Most foundations will never read your proposal
Do foundations accept unsolicited grant proposals?
Most do not. Roughly seven in ten private foundations indicate on their own IRS return that they only make contributions to preselected organizations, which means an unsolicited approach is not evaluated. The remaining three in ten do accept applications, and they are the only ones worth your time as a cold prospect. Our data holds 122,000+ funders, of which 19,000+ explicitly accept applications.
Last reviewed 6 August 2026.
Why so many are closed
Because most private foundations are small and run by very few people. A family foundation distributing a few hundred thousand a year, administered by a trustee and an accountant, has no capacity to read unsolicited proposals and no wish to acquire it. Ticking the box is an honest description of how they operate, not a discourtesy.
It also explains why they are hard to reach any other way. There is no program officer, no cycle, and no process to enter. There is a family, and they fund what they know.
The useful number is the smaller one
Vendors in this category compete on how many funders they hold. That is the wrong number for the person doing the work, because a list of a hundred thousand funders you cannot approach is a hundred thousand ways to waste a week.
The number that changes your month is how many will read you. Filtering to it removes work instead of adding it, which is the whole argument for doing this by data instead of by hand.
What to do about a closed foundation you want
Do not send a proposal. It will not be read and the effort is spent.
Look at the trustees. Preselected giving means selection happens through people, so the route is a genuine connection through your board, a current funder, or a peer organization they already fund.
And be honest about the odds. For most organizations the better use of the same hours is the three in ten who publish a process, plus the community foundations and corporate programs that are open by design.
Who asks this most
The answer above is the same whoever you are. What Quillify does about it is not.
Related
- Reading a foundation's tax returnWhat can I learn from a foundation's 990-PF?
- Start from the funder, not the opportunityHow do I find funders who would actually fund my organization?
- Foundation funding, and who is open to youHow do foundation grants work and how do I get one?
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