Reading a foundation's tax return
What can I learn from a foundation's 990-PF?
More than from its website. The return tells you whether it accepts unsolicited applications, every grant it made with recipient and amount, its total assets and required annual distribution, who its trustees are, and its stated application procedure if it has one. The single most valuable field is the checkbox indicating that the foundation only contributes to preselected organizations. If it is ticked, no proposal you write will be read.
Last reviewed 6 August 2026.
Where to look, and what it tells you
- The preselected-organizations checkbox
- The foundation stating publicly that it only funds organizations it chooses itself. Roughly seven in ten private foundations tick it. Check this before anything else, because everything else is irrelevant if it is ticked.
- The grants paid schedule
- Every grant made in the year: recipient, amount, and usually purpose. This is the real program description. Read fifteen entries and you will know more about what they fund than their website will tell you.
- Total assets and distributions
- Private foundations must distribute a minimum share of assets annually. Assets tell you the scale of what has to go out of the door each year, and a foundation whose giving is bunched into a few large grants behaves very differently from one making eighty small ones.
- Application information
- Where a foundation that accepts applications states the form required, deadlines, and any restrictions. Frequently more current than their website.
- Officers, directors and trustees
- Names and, sometimes, a family pattern that explains the giving better than any program statement. Also the answer to whether anyone in your network has a connection.
What to do with the grant list
Look at the range, not the average. If they made grants between $5,000 and $25,000 with one outlier at $200,000, the range is your guide and the outlier is a relationship, not a category you can enter.
Look at repetition. Foundations that fund the same organizations year after year have a small number of slots and they are mostly taken. One that funds a shifting set has room, and is worth more of your attention.
Look at geography. Many small foundations give almost entirely within one county, and no amount of program fit overcomes being outside it.
What a 990 will not tell you
It is historical. A return covering a tax year two years ago describes decisions made before that, and a foundation can change direction, which they do.
It records what was given, not what was declined, so it tells you nothing about how contested the money was.
And it carries no tax identification number on the 990-PF grant list, only names, which is the reason a peer match derived from it is approximate, not exact. Our own data covers tax years 2023 through 2025.
Who asks this most
The answer above is the same whoever you are. What Quillify does about it is not.
Related
- 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?
- Most foundations will never read your proposalDo foundations accept unsolicited grant proposals?
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