Grant Requirements and Guidelines

and

The Grant Application Process

Thank you for inquiring about the grant application process for The Long Foundation. The Long Foundation is located in Austin, Texas, and is a non-profit Texas corporation established in April of 1999 by Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long. This foundation is a tax-exempt private family foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Long Foundation is sensitive to the workload of potential grantees and would like to manage the expectations of applicants seeking funding whose request may not meet our guidelines and policies. Therefore, we have attempted to provide the necessary information to streamline the grant application process. Please take advantage of this information by taking time to read and understand our requirements, guidelines, and policies.

The Long Foundation favors applications that contain only the necessary information for us to properly review your request and to contact your organization. Please do not over-produce the application with color graphics, fancy bindings, or other irrelevant expenses. We also ask that you consider what really needs to be seen, and send only those materials. It will save everyone both time and expense. Only one copy of any application or document is necessary.
 

General Guidelines

In 2002, The Long Foundation made a commitment to benefit Texas Hispanic youths by furthering the Five Promises of America's Promise. While initially a state-wide funding program, in 2017 the Foundation's Board of Directors narrowed the funding area to the Austin Metropolitan area. The Foundation's goal is to reduce the high school dropout rate among Hispanic students and to provide additional opportunities for these youths to improve their economic and social potential and that of their communities. We seek to benefit Hispanic youths by making annual grants to non-profit organizations, schools and universities, and governmental and quazi-governmental programs that are addressing these goals. Selected programs and/or organizations must be located in areas, or targeted at groups, with large Hispanic populations and must support the youths, or groups, of those areas by fulfilling at least one of the Five Promises, which include:

1. Promoting ongoing relationships with caring adults – parents, mentors, teachers, tutors and coaches;

2. Providing safe places with structured activities during non-school hours;
3. Promoting healthy start and future;
4. Providing marketable skills through effective education; and/or
5. Providing opportunities to give back through community service.

To qualify for funding consideration from The Long Foundation, the applicant must be a non-profit corporation or association as recognized by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and be in good standing therewith.  An IRS determination letter is required and a copy must be included with the letter of inquiry or the pre-grant application.  An exception to this requirement is for qualifying government programs.  Another exception is if the non-profit corporation or association has filed Form 1023, application for exemption, with the IRS and expects its determination letter soon. Grants will not be made to individuals, private foundations and certain types of charitable supporting organizations.  

To qualify for funding consideration from The Long Foundation, the program to be funded must meet the following:

• The program must be directed toward benefiting Texas youths;
• The program must target youths in the Austin Metropolitan area, except in limited circumstances as directed by the Foundation's Board of Directors;
• At least 75% of the youths targeted by the program must be Hispanic;
• The program must be directed at fulfilling one of the aforementioned Five Promises of America’s Promise;
• The program must be of a charitable intent; and
• The program must identify measurable goals and agree to monitor results.

Please note that while the program must be directed at Texas youth, "youth" is not limited to minors (those under 18 years of age).  The Long Foundation recognizes that the achievement of obtaining marketable skills does not necessarily end when a person reaches the age of 18.  Youths may include people seeking to advance their education while in their 20’s. Additionally, children may benefit from programs that benefit others, such as parents, and/or guardians.

It is also important to note that this program is not necessarily limited to benefiting only Hispanic youths. While the primary purpose of this program is to help Hispanic youths, grants made to such qualifying programs can be used to benefit everyone participating in those programs. However, at least, 75% of the youth "population" targeted by the initiative must be Hispanic. The youths targeted or involved in a particular program define the "population" of that program. Consequently, the population depends upon the program itself and its specific goal. Specific areas of a program (such as a specific school, branch, zip code, etc.) may be used to qualify for funding for that particular component or portion of the program.

Grant Application Process

The Long Foundation is sensitive to the workload of potential grantees. Our staff is also limited in the amount of work and information it can process effectively. As a result, The Long Foundation has developed a two-step application process. In prior years, this involved a pre-grant application followed by a formal grant application. Now, The Long Foundation is using the common grant application and reporting forms created by the Central Texas Education Funders Group. It is important to note that while these forms were developed by the Central Texas Education Funders Group, they are designed to be general in nature so that they can be used by organizations seeking funding for most charitable purposes or events. These Common Grant forms (which currently include a Letter of Inquiry form (a/k/a Step 1), a Grant Application form (a/k/a Step 2), Instructions and a Glossary of Terms, and a Common Reporting form) were created with the goal of simplifying the grant application and inquiry process for non-profits and charitable organizations in the Austin area by standardizing, to an extent, the process. Hopefully, this will reduce the work non-profits and charitable organizations as they apply to the funders of the Austin area.

