| Grant Application Milestones | Spring Grant Cycle | Fall Grant Cycle |
| Deadline to submit LOI for current grant cycle | April 19 | August 30 |
| Notification of invitation to submit full application and schedule site visit | May 17 | September 30 |
| Deadline to submit full application | June 28 | November 1 |
| Board Meeting for funding consideration | July 25 | December 4 |
| Notification of Grant Award | Within 5 business days after board meeting | Within 5 business days after board meeting |
Our Timeline and Process
The Cousins Foundations holds two grantmaking cycles each year, spring and fall. Our Application Portal will be open to accept new LOI submissions in early August. After reviewing our focus areas and the guidelines to our grantmaking process and timeline on this page, please do not hesitate to reach out with questions or feedback.
Submit an Online Letter of Intent
After reviewing our approach to grantmaking, focus areas, and priorities to determine areas of alignment, we encourage you to contact the Foundations to express your interest in submitting an application for funding.
First Time Applicants: To submit a Letter of Intent (LOI), first create an account on our Application Portal. In your LOI, you will be asked to share basic organization information, including the geographic area and population served, and the focus of your funding request.
Previous Grant Partners: To initiate a new request, we welcome you to either submit an LOI online or contact the Foundation directly to discuss your funding request and determine alignment with our current goals and priorities.
LOI Review
Staff review all LOI’s to determine alignment with the Foundations’ priorities for the upcoming grantmaking cycle. During this phase, we may request a call to learn more about your organization and your request.
The Foundations act on each LOI in one of three ways:
- The Foundations may invite you to submit a full application for funding during the upcoming grant cycle.
- The Foundations may defer an LOI to a future grant cycle due to the current capacity of our grantmaking budget. If the LOI is deferred, you will be invited to submit an application for the next grant cycle, provided the circumstances of the request remain valid.
- The LOI may be declined due to lack of fit with guidelines and/or priorities.
Staff will respond via email to confirm the status of your LOI and any next steps.
Complete an Application
If we have determined that your request is a fit for our upcoming grantmaking cycle, you will be asked to submit a full grant application. Additionally, we will schedule a meeting in person, ideally at your office or service delivery site, to learn more about your work.
Funding Decisions
Based on the information learned during the application review process, staff will develop a summary report for our Grants Advisory Committee about your request. Our Grants Advisory Committee reviews requests biannually to determine grant approval and amount.
We will contact you about the funding decision following the Grants Advisory Committee meeting. If your request has been declined, we will do our best to provide context for that decision. If your request has been approved, we will confirm the grant terms via e-mail within 5 business days.
Post-Grant Check-Ins and Reporting
To support a culture of learning, we request that organizations provide a report at the end of the grant period. We will include the deadline for the report(s) in the grant agreement emailed at the time of award notification. We’ll ask you to share an assessment of the extent to which the work funded achieved its objectives and anticipated outcomes. We would also like to hear about unexpected challenges or circumstances, how you responded, and what you learned over the course of the grant period.
If you have received a multi-year grant, you will also be asked to submit an interim report on the anniversary of the grant, in the same format. We will be especially interested in how your work is progressing relative to the objectives and anticipated outcomes outlined in your application. We’d also like to know how you, the organization, and your work is doing generally – challenges and opportunities – and any feedback on how the Foundations can more effectively collaborate with you to advance your work.
Foundation staff will contact grant partners as a reporting deadline approaches to identify their preferred reporting method and to arrange interviews if desired.
After Grant Period
We encourage and hope grant partners will stay in touch after the grant has closed. We love to hear from grant partners with updates about their work. Please feel free to contact the Foundations at any time with these updates.
If your organization’s LOI or grant application is declined, we request you wait one year before contacting the Foundation about a new submission. For organizations that receive funding, new requests will be considered only after the current grant term’s conclusion.