How to Draft a Foundation Letter of Inquiry from a Need Brief
LOIs mint 10,000 served and a $25,000 ask. The brief had two chess tables and a third-table gap. Leave Amount UNKNOWN.
The matching generator is the Foundation Letter of Inquiry from a Need Brief (No Invented Stats or Awards) (Foundation Letter Of Inquiry From Need Brief No Invented Stats Or Awards) prompt. Browse related cards in the PromptDig library (Browse more prompts). When a filled run survives, share the version you actually use (Share a prompt).
Quote every number from the brief
Draft a funder-facing letter of inquiry from a need brief. No invented statistics, awards, EINs, or grant amounts. Start by filling Inputs, not by asking the model to remember last week's run. If a field is blank, write NONE or NOT IN INPUTS and leave it blank through Generate. The card is built so the model cannot honestly invent a number, owner, URL, or command that you did not paste.
Paste these fields before you hit run:
Need brief (who, where, what gap, what you already run): [Brief]
Org name as pasted (or UNKNOWN): [Org]
Amount requested as pasted (or UNKNOWN): [Amount]
Funder name I may address (or UNKNOWN): [Funder]
Words I must not use: [Banned]
What I must never invent (stats, awards, EIN): [Never]
Max words: [Budget or 800]
Output format: [Format]
Language: [Lang]
Contact line I allow: [Contact]
That inventory is the honesty ledger. Anything that does not appear there is forbidden in the draft. If you catch yourself adding a nice-to-have after the run, you are no longer using the card. You are ghostwriting. Put the extra fact in Inputs and run again.
Leave Amount UNKNOWN if it was blank
Generate is numbered on purpose. Do not skip a step because the first paragraph looked done. The early steps exist to stop later prose from smuggling claims.
Walk the Generate list in order:
- Banner: not a full proposal, not a funding guarantee, not legal advice.
- Honesty ledger: Brief nouns, Org, Amount, Funder, Contact, Budget, Lang. Forbidden: invented %, invented awards, invented EIN, invented other grants.
- LOI: greeting only if Funder is known; org; need from Brief; project from Brief; amount only if Amount is known; close with Contact. Stay under Budget words.
- Number policy: every number must appear in Inputs. If Amount is UNKNOWN, write AMOUNT UNKNOWN and do not pick $25,000.
- Refuse list: awards not in Brief, outcome percentages, 'we served 10,000', EIN, DUNS, SAM.gov status.
- Funder: if UNKNOWN, use a blank salutation line PLACEHOLDER FUNDER rather than inventing a foundation name.
- Never: do not write a budget table with invented line items.
- Compliance pass: quote Banned and Never hits. Print word count vs Budget. Format as Format.
If a step asks for a version lock, quote the version from Inputs in the output. If a step asks for a refuse list, keep the refuse list in the published artifact, not in a sidebar you delete. Reviewers should see what the model was not allowed to do.
Do not invent a foundation name
Most failures are the same shape: a missing field gets a confident fill. A conversion rate appears. A Gradle task appears. A flash point appears. A caption appears on a job that asked for slide text only. Your review is to search the draft for numbers, names, and commands, then grep Inputs. No match means cut.
Honor the constraints as hard stops, not vibes:
- Foundation LOI from Brief. Not a full proposal and not SF-424.
- Never invent stats, awards, EIN, or amounts.
- Stay under Budget words.
- No emojis.
When the card says not legal advice, not certification, not an exam dump, or not a caption engine, that sentence belongs at the top of the output. Deleting it to look more finished is how you inherit risk.
Refuse awards EIN and outcome percents
Finish with the compliance pass the prompt already asks for. Quote the banned-word hits. Cut them. Print character counts when the job has a cap. Print word counts when the job has a budget. List gaps as gaps. Five missing facts are more useful than one smooth paragraph.
Tags on the card (foundation letter of inquiry, loi from need brief, no invented grant stats) are a reminder of the job shape, not an invitation to wander into a neighboring cluster. If you need a different surface, open a different PromptDig card rather than stretching this one.
Fill the card, then run
Replace every bracket. Run on ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Read the ledger first, then the artifact. If the model invents a commit, KPI, DOI, PEL, bid, or logo, discard the run. Tighten Inputs. Run again. Share the filled card that survived, not the first draft that sounded done.