After a democratic member vote determines our final funding focus area, the Discovery, Inquiry and Guidelines (DIG) Committee sends out an Appreciative Inquiry Survey to all nonprofits engaged in work in our focus area to learn what work is being done to address the issue, which communities are most impacted, and where there are funding gaps. This information is used to build out our grant guidelines for the year.

We have a November deadline for Letters of Inquiry (LOI), short written applications where organizations can declare the intent of their project without investing all of the time and resources required in a full proposals. After training, our members evaluate each LOI and determine which organizations will be invited to submit a full proposal.

In January we invite organizations, selected by our members through the LOI stage, to begin working on full proposals. The proposal deadline is late-February, and shortly after our members receive training and divide into teams to participate in proposal reviews.

Organizations selected for site visits welcome small teams of SDWF members to their organization for a short visit in April. That team decides whether or not to recommend each nonprofit move forward to the final stage in our grants process – the ballot.

Finalist organizations are listed on our ballot, and all SDWF members have an opportunity to vote. Organizations awarded funding become Community Partners and are asked to attend our Annual Grants Celebration in June.

Each Community Partner is assigned two impact liaisons – SDWF members who will touch base with the organization a few times over the course of the next year to record the impact of our collaboration. Liaisons collect images and stories of impact from our community organization so that we can share their work across our communications channels and social media platforms.