What to Have Ready Before You Write Your First LOI

The question sounds small. How many people did the after-school program serve last year? You know roughly. You need exactly, because it is going into a document a funder will read, and rough is not good enough.

Two hours later you have three numbers from three places and no idea which one is right.

This is the part of grant work nobody warns you about, and it is not a filing problem. It is worth understanding why it happens, because the fix is not "be more organised."

Your documents are not equally findable, and there is a reason

Some records in a small nonprofit are always current. Others are perpetually half a version behind. The difference is not diligence — it is whether something outside the organization forces the document to exist on a schedule.

Documents with a legal forcing function are reliable. Your Form 990 is the most dependable record you have, because missing three consecutive filings costs the organization its exempt status. That consequence keeps it current in a way no internal intention does. Your determination letter is similarly stable: it was issued once, it does not change, and you can request a copy if it has gone missing.

Documents produced only on demand are often absent, and that is normal. An independent audit is generally commissioned when a funder or a state rule requires one. Below those thresholds most small organizations do not have one, and its absence is not a deficiency to apologise for. It is a document you have not needed.

Documents that are drafted but never centralised are the frustrating ones. Board minutes get taken at every meeting. The signed, approved versions tend to live in whichever volunteer secretary's email account they were finalised in. The document exists; the copy you can hand to someone does not.

And some documents exist only inside old applications. Your logic model. Your theory of change. Often your best-written program description. These get created because a funder asked for them, and then they go back into the file with that application rather than becoming something the organization uses. This is why last year's grant so often turns out to be the most complete description of your own program that exists anywhere.

None of that is a failure of discipline. It is what happens when records are produced by outside requirements rather than by internal need.

What to gather, in the order that costs you least

Work down the reliability gradient. Start with what is definitely findable, so you learn early what is not.

Identity and status. Your determination letter, your EIN, your exact legal name as registered — which is often not the name you use publicly. Your most recent 990. These take minutes.

Money. Your current operating budget, last year's actuals, and a project budget if you are asking for project support. Have the number you will cite for total organizational revenue, and know whether it is the figure on the 990 or a more recent internal one, because you will be asked to be consistent later.

Governance. A current board roster with roles and affiliations. If the signed minutes matter for this application, start asking for them now rather than the night before — that request routes through a person, and people have weekends.

Program facts. Who you serve, how many, where, and over what period. This is the slow one. Do not write a number into a draft until you can say where it came from — which report, which spreadsheet, which date range. A number without a source is a number you will have to re-derive under time pressure.

Narrative material you already own. Your last funded application. Your most recent annual report. Anything where you have already described the program carefully. You are not going to reuse it wholesale, but you should not re-invent from a blank page either.

Two habits worth more than the checklist

Write the source next to the fact. Not a citation — just a note to yourself: 312 participants, from the Q3 program report, calendar year 2025. Six months from now, that parenthetical is the difference between reusing the number and rebuilding it.

Decide which copy is the current one, and say so. The version problem in small organizations is rarely that a document is missing. It is that there are four and no marker for which is live. A dated filename and one agreed location solves more grant-week panic than any template will.

What you do not need yet

You do not need a polished case for support, a designed one-pager, or a logic model built from scratch. If a funder asks for one, build it then — and keep the version you build, because the next funder will ask something similar.

You also do not need every document listed above for every application. Gather identity, money and program facts first; those carry most first inquiries. The rest is on-demand.

The real cost of skipping this

The two-hour hunt is not the expensive part. The expensive part is what happens when you cannot find the number in time: you write around it, or you use the one you half-remember, and a figure that does not match your own filings goes out under your organization's name.

An hour of gathering, once, before the writing starts. Most of it stays useful for the next application and the one after that — provided you reuse the facts rather than the finished document. That distinction is why a single master template stops working, and it is worth understanding before the second application, not after.