand that, the relationship between a foundation and a nonprofit organization looks very different. The question is no longer, "How do we persuade them to fund us?" It becomes, "Can our two organizations accomplish something important together?"

The proposal takes on a different meaning as well. It is no longer simply a request for funding. It becomes an introduction, the beginning of a conversation, and perhaps the first step toward a partnership that may last for years, sometimes even decades.

The most successful grants I've been involved with were rarely isolated transactions. They evolved into relationships in which both organizations learned from one another, adapted together, and ultimately accomplished more than either could have achieved independently.

Building Confidence

One of the advantages of spending more than four decades in philanthropy is that you begin to notice patterns. I've forgotten thousands of executive summaries and countless proposal budgets. What I've never forgotten are the organizations that consistently kept their promises.

When I first began reviewing proposals, I thought I was evaluating projects. Eventually I realized I was evaluating organizations. The proposal described the project, but the organization determined whether I believed the project could succeed.

Every proposal tells two stories. The first explains what the organization hopes to accomplish. The second reveals the organization itself. Does it know who it is? Does it remain faithful to its mission? Does it understand the community it serves? Does it treat employees with respect and volunteers as valued partners? Does it collaborate because collaboration genuinely benefits the community, or only because the application requires it? Does the budget support the narrative? Does the proposal acknowledge uncertainty honestly, or promise more than anyone could reasonably deliver?

Those questions rarely receive direct answers. Instead, they emerge from the proposal, from conversations, from site visits, from previous experience, and from an organization's reputation over time. Experienced program officers learn to read beyond the words on the page. They look for consistency between what an organization says, what it values, and how it behaves.

One lesson that surprised me over the years was how much attention experienced foundation staff paid to organizational culture. They watched how people treated one another. They noticed whether staff seemed respected, whether volunteers appeared genuinely valued, and whether the dignity afforded to clients matched the language used in the proposal. They paid attention to whether board members understood the mission and whether the executive director inspired confidence. Those observations rarely appeared in board minutes, yet they often shaped recommendations in ways that were difficult to quantify. Character reveals itself in ordinary moments, and an organization's culture becomes part of its credibility.

I watched this lesson unfold with one of my current clients. When we first began working together, the organization relied almost entirely on written proposals and received funding from relatively few of the foundations it approached. We certainly strengthened the proposals, but we also invested time in building relationships with foundation staff whenever possible. A few years later, the proposals are stronger, but that isn't the biggest difference. Many funders now know the organization's leadership personally. They know whom to call with a question, they have seen the work firsthand, and they have watched the organization keep its promises. The organization's success rate has increased dramatically, not simply because the proposals improved, but because the relationships matured.

The proposal didn't produce the relationship. The relationship made the proposal more credible.

Trust Is the Real Investment

Good ideas, strong leadership, and well-written proposals all matter because they help a foundation understand an organization's work. Yet after decades in philanthropy, I've become convinced that foundations ultimately invest in something deeper. They invest in trust.

Foundation boards and professional staff serve as stewards of charitable resources entrusted to them by individuals, families, corporations, and communities. Their responsibility extends well beyond choosing worthy projects. They must identify organizations that will use those resources wisely, honestly, and effectively in pursuit of shared purposes.

Responsible foundations understand that not every project unfolds exactly as planned.

Communities change, circumstances change, and even the strongest ideas sometimes need to evolve. They don't expect perfection. They expect integrity. They expect organizations to communicate honestly when obstacles arise, solve problems thoughtfully, and remain faithful stewards of the resources entrusted to them. No foundation board wants to read headlines about charitable dollars being mismanaged or ethical lapses that could have been prevented. Every board hopes instead to see that its grants improved lives, strengthened communities, and advanced both the organization's mission and the foundation's own mission.

Perhaps that should not surprise us. Across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, generosity has always meant more than transferring resources from one person to another. It begins with trust. The giver accepts the responsibility to give generously. The seeker accepts the responsibility to ask honestly, steward resources faithfully, and use them for the purposes promised. Modern philanthropy includes people of many faiths and of no religious tradition at all, yet that underlying principle remains remarkably consistent.

A grant is not simply a transfer of money. It is the transfer of trust.

Long Before the Proposal

One of the biggest mistakes nonprofit organizations make is assuming fundraising begins when they start writing.

It doesn't.

Fundraising begins by understanding your own mission, understanding the mission of the foundation, and deciding whether those missions genuinely belong together. It continues as an organization governs well, treats employees with dignity, values volunteers, listens carefully to the people it serves, manages its resources responsibly, collaborates generously, and earns a reputation for doing what it says it will do. Those habits shape every proposal long before anyone writes the first sentence.

Before approaching a foundation, it may be worth pausing to ask a few questions:

• Does this foundation's mission genuinely align with ours, or are we simply looking for a potential source of funding? 

• If we receive this grant, will it strengthen our mission or tempt us to drift from it? 

• Have we earned a foundation's confidence through our leadership, stewardship, and reputation, or are we expecting the proposal to do that work for us? 

• If a program officer visited tomorrow, would they see an organization whose values are reflected in the way it treats its staff, volunteers, partners, and the people it serves? 

• Are we seeking a grant, or are we hoping to build a relationship that will continue long after this proposal has been approved—or declined? 

Those aren't simply fundraising questions.

They're relationship questions.

Looking back, I suppose my old dance analogy wasn't entirely wrong. A letter of inquiry or a first proposal really is like asking someone to dance. It opens the door to a conversation and, if both organizations discover that their missions, values, and aspirations genuinely belong together, perhaps to a lasting relationship.

But the dance itself isn't the goal.

The goal is a partnership built on shared purpose, mutual respect, and trust, one that ultimately improves the lives of the people and communities both organizations exist to serve.

In the end, the proposal didn't produce the relationship. The relationship made the proposal more credible.

That's what foundations are really looking for.

And perhaps that's the real lesson of the first dance: the invitation matters, but it is the relationship that follows that creates lasting change.

References

Marcus, M. S. (2024). The Foundation Grant Proposal (Revised Edition).

Marcus, M. S. (2002). The Grantmaking Process. 

Patrizi, P., Thompson, E. H., Coffman, J., & Beer, T. (2013). Eyes Wide Open: Learning as Strategy Under Conditions of Complexity and Uncertainty. The Foundation Review.

Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. Trust-Based Philanthropy: Six Practices.