SkillMedev Grant LOI Writer
A letter of inquiry has one job: earn the invitation to submit a full proposal. It is not a compressed proposal, and the most common failure is treating it as one - cramming in the logic model, the evaluation plan, and the budget until the letter runs three pages and the program officer stops reading. This skill produces a one-page LOI that a program officer can champion internally in ninety seconds. It sits second in the grants pipeline: it takes a pursue-tier prospect from grant-prospect-researcher and, on invitation, hands off to grant-proposal-writer.
Work the example organization throughout: Bright Futures Tutoring, a youth-education nonprofit with a $420,000 annual budget, 3 staff, serving 250 students, asking the Hearthstone Foundation for $75,000.
Operating procedure
Step 1: Confirm the prospect is qualified
Do not write an LOI for a funder that has not passed fit-scoring in grant-prospect-researcher (score 11+ of 15). Writing to unqualified funders is how three-person teams burn their application capacity. Pull from the prospect table: the funder's median grant, its stated priorities, two or three named similar grantees, and any submission requirements (word limits, portal, required attachments).
Step 2: Harvest funder language for mirroring
The mirroring rule: describe your work in the funder's vocabulary, not yours. Pull 5-10 exact phrases from the funder's guidelines, mission statement, and recent grant announcements. If Hearthstone says "academic opportunity gap" and "out-of-school time," the LOI says those words - not "tutoring services" as internal shorthand. Mirroring is translation, not distortion; if you must misdescribe the program to match the language, the funder is a bad fit and belongs back in grant-prospect-researcher.
Step 3: Draft in the need→approach→fit→ask structure
One page, roughly 400-500 words, four moves in this order - need before approach, because a funder who does not accept the problem will not care about the solution:
- Need (2-4 sentences): the local problem with one or two local numbers. Not national statistics - the funder can google those; local data proves you know your community.
- Approach (4-6 sentences): what the organization does about it, with scale numbers (students served, sessions, staff) and one headline outcome. One outcome number, chosen for strength; the full outcomes table waits for the proposal.
- Fit (2-3 sentences): why this funder specifically - name the matching priority and, where true, note the resemblance to grantees they already fund. This paragraph is where the mirroring earns its keep.
- Ask (2-3 sentences): the specific-ask rule - amount + duration + what it buys, in one sentence. "Bright Futures requests $75,000 over one year to expand from 250 to 325 students by adding a fourth tutor and a second program site." A vague "we seek your support" forces the program officer to guess, and program officers do not champion guesses.
Close with a one-sentence offer to provide a full proposal and a direct contact.
Step 4: Apply the exclusion list
What NOT to include at LOI stage: the full budget or budget narrative; the logic model; the evaluation plan beyond one sentence; the organization's founding history; more than one story or anecdote; attachments the funder did not request; and hedging language ("we hope," "we would be honored"). Every one of these belongs in the full proposal or nowhere. If it does not help the program officer say yes to an invitation, cut it.
Step 5: Verify and send
Check length (one page at 11-point or the funder's stated word cap, whichever is shorter), check every number against the source used elsewhere in the pack (same 250 students, same $420,000 budget the impact report and board pack use), and confirm the ask is 50-150 percent of the funder's median grant per the prospect table. Log the send date; if no response in the funder's stated window plus two weeks, one polite follow-up email.
Inputs to collect
The target funder and its prospect-table row (median grant, priorities, similar grantees), the ask amount and duration, what the money specifically buys, current scale numbers, one headline outcome with its source, local need data with source, and the funder's format requirements. Label guessed numbers as guesses and replace them before sending - an LOI with a wrong number poisons the relationship before it starts.
Worked artifact: Bright Futures LOI skeleton
[FILL: date]
[FILL: program officer name and title]
[FILL: foundation name and address]
Dear [FILL: name],
NEED - In [FILL: county], [FILL: local stat, e.g. "only 38 percent of
third-graders read at grade level, and fewer than half of low-income
families can afford private tutoring"]. [FILL: 1 sentence on the local
consequence, in the funder's vocabulary.]
APPROACH - Bright Futures Tutoring closes that gap with [FILL: program
in one clause, mirrored language]. This year our 3-person team serves
250 students through [FILL: delivery model, e.g. "twice-weekly
small-group tutoring in two school sites"]. [FILL: headline outcome,
e.g. "Last year, 72 percent of our students gained at least one grade
level in reading."] Our annual budget is $420,000, [FILL: funding mix
in one clause].
FIT - [Funder name]'s commitment to [FILL: exact phrase from their
guidelines] aligns directly with this work. Like [FILL: named current
grantee], we [FILL: the specific resemblance].
ASK - Bright Futures requests $75,000 over one year to expand from 250
to 325 students by [FILL: what it buys, e.g. "adding a fourth tutor and
opening a second program site"]. We would welcome the opportunity to
submit a full proposal and can provide any additional information.
Sincerely,
[FILL: ED name, title, phone, email]
Good/bad ask contrast - Bad: "We respectfully request your consideration of support for our tutoring programs." Good: "Bright Futures requests $75,000 over one year to expand from 250 to 325 students by adding a fourth tutor and a second program site." The good version gives amount, duration, and what it buys; the bad version gives the program officer nothing to champion.
Deliverable
A send-ready one-page LOI in the funder's required format, every number consistent with the organization's canonical figures, the ask stated as amount + duration + what it buys, plus a send-and-follow-up log entry.
Do NOT
- Do not exceed one page; the program officer reads dozens of these and length signals an organization that cannot prioritize.
- Do not compress the full proposal into the LOI - no logic model, no evaluation plan, no line-item budget. Those live in grant-proposal-writer.
- Do not write in internal jargon when the funder's guidelines hand you their vocabulary.
- Do not make a vague ask; "support for our work" is the single most common LOI killer.
- Do not send an LOI to a funder that failed fit-scoring because the deadline is soon.
Quality bar
- One page, four moves in order, funder word cap respected.
- At least three mirrored phrases traceable to the funder's own materials.
- The need paragraph cites local data with a source.
- The ask sentence contains amount, duration, and what it buys.
- All numbers match the canonical set used by grant-proposal-writer, impact-report-builder, and nonprofit-board-pack.
Escalation
On invitation to submit, go to grant-proposal-writer with the LOI's numbers as the fixed baseline. On decline, log the reason if given and return the funder to grant-prospect-researcher's watch tier. If the funder requires a fiscal sponsor or has legal submission conditions, consult a nonprofit attorney; this skill is not legal advice.