The Unfunded List is a nonprofit learning community built around one structural gap in philanthropy: funders receive too many proposals to give meaningful feedback to the ones they turn down. We close that gap. Our volunteer evaluators (experienced funders, nonprofit executives, and sector leaders) review grant proposals that were already submitted to a funder but did not win funding, and deliver a detailed, multi-perspective feedback report to the author.

We review proposals of any size and from any funder type (large federal grants, major international foundation requests, or smaller local community grants) as long as the underlying project supports a social mission. We are not a grant consulting firm, and we do not promise you’ll win future funding. Our role is to give you the kind of honest, expert feedback that funders themselves rarely have time to provide, so you can decide how to move forward, whether that means revising and reapplying, rethinking your strategy, or simply understanding your proposal’s strengths and weaknesses more clearly.

Visit our submission page, complete the online form, and upload your original proposal along with basic information about your project. We accept any format grantmakers require, and we treat your submission with strict confidentiality. Every eligible proposal receives feedback.

We welcome proposals from individuals, organizations, teams, or coalitions working in any sector of social impact. Whether you applied to the National Science Foundation for millions, sought multi-year restricted funding from an international foundation, or requested $25,000 from a small community grantmaker, we are interested. What matters most is that your proposal supports a mission that benefits your community or the public good.

No, Unfunded List does not award grants. Our purpose is to equip you with the kind of thoughtful, specific, and detailed feedback that funders themselves rarely have time to provide, so you can increase your chances of winning funding in subsequent applications.

 You will receive an in-depth written report drawn from multiple reviewers’ perspectives. These reviewers include experienced funders, nonprofit executives, subject matter experts, and social sector leaders. Whenever possible, we try to include evaluators who have direct experience with the issue you are addressing. The report will highlight strengths, identify weaknesses or unclear sections, and offer concrete suggestions for improvement. Many applicants discover strategic adjustments they can make immediately to strengthen their appeal to funders.

We have reviewed over 1,500 proposals, delivering helpful and candid feedback to each one. Organizations of all sizes find value in our approach, which is why many of them come back to us round after round. We recently did an impact study and comparing fundraising totals for groups we reviewed five years after their initial review.

87% were raising more

On average they were raising 213% more.

The average amount raised before applying was 1.5 million.

The average amount raised by these same groups in 2021 was 4.6 million.

We were particularly excited to learn that some of the highest increases came from groups whose proposals we highlighted on previous Unfunded Lists.

RespectAbility raised 60% more for disability inclusion

Global Press Institute raised 180% more for representative journalism

Fast Forward raised 400% more to support tech nonprofits

National Medical Fellowships raised 430% more for BIPOC medical students

Leveling the Playing Field raised 2,960% more to help kids of all income levels play sports.

A: We run review cycles throughout the year. Application windows are posted on our website. We do not recommend waiting until the last minute. Once you know which proposal you’d like for us to review, we recommend submitting as soon as your proposal is ready. 

Yes. There is a one-time $100 administrative fee when you submit your first proposal for review. This covers only a small portion of the actual cost, with the rest funded by our donors and supporters. Once you’ve paid, you may submit future proposals at no charge — some organizations, like Mary’s Center, have had multiple proposals reviewed over the years and only paid once.

Comparable consulting reviews from firms like McKinsey or Deloitte could cost $10,000 or more, without our unique network of evaluators, proprietary review process, or custom feedback software. We deliver far greater value at a fraction of the cost.

If you have questions or concerns about the fee, contact dave@unfundedlist.com.

The proposal should be in the format requested by the grant maker you are applying to.

There are no specific guidelines for formatting proposals other than the original grantmakers guidelines. Your proposal should follow the format provided by the grant maker. Our evaluators will want to see those guidelines so it’s helpful to share as much as you can when you submit your proposal to Unfunded List. Our evaluators also like it when there is financial information included (ideally a project budget).  The ideal proposal length is 4 to 6 pages but we will review anything up to 20 pages in length. Longer proposals might receive less feedback than shorter submissions. If the submission is too short, our evaluators might have unanswered questions.

Please do contact us directly with any specific eligibility questions.

All applicants are expected to carefully read their feedback report and come prepared for a report discussion with our staff. These conversations allow you to ask questions, clarify feedback, and explore opportunities for improvement. Following that discussion, you are free to revise your proposal for future submissions, use it to approach new funders, or reapply to Unfunded List in a later cycle.

Yes.

