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Examples to Study

A living companion to Tool 12: The "Study the Prepared" Exercise and Tool 13: Where to Find Your Numbers.

Everything here is listed as a positive example: organizations and resources that do something well and repay twenty minutes of your study time. Inclusion means "learn from this," nothing more, and absence means nothing at all. The list grows as readers and I find new examples; suggestions are welcome.

Organizations that present capacity beautifully

Study how each one answers, within minutes of your arrival: who are you, what do you do, at what scale, and how do I know?

  • charity: water (charitywater.org). The gold standard for impact transparency. Notice how every number is presented, how completed projects are documented, and how the annual reports read.
  • St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (stjude.org). Watch how mission, science, and family stories are woven together without ever losing the numbers.
  • The Michael J. Fox Foundation (michaeljfox.org). A masterclass in explaining a research funding portfolio to a lay audience. Their annual reports show a research organization telling its capacity story in public.
  • Feeding America (feedingamerica.org). Study the "by the numbers" presentation of a large operation, and how national statistics and local impact are connected.
  • Your local community foundation. Find it through Candid's community foundation locator and study both sides: how it presents itself to donors, and what it asks of grantees.

Newsletters to subscribe to

The immersion practice of Habit 10, in your inbox.

  • Philanthropy News Digest (philanthropynewsdigest.org), from Candid: RFPs and award announcements across the sector, free.
  • The Chronicle of Philanthropy (philanthropy.com): the news layer of the fundraising world.
  • Nonprofit Quarterly (nonprofitquarterly.org) and Stanford Social Innovation Review (ssir.org): the thinking layer, where sector-shaping ideas surface before they show up in funding announcements.
  • Grants.gov updates (grants.gov): new federal opportunities, delivered as they post.
  • Two or three organizations you admire. The monthly newsletters of well-run nonprofits are themselves the lesson; pick a few from the capacity list above and read how they narrate their own work, twelve times a year.

Funders whose worlds repay watching

Whether or not you ever apply, these funders publish enough about their thinking that watching them teaches you how funders think.

  • Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Rare As One (chanzuckerberg.com): a program built specifically around patient-led rare disease organizations, with public materials about what organizational maturity looks like to a funder.
  • Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (pcori.org): read funded project pages and applicant resources to see what a large research funder tells its applicants, and notice how much is given away for free.
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (rwjf.org): study how a major health foundation states its priorities and frames calls for proposals.
  • Candid's Foundation Directory (candid.org): the searchable version of "watch who funds what," free at many public libraries.

Free learning that is actually good

  • Candid Learning (learning.candid.org): free courses and guides on proposal writing and fundraising fundamentals.
  • Grants 101 at Grants.gov: the federal grant lifecycle, explained by the people who run it.
  • NIH's applicant resources (grants.nih.gov): even if you never seek NIH funding, no funder explains its own review process more thoroughly, and the mindset transfers.

From the book's own toolkit

Links verified July 2026. If something has moved, or you know an example that belongs here, let me know through Boyce Data Science.