Grant Writing Intake: What to Do When the Organization Doesn't Have What You Need
Every grant writer eventually inherits an organization they know nothing about. A consultant signs a new client. A development director starts a new job. A staff writer gets handed a program that has been running for a few years but has never been written about. However you arrive, the first task is the same: gather enough information about the organization and its programs to write something a funder will fund.
That gathering step often gets treated as logistics. Send the list, collect the documents, start writing. There are checklists all over the internet telling you what to ask for, and most of them are perfectly good lists. Here is a link to mine.
However, almost none of them address what to do when the organization doesn’t have the things on the list.
It’s unlikely that they are hiding them or dragging their feet. Rather, sometimes it’s just that a board roster was never written down, an audit was never required, and no one put the program description on paper in any form. This situation is actually pretty common, and it’s not a sign of a bad organization. It does change what your job actually is for the next several weeks.
So here is the sequence. And then we’ll discuss what to do when it stalls: You get the engagement. You have a real conversation about the work. And at the end of that conversation, you hand over a checklist: financials, board roster, key staff roster, 501(c)(3) letter, past grant proposals, program information, and everything else you need before you can write.
Then you wait.
Sometimes the folder comes back full in three days. Sometimes almost nothing comes back at all, and the temptation is to read that silence as an organization that is disorganized or unresponsive. That reading is usually wrong, and not changing course costs you weeks.
Table of Contents
Fill in what you can before you ask for anything
Start by completing your own intake form yourself.
Most of what goes on it is public. The mission statement, the address, the executive director's name, the board size: all of that is on the website or in the most recent 990 tax return that is filed with the IRS and available with a quick search on the internet: 990 tax return [name of organization].
If the organization has past grant proposals on file, you'll find much more information there. An hour of your own work will fill in a surprising amount.
Then send only what is left.
The difference matters more than it sounds like it should. A full document request that includes six items you could have found yourself reads as busywork, and it teaches the organization that your requests are not carefully considered. A short list of specific gaps reads as someone who has already done their homework and needs three things. The second one gets answered.
It also changes what you learn. When you fill the form in first, the blanks that remain are meaningful. They are not just items nobody has gotten around to sending. They are the places where the information may not exist at all, which is exactly what you need to know before you promise a submission date.
Every item gets one of three responses
What is missing is not always absent. Sometimes it has simply never been asked to speak.
Go through the remaining list with your contact at the organization, item by item, out loud. Not by email. Each line will resolve in one of three ways, and knowing which one you are looking at tells you what happens next.
Retrieve. It exists as a document and someone can send it to you. The determination letter, the 990, the bylaws, the most recent financial statements. This is the only response a checklist is designed to handle, and for an organization with an established grant writing program, most of this information is on hand.
Substitute. The item as named does not exist, but something else answers the same question. There is no formal case for support, but there is an appeal letter. There is no audit, because the organization has never been required to have one, but there are financial statements. The information you need is available. It is just wearing a different label.
Construct. Nothing exists in any form. No written program description, no outcome data, no logic model, nothing on paper that anyone has ever produced. This is not a collection problem. You are going to build it, and that takes time you need to plan for.
The reason to name these is that they look identical from your inbox. An item that is missing because nobody has emailed it yet and an item that is missing because it has never existed produce exactly the same silence. The only way to tell them apart is to ask.
Working the list category by category
Here is how the three responses play out across a standard checklist.
Grant history and tracking
Retrieve: Past grant proposals, letters of inquiry, award letters, decline letters, funder feedback, and final reports. Ask for the declines with the same weight as the wins. A decline letter with reviewer comments is often the most useful document in the entire file.
Substitute: If the organization has never applied for a grant, ask for anything else it has written to persuade someone to give money. Appeal letters, donor newsletters, a case for support, board presentations requesting funding, or a report to a funder who gave without a formal application. These items show whether anyone at the organization can make a written case, and they give you existing language in the organization's own voice.
Construct: The grant tracker. Very few organizations arrive with one, and building it is usually a straightforward hour of work that pays for itself the first time somebody asks what was submitted last year.
