Most grant funding provided for law enforcement comes from federal and state resources. The mission of all private foundations is to serve the needs of the private community and help meet the needs of the people. Here are three steps you need to take when searching for private grant funding.
1. Determine Your Eligibility
Private foundations require that the applicant be designated by the IRS as a 501 (n) 3, also called a nonprofit. This means the organization was determined by the IRS to be a charitable organization. Without that formal designation, you, as law enforcement, are not eligible to apply to the foundation for funding. A municipality is a government entity and not eligible for this type of funding.
Your department may be eligible if you partner with a community nonprofit organization and they are the lead applicant. Most of the fundable projects in the private foundation area related to law enforcement are targeted at helping the individuals with domestic violence, substance abuse, youth-related issues, gangs, and other social and human issues. Private foundations typically do not fund vehicles, law enforcement tools, motorcycles, ATVs UTVs, people movers such a Segways, or software such as crime database programs.
Some corporate foundations will assist with funding for community safety, along with some tools and technology. To identify those corporations that might provide appropriate funding, you need to search for corporations whose headquarters are within your geographic area, as they tend to fund close to home.
2. Do your Homework
Completing a proper and full search for a private grant maker is your primary task in identifying the right prospect for the purpose your law enforcement organization has in mind.
Never make the mistake of limiting your search for the “perfect” funder. But approach your search with the basic criteria that meet your needs and an open mind for selecting several candidates for consideration. Match your mission with the grant maker’s mission. You must also consider what type of support you are seeking.
The Foundation Center is the premier site for research on foundations. The Center has a large collection of training materials, research resources and publications. In addition, the Foundation Center Directory is a one-stop-shop for obtaining critical information about how to approach the foundation and for what purposes they provide grant funding.
Anyone seeking foundation support needs to spend time on this website learning about foundations, how to approach them and how to find them.
There are cooperating collections of the Foundation Directory found at libraries across all 50 states. The listing for these locations may be found at the website under ‘”Cooperating Collections.”
The Directory provides the most complete profiles available of all 88,000 foundations. At the local libraries a computer is available for your free research. All potential foundation profiles may be saved to a thumb drive for your use at home.
There are three basic research strategies that you can use to define and identify a funder:
- Subject matter;
- Geographic approach;
- Type of support.
The Foundation Directory allows the grant seeker to search by any of these categories. The cooperating libraries will also have dozens of other directories and guides for finding funding available at their grant research center. You might want to try the following categories for your search: law enforcement, law enforcement equipment, substance abuse, domestic abuse, juvenile justice, gangs, etc. The directory provides a list of all searchable topics.
3. Learn the Rules
In addition to the Foundation Directory profiles, you need to complete the research on a funder by looking for other sources of information to round out the prospective grant maker’s profile. These resources are websites, annual reports, 990-PF tax returns (available at the IRS or the Foundation Center website; the foundation’s own guidelines and request for proposal document, newsletters, and press releases and grant lists.
The Foundation Center website will provide information on how to obtain many of the documents you need to complete your research. Please keep in mind that less than 4000 foundations have community websites. The rest of the research is completed the old fashioned way: hard copy!
Once you have identified the right prospect, completed your research and understand how the funder wishes to be contacted the first time, you need to prepare a concept paper in the form of a letter of inquiry. This letter will contain a summary of your project, identification of the target population, partner, cost, goals, expected outcomes and the benefit of the funding partnership to the community. It is a “mini presentation” of the project you wish them to fund.
The grant maker will review this letter and then contact you to either invite you to apply or to turn you down. Never contact a private or corporate foundation without ensuring you have identified the funder’s required method of contacting them.
The best chance of locating private funding is through local corporations or foundation specifically set up for funding public safety, law enforcement or related social service focused foundations.
