Foundation Intelligence: Using AI for Funder Research and Strategy

• Increased competition: 87% of foundation leaders report increased demand for funding, making targeted research essential to stand out
• Federal funding declines: With government support receding, foundation dollars have become more critical for many organizations
• Foundation AI adoption: Two-thirds of foundations now use AI internally, changing how they evaluate applications and manage grantmaking
• Data abundance: Access to millions of grant records creates opportunity for those who can efficiently analyze patterns
• Relationship primacy: Despite technological advances, foundation giving still relies heavily on relationships and mission alignment

IRS Form 990 filings contain valuable intelligence, but manually analyzing these documents is time-consuming. AI can rapidly extract and synthesize key information: total giving amounts and trends over time, typical grant sizes by category, geographic distribution of grants, trustee and staff information, foundation expenses and administrative costs, and patterns in multi-year funding commitments.

More sophisticated analysis can identify shifts in funding priorities before they're formally announced. If a foundation's 990 shows increasing grants to environmental organizations over the past three years while education grants have declined, that trend provides actionable intelligence even if their website still lists both as equal priorities. AI can track these trends across your entire prospect portfolio, alerting you to meaningful changes.

AI tools can also analyze grantee lists to identify organizations similar to yours that have received funding. This provides both evidence of fit and potential intelligence sources—if the foundation funded three organizations doing work similar to yours, those organizations' public reports might reveal what aspects of their work the foundation valued most.

Foundation staff and trustees bring their own priorities, backgrounds, and networks to funding decisions. AI can help you build profiles of key decision-makers by synthesizing publicly available information: professional backgrounds and previous roles, board service at other organizations, public statements about philanthropy, connections to your board or major donors, and publications or speaking engagements that reveal interests and values.

This intelligence helps you personalize your approach. If a foundation president previously worked in early childhood education and your proposal includes early childhood components, that's worth emphasizing. If a trustee serves on the board of another organization you've partnered with, that connection provides a warm introduction path. If staff members have recently spoken about specific challenges in your field, you can directly address those challenges in your proposal.

LinkedIn, Google Scholar, foundation websites, and public speaking databases provide rich sources of information, but manually researching every trustee and staff member for dozens of foundations is impractical. AI can automate this research, creating profiles that highlight relevant connections and interests while flagging relationship opportunities.

Cold approaches to foundations have significantly lower success rates than introductions from trusted sources. AI-powered network mapping tools can identify hidden connections between your organization and target foundations: shared board members between grantee organizations and your organization, your major donors who also support the foundation, professional networks connecting your staff to foundation staff, organizations you've partnered with that receive foundation funding, and common advisors, consultants, or intermediaries.

These tools analyze multiple data sources—LinkedIn connections, foundation grantee lists, your CRM data, public board rosters—to surface relationship pathways you might never discover manually. The insight that one of your board members went to graduate school with a foundation trustee, or that a major donor to your capital campaign also serves on a foundation's grants committee, can transform your approach from cold outreach to warm introduction.

Network analysis also reveals which of your current funders might provide valuable introductions to prospective funders. If you identify a foundation that has co-funded several projects with one of your existing foundation supporters, that existing funder might be willing to facilitate an introduction or provide intelligence about decision-making processes and preferences.

Once you've identified priority foundations and gathered intelligence about their interests, decision-makers, and processes, you need to plan how to build relationships. AI can help develop cultivation plans by analyzing successful patterns from your past foundation relationships and others in your sector, suggesting appropriate touchpoints based on foundation preferences, identifying optimal timing for outreach based on funding cycles and organizational capacity, and recommending specific staff or board members to lead relationship building based on connections and expertise.

For foundations that prefer relationship development before formal proposals, AI can suggest a cultivation sequence: initial introduction through a mutual connection, invitation to site visit or program observation, informal conversation about shared interests, concept paper to gauge interest, and full proposal if encouraged to proceed. For foundations that prefer concise initial contact, the sequence might look quite different. AI helps you match your approach to each foundation's documented or inferred preferences.

AI can also help you manage cultivation activities across your entire foundation portfolio. If you're cultivating relationships with 20 foundations, AI can help ensure you're making appropriate contact with each at suitable intervals, prioritizing those closest to a proposal stage, and tracking interactions and next steps systematically rather than relying on memory or scattered notes.

When you're ready to develop a proposal, foundation intelligence should inform every aspect of your approach. AI can help you analyze what successful grantees emphasized in their work, identify language and framing that resonates with the foundation, understand which outcomes and metrics the foundation values most, determine appropriate funding amounts based on the foundation's typical grants to similar organizations, and anticipate questions or concerns based on the foundation's past priorities and decision-making patterns.

AI writing tools like Grant Assistant and Grantable can help draft proposals, but they're most effective when informed by the intelligence you've gathered. Rather than using a generic proposal template, you can feed these tools specific information about the foundation's priorities, language preferences, and interests gleaned from your research. The result is proposals that feel tailored rather than templated, addressing the specific concerns and interests of each funder.

Intelligence also helps you position your request strategically. If your research shows that a foundation typically starts with small project grants before making larger general operating investments, you might request project funding initially even if your ultimate goal is unrestricted support. If the foundation has recently expanded funding in your program area, you might position your request as aligning with their strategic growth. If they've expressed interest in collaborative approaches, you might emphasize your partnerships.

As your foundation relationships grow, managing a portfolio of prospects, active funders, and past funders becomes increasingly complex. AI can help you optimize your foundation portfolio by identifying which relationships warrant the most cultivation time, which foundations are most likely to increase their support, which relationships may be at risk based on changing priorities, and where you have gaps in your funding mix that specific foundations could fill.

Portfolio analysis might reveal that you're over-concentrated in foundations focused on a single program area, creating vulnerability if those priorities shift. Or it might show that you've successfully built relationships with several small family foundations but haven't yet connected with larger institutional funders that could provide more substantial support. These insights help you set strategic priorities for where to invest relationship-building effort.

AI can also help with the practical work of managing ongoing funder relationships: tracking report deadlines and requirements, monitoring whether you're meeting grant conditions and outcomes, flagging opportunities for renewal or increased support based on relationship history, and identifying appropriate moments for deeper conversation about the foundation's evolving interests or your organization's strategic direction.

The most sophisticated research is worthless if it doesn't influence how you approach foundations. Build research into your fundraising process by requiring intelligence summaries before any foundation outreach, using research insights to inform proposal development and cultivation strategies, regularly reviewing your foundation portfolio to identify opportunities and risks, and tracking which intelligence sources and methods lead to the best outcomes so you can refine your approach.

Create simple templates that capture key intelligence in a consistent format: foundation priorities and interests, decision-making process and key contacts, typical grant sizes and funding patterns, relationship connections and introduction pathways, current status and next steps. These templates ensure that intelligence is documented in ways that inform action rather than sitting in scattered notes or individual memories.

Regular portfolio reviews—quarterly for most organizations—help you assess whether your foundation relationships are developing as hoped, identify foundations to add or remove from active cultivation, adjust strategies based on what's working and what isn't, and ensure you're maintaining appropriate contact with all active prospects and funders.