One thing worth noting quietly: a grant history normally tells you two things: 1) what the organization has pursued, and 2) whether it can hit a deadline and follow instructions. Substitute materials answer the first question, but there’s no way around the second. With a first-time applicant, you are working without evidence on reliability, and that is worth knowing going in.
Financial documents
Retrieve: Current operating budget, 501(c)(3) determination letter, most recent 990 tax return, financial statements, and a summary of funding sources for the past two years.
Substitute: No audit means unaudited financial statements, a profit and loss statement, and a balance sheet, which is entirely normal for a smaller organization and is not a red flag on its own. No full 990 means the 990-EZ or the 990-N postcard. Flag which version they file, since some funders ask specifically. No formal funding source summary means you build one from the 990 and the accounting system.
Construct: The program budget. This is the item most often missing, because organizations budget by department or by fund, not by program. Building a program budget is a working session with whoever handles the books, not a document request, and it usually takes longer than anyone expects.
Note that if the program budget comes back as a flat percentage of the total operating budget, with no line items underneath it, that's often a sign the organization has never actually allocated costs by program. A little proportional allocation for shared costs like rent or a shared salary is normal. What's missing is any direct-cost detail for the program itself. That's a red flag worth addressing before you build a budget narrative around it. We’ll address this in next week’s blog.
Organizational information
Retrieve: Board roster with titles and affiliations, key staff list with titles and functions, strategic plan, annual report.
Substitute: If there's no staff list, pull titles from the website and confirm them. No strategic plan means asking for board minutes, a retreat summary, or whatever document the board last used to set direction. An outdated strategic plan is still useful and worth asking for by name, since people often assume you only want the current one. Also, many organizations do not have a strategic plan. This is not a red flag, but it is an area for organizational development.
Construct: The board roster, more often than you would guess. There is a board. Nobody has ever written down the list with affiliations and terms. The names of board members will be on the most recent 990 PF tax return. For affiliation and terms, send a simple template, then walk through what goes on it and why funders ask: affiliations show community reach, terms show governance stability, and giving participation shows internal commitment. The same applies to a theory of change or a quality improvement plan. Many organizations do not have either one, and that is normal rather than disqualifying.
Program and project materials
This is where the assumption breaks hardest, because most checklists quietly rely on a past grant proposal to carry the program information forward. Take that away, and there is often nothing.
Retrieve: Program descriptions, brochures, service overviews, logic models, evaluation reports, outcome data, partner agreements, participant numbers.
Substitute: Any narrative describing the work will help. Website copy, newsletters, appeal letters, board presentations, a report submitted to a different funder, a grant proposal written for a program that is not the one you are working on. For numbers, ask what is captured at intake rather than what the organization believes it serves. Those are often different, and the gap matters before you promise a funder anything. Demographic detail is frequently thinner than participant counts, since attendance gets tracked for operational reasons while demographics depend on somebody having built an intake form that asks.
Construct: Everything else. No written program description anywhere, no outcome data, no evaluation plan. This is the heaviest lift in the checklist, and the one that most often surprises people, and it is the reason the rest of this post exists.
Brand and collateral materials
Retrieve: Logo files, letterhead, brochures, annual reports, photographs.
Substitute: A low-resolution logo pulled from the website will do for internal drafting while someone hunts for the original file. Letterhead can be rebuilt from an existing letter.
Construct: Usable photographs, more often than you would like. Plenty of organizations have pictures. Far fewer have pictures with signed releases from the people in them, and that takes lead time nobody plans for. Ask about releases early, not the week the grant proposal is due.
What construct actually looks like
You cannot interview your way to what you could have seen by standing in the room.
Everything above is manageable except the construct tier, and the construct tier is real work that has to go somewhere on your calendar.
