A federal notice of funding opportunity tells you what to submit and when. You read the NOFO, you build to it, you file by the deadline. The document you are looking at is the document you are answering.
Private foundation process pages do not work that way, and a batch of them indexed on OpenGrants over the past two weeks makes the difference unusually easy to see. Eight records, from a family trust in Washington D.C. to a national research funder, and in every one of them the thing labeled apply is not the application. It is a screen. Clear the screen and an application becomes available to you. Fail it, or never enter it, and the application you were planning to write does not exist as far as you are concerned.
This is not a detail of etiquette. It changes what you put on your calendar, how far ahead you have to start, and — in several of these cases — whether a first-time applicant can get in the door at all.
Two Documents, One Abbreviation
Start with a distinction that swallows a lot of wasted effort, because two different things get called an LOI.
A letter of intent tells a funder you plan to submit. It exists so the funder can plan its review — line up reviewers, estimate volume. It does not screen you out.
A letter of inquiry is a screening instrument. The funder reads it to decide whether to invite a full proposal, and a decline at that stage is a decline. The OpenGrants encyclopedia entry on the letter of inquiry covers the craft of writing one; the point here is narrower. Same three letters, opposite consequences. One is a courtesy. The other is the competition.
Every one of the eight records below runs a letter of inquiry, or something that behaves like one under a different name — interest form, expression of interest, Part 1, preliminary application. Where the record uses a name, this post uses the record’s name.
What differs between them is how much control you have over passing. That turns out to be the useful way to sort them.
At the Top, You Cannot Apply at All
Three of these funders gate access in a way no amount of application quality gets past.
The Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation is the clearest case, and its record is nearly empty for a reason. Per the record, the application process page states that grant applications are accepted by invitation only, and no open RFP, deadline, award amounts, focus areas, or eligibility details are disclosed on the page. That absence is the finding. There is nothing to prepare, no criteria to write toward, and no submission to time. A funder like this belongs on a research list, not a pipeline, and the practical error is treating a blank record as missing data rather than as the program’s actual posture. See the Glazer Foundation application page for current details.
Burton D. Morgan Foundation does take an inbound form, and then tells you plainly how little that form usually does. The record describes its grantmaking as largely proactive: it typically partners with grantees for multiple years, so capacity to approve new grant requests each year is limited. Prospective applicants confirm eligibility and mission fit against the Foundation’s 2024–2026 strategic plan and priorities, then submit a grant interest form through the GoApply system. The record also carves out a specific exclusion — entrepreneurship education for youth is now funded through YIPPEE and is not eligible under this program — which is the kind of routing rule that sends an otherwise well-aimed request to the wrong place. Northeast Ohio is the geography on the record; it states no deadline and no award figures. Once a grant is underway, Program Officers collaborate with applicants throughout the review process to establish objectives, milestones, and anticipated outcomes, and recipients submit interim and final outcome reports through GoApply.
Read that description as an honest disclosure rather than boilerplate. A funder whose portfolio is mostly multi-year renewals is telling you that the open slot count is small, and that is a planning input, not a discouragement.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation makes the gate vary inside a single institution. Per the record, Sloan funds through multiple grantmaking programs, each with its own goals, strategies, and application requirements. An applicant identifies a relevant program and submits a letter of inquiry by email to that program’s director; if invited, a formal proposal follows a rigorous review. And then the line that matters most: not all programs accept unsolicited inquiries. There is no foundation-wide answer to “can I apply to Sloan.” There is only a per-program answer, and finding it is the first task rather than a preliminary to the first task. The record also notes that grants are awarded year-round, but major grants over $250,000 are approved only quarterly. Confirm current figures and program-level rules against the Sloan Foundation application guidance.
In the Middle, the Gate Is a Document
Three more run a real screening document with a published shape — the case most grant teams picture, and the one where preparation pays.
The Alexander and Margaret Stewart Trust has the most interesting rule of the eight. First-time applicants create an online account and submit a letter of inquiry, and trustees then decide whether a formal proposal is appropriate. But organizations that received a grant within the last three years pre-qualify and skip the letter of inquiry entirely.
The gate is a first-timer’s gate. Recency of funding is a bypass, which means the cost of entering this funder’s process is front-loaded onto exactly the organizations that have not been funded before, and a lapse of more than three years puts a former grantee back at the start. Applicants supply organizational information, a project description, and supporting files including accounting statements, annual reports, and proof of IRS tax-exempt status. Trustees may follow up with questions or a site visit. The record lists exclusions worth checking before any of that: the Trust does not fund endowments, building programs, capital campaigns, or scholarships to individuals or to institutions on behalf of individuals. The record carries a deadline of September 18, 2026, and gives the geography as Washington, D.C. for medical care projects — confirm both against the Stewart Trust funding page.
Perry & Ruby Stevens Charitable Foundation publishes something most funders do not: a response commitment. Applicants create an account, register the nonprofit, and submit a letter of inquiry, and per the record the Foundation responds to all letters of inquiry by email within two weeks to determine eligibility. An approved inquiry opens the full application, which asks for a staff list, organizational and project budgets, a board member list, a financial audit, IRS Form 990, letters of support or MOUs, and an implementation timeline. The record puts the entire cycle at two to three months, possibly including phone interviews or site visits, with decisions announced following each board meeting; successful applicants receive a grant agreement and then a check after returning a signed copy. A two-week screening answer is a genuinely useful planning fact — it makes the first stage cheap to test.
