Developing Relationships with Funders 25 Sample Letter of Inquiry Date Ms. Wendy Wonder President Future Foundation 0000 Clinton Avenue, Suite 2330 Anytown, Any State 02009 Dear Ms. W

Step 2—Developing Relationships with Funders 25

Sample Letter of Inquiry Date Ms. Wendy Wonder President Future Foundation 0000 Clinton Avenue, Suite 2330 Anytown, Any State 02009

Dear Ms. Wonder: As follow-up to my recent conversation with Lisa Bryant, I am pleased to submit this Letter of Inquiry

for Alyson Eats for your consideration. We are respectfully requesting a general support grant of $50,000 for our comprehensive programs to address hunger and food insecurity in some of our community’s most underserved areas.

Since 2004, Alyson Eats has sought to ease the suffering of some of the approximately 130,000 residents of Alyson who are experiencing or at risk for hunger. Our objective over the coming year is to provide more than 200,000 nutritious meals to hungry children and adults on Alyson’s south side.

Alyson Eats will engage our nine staff members (five are part-time), our 50 regular volunteers, and our corporate and other institutional partners across the city to conduct three proven programs to address hunger: our food pantry and distribution service, which will distribute approximately 9,000 boxes of food this year; a summer-time program that will provide meals to about 1,000 children who normally get free lunch at school; and an outreach program to recruit and engage donors of food and funds, as well as vol- unteers, with a goal this year of recruiting 15 new volunteers and generating 4,500 additional hours of volunteer engagement. We will also pilot a new program to equip teenagers with the skills to eat health- fully and affordably for life, beginning with a class of 30 young people. The Fiscal Year 2020 budget of Alyson Eats is $1,352,016. We have secured commitments for about 85 percent of our budget.

Thank you for inviting Alyson Eats to submit this Letter of Inquiry. Because of our shared commitment to building a better future for families struggling with poverty in our state, we hope that the Future Founda- tion will invite a full proposal for $50,000 in general operating support for the one-year period beginning January 1. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at (111) 111–1111.

Sincerely, Shawna Jones

Executive Director

Now that a sample LOI has been presented and reviewed, take the time to answer the questions in Worksheet 2.1. This exercise will help in develop- ing a strong letter of inquiry for funders. If you cannot clearly and succinctly answer the questions, that probably means you need to gather more infor- mation before you can effectively complete an LOI.

O'Neal-McElrath, T., Kanter, L., & Jenkins, E. L. (2019). Winning grants step by step : The complete workbook for planning, developing, and writing successful proposals. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Created from ashford-ebooks on 2023-12-10 04:33:31.

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