Years ago, I was hired by a gospel mission to take on their grant writing and management. But even though they had written grants before, my contact asked me not to read them or the website. He wanted a new proposal built entirely from scratch, based on a site visit. So I spent the day there. I talked with clients, staff, and volunteers. I saw the building. I saw where people slept and where they ate. Then I wrote it alongside my point of contact, from what I saw and heard that day, not from the file. That is what construct means. Not chasing an email. Not sending a firmer reminder. Going and gathering the raw material yourself, then building the written piece with the people who run the program.
It is also, for what it is worth, some of the best writing I have done. Program descriptions built from a site visit tend to be more specific and more alive than ones assembled from a previous grant proposal, because you are not inheriting somebody else's summary of the work and you can better replay what it’s like to be there than imagining it from afar.
Program case statement: A one-page tool for the construct problem
The trap in the construct tier is reaching for a logic model too early. An organization that has never articulated its program logic cannot fill one out, and handing over a blank one produces the same silence you started with.
What works better is a one-page program case statement, built one per program. Two columns. On the left: a photo of the program in action; who is served, with demographic detail; numbers served for the past two years; and a summarized budget. On the right, the program description, the goal, the objectives, the evaluation plan, and last year's results.
Three things make it work.
First, fill in what you can yourself, the same way you did with the intake form. You can usually draft the program description, service area, and common budget categories before you ask anyone for anything.
The gaps become specific questions rather than a blank form. Asking someone to confirm a demographic breakdown you have drafted is a different request from asking them to produce one.
And the evaluation fields wait. Those are the last things to fill in because they come out of the framework or logic model session, not a document request. A blank evaluation plan at this stage is expected, not a failure to collect.
Once it is finished, the sheet belongs to the organization. It becomes their reference for the next application, the next board packet, and the next report, whether or not you are the one writing it. And program managers love having it.
I built this one as a downloadable template with coaching notes and a completed example, since the format is easier to follow when you can see one filled in.
How to actually walk an organization through building a logic model or a framework is its own post, and so is the question of what to do commercially when a project you scoped as retrieve turns out to be construct.
Frequently asked questions
What if the organization has never applied for a grant before?
Expect most of the program and evaluation items to land in the construct tier, and expect the financial and governance items to mostly retrieve. Ask for non-grant fundraising materials in place of past grant proposals. Plan for interviews and a site visit rather than a document request, and set the submission timeline accordingly.
What should I do if the organization does not respond to my document request?
Before following up again, ask yourself whether the items you requested actually exist. Non-response is often a person avoiding a request they do not know how to fill. A five-minute call asking which items they have, which they might have in another form, and which have never existed will usually move things faster than a third email.
Should I send an organization a logic model to fill out?
No. A logic model is a synthesis tool that requires training to complete, and sending a blank one to an organization that has never built one produces confusion rather than information. Build a draft yourself from what you have gathered, then walk them through it and let them correct it. People correct much more readily than they generate.
How long should I give an organization to gather documents?
Two weeks is reasonable for items in the retrieve tier. Substitute items take longer because someone has to go looking. Construct items should not be on a document deadline at all, because they are not documents yet. Put those on your own calendar as working sessions.
What is the best grant writing class?
Spark the Fire’s Certificate in Grant Writing class covers the full arc from prospect research through submission, including the pieces most classes skip: how to work with an organization that is not grant-ready, how to build program logic with an organization rather than for it, and how to write a community insight statement that holds up under review. It’s hands-on with weekly writing assignments. It is approved for continuing education through the Grant Professionals Certification Institute and CFRE International, and it is built on brain-based adult learning rather than a stack of recorded lectures.
Remember: The organization is not disorganized
An empty page is not evidence of nothing happening. It is evidence of nothing written down yet.
When a checklist comes back empty, the most useful thing you can do is stop reading it as a character problem. The list assumed a filing cabinet. Some organizations have one. Many do not, and the ones that do not are frequently the ones doing the most interesting work with the least infrastructure behind it.
Sort every item into retrieve, substitute, or construct. Fill in what you can yourself. Ask for what is left, specifically. And when something has to be built from scratch, put it on the calendar as the work it is.
Cheering you on,
Allison