Caring for Colorado Foundation splits the application in two, and puts a separate deadline on each half. Part 1 is a low-barrier eligibility and alignment screen due by a first deadline at 5 p.m. MST; invited applicants then complete an in-depth Part 2 covering proposal objectives and outcomes, demographic information, a financial summary, narrative questions, and required attachments, due by a second deadline. Tax-exempt organizations requesting more than $25,000 must submit audited financials — a threshold worth knowing before you size a request. The foundation describes its philosophy as aligned with Trust-Based Philanthropy, emphasizing multi-year flexible funding, streamlined paperwork, transparency, and support beyond the grant, across six funding priorities aimed at equity in health, well-being, and opportunity for Colorado’s young people and families.
One caution the record states directly: as of the page, there are no open funding opportunities, and specific deadlines and amounts are published per opportunity when one opens. A two-part process with no cycle currently open is a subscribe-and-wait situation, not an application.
At the Bottom, the Gate Is a Conversation
The last two are the ones a document-focused grant team is most likely to misread, because the first step is not a submission.
Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust begins, per the record, with staff consultation — then an interest form, then a brief letter of inquiry, and only after approval an invitation to submit a full proposal with a detailed narrative, budget, three years of audited financials, board information, and donors. Proposals must align with the Trust’s six core program areas and demonstrate impact, effectiveness, feasibility, and sustainability. Program staff present them to the Board of Trustees at monthly meetings, which approve or decline on an ongoing basis. New applicants are strongly encouraged to attend a “Piper 101” information session.
Three years of audited financials is a readiness fact, not a writing task; an organization that does not have them cannot produce them during a proposal window. And the consultation-first sequence means the earliest useful action is a phone call, in Maricopa County, Arizona, where the Trust makes grants.
Grand Haven Area Community Foundation runs the same idea on a stopwatch. Its Community Impact Grant Program takes a Preliminary Application at any time, and the record recommends submitting it a minimum of four to six weeks before the grant deadline. Within two weeks the foundation reviews it for alignment with grantmaking priorities and responds. If eligible, the appropriate grant application is made available through the online portal, after which the team conducts due diligence, possibly including a site visit, before the Grants Committee reviews. Grants are reviewed quarterly and are available in multi-year form. Per the record, citing the foundation’s 2024 Annual Report, a total of $2,018,222 was awarded through the program.
That last figure is the one to hold onto, because it is the rare case where a process page tells you the size of the pool you are entering.
The Deadline Arithmetic
Put the timing facts from these records side by side and a pattern falls out that no single listing makes obvious.
Grand Haven’s published grant deadline is not the date you work back from. The record’s own recommendation — preliminary application four to six weeks out, response within two — means the operative date for a new applicant is roughly six weeks earlier than the one on the page, and the portal application does not open to you until the screen clears. Stevens puts the full cycle at two to three months from inquiry to decision. Piper’s board meets monthly and decides on an ongoing basis, so there is no cliff, but the queue is real and it starts with a conversation. Sloan awards year-round while approving major grants over $250,000 only quarterly, which means the size of your request determines which calendar you are on. Caring for Colorado has two deadlines per cycle, and Part 2 is unreachable if you miss Part 1.
Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions.
The first is that the visible deadline is frequently the second deadline. Budgeting your effort against it is how a well-prepared organization arrives on time for a stage it was never admitted to.
The second is more encouraging. Screening stages are cheap, and several of these are explicitly designed to be. A low-barrier Part 1, a two-week eligibility answer, a preliminary application accepted at any time — these are inexpensive tests of fit that resolve fast. The correct response to a screening gate is usually to enter it early and often, not to over-prepare for it. The expensive document comes later, and only for the applicants who were invited to write it.
Reading a Process Page for What It Actually Says
Four questions answer most of what you need from a funder’s process page, and all four are answerable in a couple of minutes.
Is the first step a submission, an invitation, or a conversation? An invitation-only funder like Glazer is research, not pipeline. A consultation-first funder like Piper needs a call on the calendar before anything gets written. A submission-first funder needs a document.
Does the screen have its own deadline, and how far before the visible one? Grand Haven and Caring for Colorado both answer this in plain language. Where a page does not, ask.
Is there a bypass, and am I on the right side of it? Stewart Trust’s three-year pre-qualification is the clearest example — a rule that quietly sorts applicants into two different processes with two different costs.
What does the funder say about its own capacity? Burton D. Morgan’s disclosure about multi-year partnerships and limited annual capacity for new requests is not discouraging language to be read past. It is the most decision-relevant sentence on the page.
None of these records states a full set of figures. Where an award amount or a deadline is absent above, it is absent from the record itself — confirm it against the official listing before you commit a budget or a schedule to it. That is the standard we hold every grant record to, and the reason a thin listing gets published as a thin listing rather than filled in with a plausible number.
Structural facts like these — who may apply, what the screen is, when it closes — are exactly what gets lost when a funder is reduced to a name and a subject area. OpenGrants indexes more than 43,000 open funding opportunities across federal, state, local, foundation, and corporate sources, searchable free with no account, with the eligibility and process language kept alongside the basics. Browse the OpenGrants funder directory to see how a funder actually takes requests before you build a calendar around it, search the grant database for programs in your area, and use the OpenGrants knowledge base to set up alerts so a screening deadline is not the one you find out about late.
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