Most small charities waste months applying to funders who were never going to say yes. This guide shows you how to read a funder's real behaviour, run a simple four-question fit test, and build a short list of funders genuinely worth your time.
Why scattergun applications fail
When money is tight, it is tempting to apply everywhere. Fifty applications feels like fifty chances. In practice it is usually fifty near-certain rejections, because most of those funders never fund charities like yours, in your area, doing your kind of work.
Grant-making trusts and foundations are not one big pot. Each one exists to do something specific, set out in its own governing document. A trust set up to support young people in Yorkshire cannot fund an older people's lunch club in Cornwall, however good the application. The trustees of that funder have the same legal duty you have: to spend their charity's money only on its own purposes.
Scattergun applications fail for a second reason too. A rushed, copy-pasted application reads like one. Grant assessors see hundreds of applications, and they can tell within a paragraph whether you have read their guidance. An application that ignores their priorities does not just fail — it can mark your charity's name for next time.
The better approach is fewer, better-matched applications. Ten well-chosen funders, each approached properly, will almost always beat fifty picked from a list.
What a funder actually does matters more than what its blurb says
Many funders describe themselves in broad, warm language: "supporting communities", "helping people fulfil their potential". That tells you very little. What tells you a great deal is what they actually funded last year.
There are three places to look, all free.
The funder's own accounts. Every registered charity in England and Wales, including grant-making trusts, files an annual return with the Charity Commission. You can look any funder up on the register of charities and open its accounts. Most grant-makers list the grants they made, or at least the larger ones. Ten minutes with a funder's accounts tells you who they really fund, at what size, and where.
360Giving's GrantNav. 360Giving is a UK charity that encourages funders to publish their grant-making as open data. Its search tool, GrantNav, lets you search hundreds of funders' published grants by place, subject and amount. Not every funder publishes there, but many of the larger ones do, and it is the quickest way to see real awards to real organisations.
The funder's published grants list. Larger foundations often list recent grants on their website. Read the last year or two, not the mission statement.
When you look, ask three questions:
- What did they actually fund? Look at the organisations and the work, not the strapline. A funder that says "education" but whose grants all went to universities is not a match for your homework club.
- What are their typical award sizes? If their grants cluster between £1,000 and £5,000, do not ask for £40,000. If they mostly make grants of £50,000 and up, a £2,000 request may be too small for them to process. Ask for an amount inside their normal range.
- Where do they fund? Many trusts fund only in one county, city or even parish, and this is often buried in the small print or visible only in the pattern of past grants. National-sounding names can hide very local funders — and the reverse.
The four-question fit test
Before a funder goes on your list, it should pass all four of these questions. If it fails one, leave it alone — not because your charity is not worthy, but because the answer is already no.
- Do they fund what you do? Not roughly. Actually. Match your work against their stated priorities and their recent grants.
- Do they fund where you are? Check their geographical area against where your beneficiaries are — the people you help — not just where your office is.
- Do they fund at your size? Some funders only fund charities below a certain income; others expect audited accounts and a track record that a two-year-old charity cannot show. Check any income limits, and check whether their typical grant fits what you need.
- Do they fund organisations like yours? Some fund only registered charities; some also fund community groups; some exclude churches, or fund only churches; some will not fund charities that received a grant from them in the last few years.
Only funders that pass all four questions earn a place on your shortlist. Everything else is a polite waste of two organisations' time.
Eligibility red flags and exclusions
Almost every funder publishes exclusions — the things they will not fund. Read these before anything else, because one exclusion ends the conversation. Common ones to watch for:
- "No unsolicited applications." The funder chooses who to invite. Applying anyway signals you have not read their guidance. Leave these alone unless you have a genuine route to an invitation.
- No funding for salaries or running costs. Some funders only fund projects or equipment. If you need core costs — rent, wages, insurance — these funders cannot help, whatever you call the budget lines.
- No retrospective funding. Most funders will not pay for work that has already started or already happened. Apply before you begin.
- Religious or political activity exclusions. Many funders will not fund the promotion of religion, though some will fund community work delivered by faith groups. Read the wording carefully and be honest about which side of the line your work sits.
- One application per year, or waiting periods after a rejection. Breaking these rules gets an application binned unread.
- Match funding requirements. Some funders will only pay a share of the cost and expect you to have raised the rest.
None of these makes a funder bad. They simply tell you whether the door is open to you. A clear no from the guidance saves you a slow no by letter.
Approaching small trusts with no website
Thousands of small grant-making trusts in the UK have no website, no application form and no staff. They are often family trusts, run by a handful of trustees who meet a few times a year and distribute a modest income. They can be excellent funders for small charities — less competition, more patience — but they need a different approach.
