Lesson 17 · The Grant Architect

17. Decoding IRS Form 990 - Part 2

30 min

By the end you'll be able to

  • Analyze a Part XV grants paid schedule to find median gift size and recipient pattern.
  • Map a foundation's recent giving by geography and recipient type.
  • Identify anchor grantees and infer discretionary capacity.
  • Score any private foundation prospect on a five-point scale (capacity, alignment, geography, gift size, accessibility).

Part XV of the 990-PF (the grants paid schedule) is where the real intelligence lives. It lists every grant the foundation actually paid in the reporting year, with recipient name, recipient location, purpose of the grant, and dollar amount. Stated priorities lie; Part XV does not.

In this lesson you will learn to analyze a grants paid list the way an analyst reads a portfolio: sort by amount to find the median gift size (your right-size ask), group by recipient type to find the foundation's pattern (do they fund startups or only established institutions), and map by geography to see whether your zip code is even in their universe. You will also learn to spot anchor grantees (the same five recipients funded year after year), which often signal that the foundation's discretionary capacity is smaller than its assets suggest.

By the end you should be able to score any private foundation prospect on a five-point scale (capacity, alignment, geography, gift size, accessibility) based entirely on its 990. The mistake to avoid is anchoring on the largest grant in the list. The largest grant is usually an outlier; the median is your honest target. Right-sizing your ask to that median is one of the highest-leverage moves in grant work.

Common mistakes

These are the traps learners hit most often on this topic. Knowing them in advance is half the fix.

  • Anchoring on the largest grant.

    The largest grant is almost always an outlier paid to an anchor partner. Anchoring your ask there signals you do not understand the foundation's pattern.

  • Treating total assets as available budget.

    Most foundation budgets are committed to anchor grantees and operating costs. The pool available to new applicants is a fraction of total grantmaking.

Practice problems

Try each on paper first. Click Show solution only after you've made a real attempt.

  1. Problem 1
    From a foundation 990 Part XV with 30 grants ranging from 150K, with a median of 100K or more to the same recipient every year, produce a one-paragraph prospect profile.
    Show solution

    The foundation makes roughly thirty grants per year ranging from 150K with a median of 100K or more) go to the same long-standing anchor recipient, which absorbs a disproportionate share of the budget and leaves the discretionary pool concentrated around the median. A new applicant should anchor an ask at 35K, not at the headline $150K, and should expect to build relationship over multiple cycles before approaching the upper range.

Practice quiz

  1. Question 1
    Why does the lesson tell you to anchor your ask on the median grant rather than the largest grant in Part XV?
  2. Question 2
    What does it usually mean if the same five recipients appear in Part XV year after year, taking the majority of grant dollars?
  3. Reflection 3
    List the five factors in the prospect-scoring framework introduced in this lesson.

Lesson 17 recap

Part XV is where stated priorities meet actual behavior. Reading it gives you median gift size, geographic pattern, recipient type, and the anchor-grantee structure that determines what is actually available to you.

Coming next: Lesson 18 — Dissecting the NOFO / RFP

Next, we move from prospecting to opportunity analysis with the shredding method for NOFOs and RFPs.

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