Our evaluation committee has a vast array of experience working for and with funding organizations of all sizes. A short, but incomplete, list of organizations where committee members work, have previously worked, or have otherwise been involved includes: the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, The Slingshot Fund, The Aspen Institute, Australia’s Greater Charitable Foundation, the Qatar Foundation, the Sehgal Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the White House, the Skoll Award, Echoing Green, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The committee includes experts familiar with the world of international development funding (DFID, USAID, AusAID, the U.S. State Department, National Science Foundation (NSF)).

We also have evaluators who are experienced securing government grants at the local, state and federal level as well as evaluators with experience in corporate grant-making/partnerships. We even have international evaluators from over a dozen countries and almost every continent. Our academic chops are considerable as well. We partner with George Washington University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and we have evaluation committee members on the faculty at Stanford, Duke, and Harvard Universities.

Regardless of the change you are looking to make or the funding institution you are targeting we have evaluators who can help.

We spend a lot of effort building an evaluation committee with a breadth of experience and perspective and we are confident that we can be supportive of any format submitted to any funder. Your proposal will receive the highest quality evaluation to prepare you for success with future submissions to funding organizations. 

We will review one proposal per organization per round. Keep in mind, we review every six months so organizations can submit 2 proposals per year.

No. We are a global learning community and we accept proposals from anywhere. We have reviewed proposals from over 80 different countries and we have evaluators who have experience with most global regions.

Yes. Even if you have been funded before we would love to help you keep going by providing fresh perspectives and comments to support your future applications. Many of the organizations we review for keep coming back to us for feedback after winning funding.

Our program is designed to review grant proposals that were submitted to grant makers through a formal application process. Unsubmitted materials or generic fundraising documents will make it harder for us to make any specific recommendations and we will not be able to compare the materials to the funder’s priorities.

Please do contact us directly with any specific eligibility questions.

One of our first applicants, Accountability Lab, has seen their budget grow from $400k to several million and the Director of their Mali program received one of the first Obama Fellowships. Another Unfunded List honoree, Simprints, applied for the WeWork Creator Awards in London on the recommendation of the Unfunded List evaluation committee and won the first prize of $360,000. They have since won millions in prizes and formed a global partnership with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). Their founder credits Unfunded List for their success. Recently, Mary’s Center, a health center in Washington DC, won a $250,000 grant from healthcare company Cigna to fund a child nutrition program, the first of its kind in the District. Their initial submission was unsuccessful and then we reviewed it, they resubmitted, and won the grant.

We have helped a disability inclusion organization win their first funding from a foundation that had not funded in that area before. We helped an organization focused on eating disorders (ProjectHeal) to win a six-figure grant from a national foundation. A small organization in DC serving homeless families applied for a grant from a local giving circle. They were rejected. We reviewed their proposal, provided them feedback and had a productive report discussion. The proposal authors submitted a new draft and won the grant on their second attempt. A young doctoral student from Haiti studying at Howard University applied for a grant and was rejected. We reviewed his submission, gave him feedback which he used to resubmit and has won 3 of his 7 submissions this year – his first ever grant awards in over 15 years of operation.

What do other proposal authors have to say about Unfunded List?

Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what past applicants have told us in their own words:

“Last year we had submitted the grant proposal to Rotary and it was not accepted. And this year the same proposal, with modifications, editing based on the feedback we received last year, we submitted to Rotary, same organization, it got approved!”
— Ghanshyam Jethwa, Creshendo

“It’s really helpful for grassroots organizations and youth-run organizations like us to have this kind of feedback… It’s not always shared with us why a grant is successful or not successful, so this was super helpful.”
— Natalie Kwan, Music for Every Child

“The feedback we received was very useful and it directly allowed us to shift some of the language we used in proposals and rethink some of the ways we were explaining what we do and the impact we are having.”
— Blair Glencorse, Accountability Lab

“We cannot tell you how much we appreciate the Unfunded List. The feedback is invaluable. While we always ask for feedback on declined applications, we rarely get a response and even less often get specific feedback.”
— Bethany Simmonds, Food Rescue US

“We think this was really helpful and provided some important context… We actually had a team meeting yesterday. There are a few things in the feedback that we’ve been talking about as a team.”
— Mariah Jolin, Youth & Innovation Project

“I’ve been writing grants since 2009, but in the 17 years since I started, this is the first time I’ve run into a program like this. Thank you so much for creating this organization.”
— Amy Hatter, ProsperityME

Every proposal we review gets this same level of candid, detailed attention, whether it’s a first submission or your fifth.