The Long Foundation's two-step application process requires potential new grantees to first make their request for funding by completing the Letter of Inquiry (LOI) form found on the Central Texas Education Funders Group website. This form, along with instructions and a glossary of terms, can be found by clicking on its icon at the end of these Grant Requirements and Guidelines. Because The Long Foundation does not control the LOI form, we have an Additional Information form that must also be completed and submitted with the LOI as a supplement. The Additional Information form can also be found by clicking on its icon at the bottom of this section, and should not take too much additional effort to complete. We will evaluate all completed LOI and Additional Information forms (and any pre-grant application forms sent in instead of the newer LOI) submitted by the deadline (see below) in order to choose organizations with programs that fulfill the criteria listed above, and that The Long Foundation decides may be of interest for funding. These chosen organizations will then receive an invitation to submit a formal grant application, and will be sent the formal grant requirements therein.

Grant recipients from the prior year do not need to submit LOI (or pre-grant applications), at least in regard to funding requests for the previously funded program. These prior grant recipients will automatically be invited to submit a formal grant proposal in regard to the previously funded program.

What does this mean? It means that we only review formal grant applications that have been invited to apply. How do you get invited to submit a formal grant application? You get invited to submit a formal grant application to The Long Foundation either because of its prior knowledge and interest (due to prior funding or otherwise) or by submitting a completed Letter of Inquiry and an Additional Information form and having a non-profit activity that is of interest to The Long Foundation and meets its requirements and guidelines. Why is this two-step application process used? It is used to save many potential grantees the time and expense of submitting a formal grant application when their program may not be of interest to The Long Foundation. Additionally, it saves our staff the time and expense of handling and processing a large number of formal grant applications.

Please note that an invitation to submit a formal grant proposal does not imply an invited charitable organization will receive a grant.  It only means that their program seems to fall within grant guidelines, is of interest to The Long Foundation, and that they may submit a formal grant application for consideration by the Board of Directors for funding.

We realize that some questions on the Letter of Inquiry and the Additional Information form may not apply to all organizations. However, please complete the LOI and the Additional Information form to the best of the applicant's ability. The Additional Information form was created using Microsoft Word. Therefore, once downloaded, it must be completed using Microsoft Word, or it must be converted for use by your word processing program. The spaces for answers should expand sufficiently for most answers. If needed, you may request a Microsoft Word version of the Additional Information form by way of an e-mail.

There are several ways to return the completed Letter of Inquiry and Additional Information form back to The Long Foundation.  It may be returned by way of e-mail (as an attachment) to Mitchell@longfoundation.org.  The completed documents can also be submitted by way of the U.S. Postal Service and overnight service to:

The Long Foundation
40 N. I-35, Suite 7C2
Austin, Texas 78701

You may include one brochure or pamphlet with the Letter of Inquiry.  You will also need to include a copy of your IRS determination letter.  This document must be submitted even if you returned the completed LOI by e-mail (it can be mailed separately and received at a later date if an electric copy is not available for e-mail).  At this stage, please do not include additional materials, as they will not be reviewed.

Grants are usually determined in May or June of each year, with grant payments occurring usually in the summer.

Because of our two-step process, Letters of Inquiry (Step 1) and the Additional Information forms must be submitted by the last Friday in October, and formal grant applications must be submitted by the last Friday in January of the following year (or as otherwise stated in the request letter).

You will be sent a confirmation that we are processing your application within 3 weeks of having received it in our office. Moreover, be advised that the Long Foundation does not generally make grants outside of its normal schedule.

Just for clarification, we strongly prefer to receive material by the given dates, but we will accept material postmarked by the given dates if it arrives within five business days of the deadline or as permission is granted.  This is so your organization does not have to spend additional funds for overnight or next-day delivery.
 
At this time, The Long Foundation does not have a set upper or lower limit on the size of a grant that it will award, though most of our grants range from $5,000 to $20,000.  Additionally, the size of each grant and the number of grants awarded each year will vary.

Additional Guidelines

Programs that have a lower priority to be funded (even if all other requirements are met) include the following:

• Funding for internet web sites (including web site design, implementation, conversion, revisions, maintenance, etc.).

• Pilot or start-up programs that are not based on or modeled after other existing programs. If a pilot or start-up program is based on or modeled after a program based elsewhere, then that other program must have demonstrated measurable results.

• Environmental programs.

• Building construction or expansion programs (i.e., funding for brick and mortar projects).

• Religious organizations (including houses of worship and schools), unless the specific program for which funding is being requested contains no bias to any particular religion and is open to the entire targeted community.

• Programs that are not also receiving financial support from the local community.      

• General-purpose, non-specific grants for general fund-raising programs or general endowment programs, even if the overall mission of the requesting organization is in alignment with our guidelines.  Funding for a specific purpose or a specific endowment is more likely to be awarded as long as the program is strongly aligned with our guidelines.

• Schools

• Grants will not be made to individuals, private foundations and certain types of charitable supporting organizations.

Click here Common Grant Application Link