Grant Guidelines, Application and Checklist

Grant Guidelines

The John Larsen Foundation will not consider unsolicited grant proposals.  Only those organizations that have been invited by a board member to submit a grant proposal will be considered for funding.

We generally accept grant requests that are specific to the St. Paul/Minneapolis metropolitan area, the Whitefish Lake Chain area in northern Minnesota and the Cross Plains/Black Earth area in Wisconsin.

The Foundation commonly makes grants for general operating purposes.  However, we will entertain solicitations for the following:  capital campaigns including buildings and renovations, fundraising and endowment funds, scholarship funding and program development including faculty/staff development and seed money/start up funds. We make a balance of single year grants and multi-year commitments.

The foundation does not generally make grants to religious organizations for religious purposes. We do not make grants to individuals (although we will support scholarship funds), political organizations or candidates, veteran’s organizations, fraternal societies or orders, nor do we support courtesy advertising or respond to telephone solicitations. The foundation does not generally make grants to umbrella organizations.

The John Larsen Foundation is a not-for-profit family foundation that supports qualified non-profit organizations that are exempt from federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Application Procedure

The John Larsen Foundation understands that writing grant proposals is an arduous and specialized task, and we hope to make it less difficult. We have proposed guidelines that should give our board as much information about your organization as we need, while letting you know as much as you may need about us. We appreciate brief narratives.  Please use the Minnesota Common Grant Application form with the attachments outlined below. Please number the pages of the Application. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to call.

We request the financial statements from the past three fiscal years. If we already received a portion of these in a previous proposal, please submit only the year(s) that we are missing.

We also request that grant seekers sign a “Certificate of Non-discrimination.” Please click the link to download, then sign and include the certificate with your application..

The proposal should indicate clearly that the organization in whose name the grant is to be paid is the sponsoring organization and assumes responsibility for the project to be funded.

The John Larsen Foundation makes grants once each year. Applications should be submitted by September 15 for a November decision. At the discretion of the foundation members, a decision may be deferred to the following year. The applicant organization will be notified at the earliest possible time of such a decision.

Please e-mail the application to john@jlfound.org.

The documents must be in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel or Adobe PDF Format.  Please name the document(-s) that you send as follows: (your organization name—can be abbreviated) space (two-digit year, e.g. 14) space (“Larsen App”). So, an example for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra 2014 grant application would be: SPCO 14 Larsen App

If your application is in parts, please use the naming system as described above with an addendum describing the part. For example, if the SPCO had a separate cover letter, the file would be named: SPCO 14 Larsen App Cvr Ltr

Application Checklist

Please use this checklist to ensure your grant proposals are complete:

  • We have been invited to submit a proposal by a member of the John Larsen Foundation.

  • We have read the guidelines and know that our grant fits within the guidelines.

  • We are emailing john@jlfound.org the following documents to be received by the due date for the grant period:

  • We have followed document naming convention and are using the requested software.

  • We have indicated in our cover letter the grant application due date for which we are applying.