M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust

Application Planning Resources

Grant Application Overview

The staff and Trustees of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust look forward to reviewing your grant application. While the application is detailed, we hope these questions will be helpful to your organization and may help to clarify and better define your proposed project. Take a moment to review the instructions before starting. More complex projects may invite a more detailed response. Please stay true to the scope of the project described in your Letter of Inquiry (LOI) approved by the Trust; if anything other than minor adjustments have occurred in the project planning, please contact us before proceeding. Be as concise and specific as possible, edit carefully and invite others in your organization to review a draft of the application before submission.

Once your LOI is approved, a new grant application request will populate in your Grants Portal under Full Application Requests. The information you submitted with your LOI will appear at the beginning of the grant application, followed by the Full Application, which is comprised of two components:

  1. The first portion of the application is broken out into six sections that you will fill out in the online form. These sections include Organizational Background, Project Information, Organizational Summary, Organizational Programs and Services, Board Governance and Full Project Description.
  2. The second portion of the application consists of document uploads in the Project Documents section. Required documents include Organizational
    Financial Summary, Project Expense Budget, Project Funding Plan, Project Outcome Evaluation
    and Future of Project Sustainability (Pro Forma). We invite you to upload your responses to these sections in Word, Excel or PDF format. The instructions will provide page limits for each of these sections. To assist Trust staff and Trustees in reviewing the grant request, please use no less than 11-point font in narrative areas and no less than 10-point font in a matrix, chart or spreadsheet. It is important to adhere to the page limits and font sizes described in the instructions.

Application Documents and Resources

Download the full application instructions for more detailed explanations of each of the components.

The explanations, tips, and sample documents found here may prove helpful in both your project planning and the completion of your application. They are intended to help inform your thinking; however, each organization and project is unique and may require a different approach than what is suggested here. Feel free to apply a format that works for you.

Budgets

Funding Plan and Pro Formas

IRS Documentation

Organizational Financial Summary

Please note that the Organizational Financial Summary will not be required for applications after January 2024.

back to top

The Trust guides nonprofit organizations through every level of their development through grants and other resources.

The Trust has a wealth of knowledge and experience that can make all the difference to you and your organization.