What a good answer looks like.
Align asks plain questions, but some of them are asking for something specific and it is not always obvious what. This page shows you the shape.
Do not copy any of this. Cedar Commons is not a real organization and the Aldrich Family Foundation is not a real funder. That is deliberate. There is nothing here you could paste into your own session and have it mean anything, which is the point: the answers have to be yours.
Every question below shows two answers. One from somebody who did the digging. One from somebody with forty minutes before a board meeting. Both are real answers and Align accepts both. Underneath each pair is the part worth reading: what Align can actually do with each one.
01 · Strategic fit
What have you read of theirs, and what did it say about who they fund?
Their program page and the 2024 annual report. The program page says they fund organizations "building community wealth in disinvested neighborhoods." The annual report splits grants three ways: housing, small business, workforce. Housing was 41% of dollars last year, and every housing write-up is about ownership and land, none about rental subsidy. The president's letter says they are moving toward multi-year general operating.
Just the program page. It says community wealth building in disinvested neighborhoods. I did not get to the annual report.
What Align can do with each. With the first it can hold your program up against a stated pattern and a dollar split, and notice that you do rental when they fund ownership. With the second it can only test the phrase "community wealth," which is broad enough to include almost anybody. It will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
Can you name two or three grantees whose work resembles yours?
Two I recognized were a land trust somewhere in the Midwest and a homeownership lender. I did not write down the amounts or the program names.
What Align can do with each. The first gives it four things to test per grantee, including whether your $250,000 sits sensibly beside what those organizations actually received. The second is still worth saying, because knowing the type of organization is real information. But funding capacity will come back Can't tell, because there is no number to compare yours to.
02 · Geographic fit
Have they funded in your region, and is geography a stated priority?
They say national with no regional restriction. But of the 34 grants in the 2024 list, 22 are Midwest or Northeast. One is in our state, to a food policy group four years ago. Nothing in our county that I could find.
They say national. I did not see anyone from around here but I only skimmed the list.
What Align can do with each. The first turns the word "national" into a pattern you can argue with, which is the difference between a stated rule and what a funder actually does. The second leaves it unable to tell whether you would be an exception or a first, and those are very different bets.
03 · Funding capacity
What do they typically give, is your ask inside that range, and what is your annual budget?
Grants ran $150,000 to $600,000 last year, median around $300,000. We are asking $250,000. Our annual budget is $4.2 million, so this would be about 6% of it. The largest grant we have managed is a $500,000 federal award, so the size is not new to us.
Looks like a few hundred thousand each. We are asking $250,000. Our budget is around $4 million.
What Align can do with each. Both work, and this is the one category where a fast answer holds up well. The first also lets it check whether you have run a grant this size before, which is the second question a program officer asks after they decide they like you.
04 · Relationship potential
Does anyone connected to your organization know anyone connected to this funder?
Our board treasurer served on a regional housing task force with their senior program officer in 2023. Not close, but they would recognize each other. Separately, one of their current grantees is our partner on a county pilot, and their director has offered before to make introductions.
Nobody, as far as I know. I have followed them for a couple of years but I have never spoken to anyone there.
What Align can do with each. The second answer is a good answer. It is honest, it takes one line, and Align will mark relationship potential Not aligned and tell you plainly why, which is far more useful than a hopeful maybe. The only answer it pushes back on is "we have a connection" when the connection turns out to be a name badge at a conference. Watching a funder is knowledge. It is not access.
05 · Timing
Is there a deadline, are they open right now, and would you actually be ready?
Letters of inquiry twice a year, next one closing 15 October. The site does not say invitation only. We would be ready: the program budget is built and evaluation data runs through June. The one gap is a signed MOU with our county partner, which is drafted but not executed.
There is an October deadline. We would have to hustle but probably.
What Align can do with each. "Probably" is a real answer and it will take it. It will also ask what specifically is not ready, because that is where the twenty wasted hours usually hide. Note that the thorough answer named its own gap. Align did not have to drag it out, and that is the fastest version of this conversation.
06 · What your read is built on
What did you actually look at?
Program page, 2024 annual report, the full grantee list, and their most recent 990. Plus a call last spring with a colleague whose organization they fund.
Their website, and a news article somebody forwarded me.
What Align can do with each. This one gets no status word. It becomes the confidence note stamped on the whole report. Align says out loud what the read rests on, so that when you carry it to your director or your board, nobody mistakes a mission page for due diligence.
Rubree Score: the same draft, read twice
One organisation. One draft, about seventy percent done. On the left, Score has the funder's solicitation. On the right, it does not. Nothing else changed.
The funder published point values and never said what earns them, so Score built the performance descriptors from the funder's own language and disclosed it before printing a single number.
…that is 28 states plus D.C. The count reconciles. Idaho is on the priority market list; Oregon is not. The entity qualifies for the bonus on the basis of Idaho alone, since the criterion is satisfied if the entity is “based in, or… designed to be implemented in” one or more priority markets.
| Criterion | Avail. | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonus: Priority Market | 15 | 15 | aligned |
| Alignment with overarching priority | 10 | 0 | not aligned |
| Clarity on use of resources | 5 | not scored | can’t tell |
Scored: 51 of 65 available.Excluded from the total: Clarity on use of resources and implementation — 5 points, because the budget attachment was not supplied.Total available in the funder’s structure: 70.
This is not a score out of 70. It is a score across the 65 points this report could actually check.
Same draft. Score warned that the solicitation was missing, the writer carried on anyway, and Score then refused to produce the thing everyone comes for.
Not in what you gave me — criterion findings require the funder’s evaluation criteria. None were supplied.
Not produced… No table, no total, no points appear in this section or anywhere else in this report.
It still found what the draft says about itself: a question carrying a heading and no answer, two required attachments the draft admits are not attached, and a 3,000-character box using 834 of them.
And one thing it deliberately did not say. The draft states the fund serves households up to 140 percent of area median income. The funder caps that programme at 120. Score did not flag it, because the cap lives in the solicitation and the solicitation was not supplied. Calling 140 a violation would have meant inventing a funder requirement.
Look at the two zeros. On the left, alignment scores 0 because Score read the question and found the box empty; that zero is earned. Use of resources reads not scored, because the budget was never uploaded and nobody could look. A tool that draws both as an empty bar has told you the same thing twice, and one of those times it was wrong.