Every one of them still appears on the Charity Commission register, which lists a contact — often called the correspondent — with a postal address. The correspondent may be a trustee, a family solicitor or an accountant. Their job is to receive letters and put suitable ones in front of the trustees.
The etiquette is simple and old-fashioned:
- Write a letter. One or two pages, on your letterhead, addressed to the correspondent. Say who you are, what you do, what you need, how much it costs and what difference it will make. Enclose your most recent accounts or a simple budget if the letter refers to one.
- Do the trust's homework for it. Say, in one sentence, why you are writing to this trust: "We are writing to you because your grants support older people in Lancashire, and our befriending scheme works with 60 isolated older people in Preston."
- Ask for a specific amount within their normal range, which you can see from their accounts on the register.
- Do not chase quickly. Small trusts may meet only two or three times a year. Silence for four months is normal. One polite follow-up after that is enough.
- Accept silence as an answer. Many small trusts only reply to successful applicants. It is not rudeness; it is a trust with no staff.
Build a shortlist of six to ten, not fifty
Aim for a working shortlist of six to ten funders that pass the four-question test. That is not a small ambition — it is the size of list one volunteer or part-time fundraiser can actually handle properly: reading each funder's guidance, tailoring each application, tracking each deadline and following up.
For each funder on the list, record:
- name and Charity Commission number
- what they fund and where
- typical grant size, and the amount you will ask for
- how to apply (form, letter, invitation only)
- deadlines or meeting dates
- exclusions that affect you
- the source of your evidence (their accounts, GrantNav, their website)
Finding the candidates for that shortlist is the slow part — trawling the register and grants data funder by funder. If you would like a head start, the free Find grants for your charity tool searches published UK grant-making data for funders whose real behaviour matches your charity's work, location and size, and gives you a starting list to check with the four questions above.
However you build the list, review it once or twice a year. Funders change priorities, close programmes and open new ones. Once a funder says yes, the next job is a board decision, not just a fundraising one — see what your trustees must decide, approve and minute about grants.
Time your approach around the funder's meetings, not your panic
Most trusts and foundations decide grants at trustee meetings, typically quarterly, sometimes only twice a year. An application that arrives the week after a meeting may wait three months before anyone reads it.
So find out when decisions are made. Larger funders publish deadlines and decision dates. For small trusts, the pattern in their accounts sometimes shows when grants are paid, which hints at meeting dates — or you can simply ask the correspondent when the trustees next meet.
Then work backwards from your own need. If you need the money by September and the funder's trustees meet in July with a deadline in May, your application needs to be ready in April. Grant funding is slow money. Six months from first letter to first payment is common, and a year is not unusual. Never build a budget that depends on a grant decision arriving quickly. Once you have a shortlist and a timetable, the next step is the application itself — see how to write your first grant application.
Checklist: before any funder goes on your shortlist
- We have read the funder's actual grants (accounts on the register, GrantNav, or their published grants list) — not just their blurb
- They fund what we do — matched against real recent grants
- They fund where we work
- They fund charities our size, and our ask sits inside their normal grant range
- They fund organisations like ours (legal form, age, track record)
- We have read their exclusions and none of them rules us out
- They accept unsolicited applications, or we have a route to an invitation
- We know how they want to be approached (form, letter to the correspondent, online portal)
- We know their deadline or next trustees' meeting, and it works with our timetable
- The shortlist still has ten funders or fewer — if not, cut the weakest fits
Common questions about choosing funders
How many funders should we apply to at once? Work through your shortlist of six to ten over a few months rather than firing everything off in one week. Most funders are happy for you to apply elsewhere at the same time — many expect it — but each application should still be tailored. If a funder asks whether you have applied elsewhere, answer honestly.
A funder's website says one thing but their accounts show something different. Which do I trust? The accounts. Websites go stale; accounts show actual decisions. If the published guidance and the grants list disagree, the grants list is telling you what the trustees really do. If it matters, ask the funder directly before applying.
Is it worth applying to funders that say "no unsolicited applications"? Not by application, no — it will not be read, and it uses up goodwill. If you believe you are a genuinely strong fit, a brief, polite letter asking whether they would ever consider an approach is the most you should do. Otherwise spend the time on funders whose door is open.
We're a very new charity with no track record. Who will fund us? Look for funders that explicitly welcome new or small organisations, and for local sources: community foundations (there is one covering almost every part of the UK), local authority grants, and small local trusts. Membership bodies such as NCVO and your local council for voluntary service can point you to funders used to backing first-timers. Your first grants will likely be small; they become the track record for the next ones.
Want more on grants once a funder says yes? See how to write your first grant application and what your trustees must decide, approve and minute about grants — or browse the full guides library.