This resource is intended to provide sample documents for the initial stages of the grantmaking process. 

This resource is intended to fill a gap in available source material to provide a useful overview for grantmakers of all sizes and types. It outlines the general steps of the grantmaking process while highlighting areas where due diligence components can be incorporated.

A common grant application is intended to be utilized by multiple foundations, minimizing the burden on nonprofit partners to complete numerous, divergent applications looking to obtain grants from multiple funders. A common grant report is similarly intended to help nonprofits save time, while assisting foundations by simplifying the process of gathering standard grant evaluation information.

Collected through FOMR data, surveys, and interviews with members, this report centers on the relevance of racial equity to Exponent Philanthropy members’ mission, as well as their board and staff demographics. It also describe how racial equity relates to good governance, grantmaking, and investment practices.

Human Rights Funders Network (HRFN) offers this analysis as a call to action to the field to bring our practices into alignment with their promises and meet the creativity, vitality, and reality of social justice organizing today. Within the field of human rights philanthropy, they have spent much of the last decade asking how we can break down silos and move money to movements organizing in powerful, intersectional ways. This report offers a baseline of where the field is today. The research suggests that a resoundingly small fraction of human rights funding supports activism that cuts across multiple communities or issues.

With the influx of federal resources and state surplus, there is a tremendous opportunity for Michigan philanthropy to strengthen partnerships with government and community members to shape the allocation of public dollars. In this conversation, CMF and the Statewide Equity Fund Working Group connect with Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence at PolicyLink, to discuss insights gained from her work as a policy advocate, activist and social justice leader, learn more about PolicyLink's partnership with the Urban Institute in measuring equity impacts in federal policy and philanthropy's role in shaping the equitable outcome of public dollars.

This guide provides an overview of the regulations and practical considerations of different types of charitable gaming available to nonprofit organizations.