Every private foundation files a return that says, in one box, whether it will read a grant request it did not invite. Of the 131,545 foundations that answer that box, 27,218 say yes, which is 21%. Nobody publishes that list, so here it is, free, state by state, with the deadline, the restrictions, the contact and every grant paid.
Analysis by Matthew Hanauer, PhD, Chief Technology Officer at Civly, built from the IRS Form 990-PF electronic filing releases.
Part XV, line 2 of Form 990-PF asks a private foundation one plain question: does it only give to organizations it picked itself? A foundation that answers no has to file who to send a request to, the deadline, and the limits. That answer is public on every return, and it has never been published as a list.
foundations answered no to the preselected-only question, out of 131,545 that answered it at all.
said they give only to organizations they pick themselves. Writing to those is time spent for nothing, and the return says so before you start.
paid out in their latest filed year by the foundations that accept requests, 45% of the two groups combined.
paid by the preselected-only foundations in theirs. The larger pot is closed, and the open pot is still $64.2B.
Each state page lists every foundation there that accepts requests and paid real money in its latest filed year, with the deadline as filed, the size of a typical grant, and how much of the money went to organizations the funder had never backed before.
Part XV, line 2 of Form 990-PF asks a private foundation whether it makes contributions only to preselected charitable organizations. A foundation that answers no has to file the rest of that block: the name and address to send a request to, the form it should take, the submission deadline, and any restriction by geography, charitable field or kind of institution. We read that answer as accepting unsolicited requests. Everything here comes from that block and from the grant schedule on the same return.
A foundation appears when it accepts requests and paid at least 5 grants totaling $100K or more in its latest filed year, and that year is 2022 or later. 8,971 of those 27,218 foundations clear that bar. The rest accept requests but are too small or too far out of date to be worth a fundraiser's week.
Foundations file on their own fiscal calendars, so each row is measured on that foundation's own latest filed year rather than a shared one. The newest tax year, 2025, is partial until the IRS finishes releasing returns, so a foundation already measured on 2025 is measured on a year that is still filling in.
Latest-year grants and terms per foundation from IRS 990-PF e-file returns; the newest tax year is partial until the IRS finishes releasing it. Grants are de-duplicated on funder, year, recipient and amount, so identical repeat grants collapse into one and totals can run low.
The share of that year's grant dollars that went to organizations the foundation had never funded before in our records. A high share means the money reached organizations that were new to the funder, which is what an uninvited request is asking it to do. It is blank when we hold only one year of grants for that foundation, because there is nothing to compare against.
318 of the 8,971 filed no usable state on the return. They count in the national figures above and appear on no state page, because there is no state to put them on.
Every grant Civly has parsed out of the 990-PF grant schedules, whatever the foundation answered on line 2. The newest year is the one still filling in.
| Tax year | Grants | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 115 | $611K |
| 2014 | 89 | $359K |
| 2015 | 135 | $1.7M |
| 2016 | 262 | $7.6M |
| 2017 | 111 | $1.8M |
| 2018 | 4,126 | $133.4M |
| 2019 | 162,121 | $8.4B |
| 2020 | 1,881,701 | $95.0B |
| 2021 | 1,948,834 | $105.9B |
| 2022 | 1,972,211 | $115.6B |
| 2023 | 1,975,037 | $122.3B |
| 2024 | 1,389,578 | $102.9B |
| 2025 (partial) | 569,838 | $26.9B |
Source: IRS Form 990-PF e-file releases (public domain). Analysis: Civly.
This page tells you who will read a request. Civly Grant Matching goes the rest of the way: it reads your own filings, matches your programs against millions of paid grants by purpose, geography and grant size, and hands you the funders with the deadline, the restrictions and the named trustees attached.
See Grant Matching