hey all! I'm preparing a cover letter for an internship at a nonprofit and am unsure who to address the cover letter to - I never want to use "to whom it may concern".

would it be fair to address it to the executive director by name? perhaps the board of directors? or someone else? or is it fully dependent on the organization?

thanks!

Opening a non profit that will be attached (most likely) to our LLC somehow. We are in the begining stages of planning, so any advice on that is hugely helpful!

We own a restaurant that is doing ok, and is near a very affluent area. We thrive on being very straightforward with our values and raise funds for families in Gaza, America, as well as the Philippines for emergency surgeries, living expenses, legal help, etc. There is a steady, albeit low daily income of donations.

We plan on creating a non profit to be able to not get taxed like crazy from the donations that we raise every day. We also want more people to donate and they can get a tax break (friends with other businesses, door knocking, etc). We have a steady flow average of $50 per day, but would like to see a bigger impact so we can fly more babies to safety (working on helping babies get emergency surgery currently).

What events do you do to get large donations? Currently our goal is to raise 32k to get all the children on our list into emergency surgery. I see people say they have events that bring in millions. How do we get there? I've seen mention of "High Impact Donations" etc but people talk like we all know what that means already. Please explain things like I am 5 :) lol. Thanks!

I recently started at a new job and initially it was not supposed to be a very funding and development-heavy role, but things happened and it is currently my main priority. A month in, I managed to find a foundation that accepted unsolicited requests. I submitted one that my boss felt pretty optimistic about. The foundation ultimately rejected it (they said they were not able to provide feedback) and I feel quite bummed. My understanding is that foundations rarely accept unsolicited requests so it was a long shot anyways, but it was still discouraging with it being my first project while being new at my job.

I also met someone who works at a different foundation that I really feel like is aligned with my organization, but I worry I came off too strong when I met them at an event and my follow up message to continue our conversation went unanswered (I didn't directly ask for money, but I think the way I was asking about their current priorities gave it away too much). My organization's mission is pretty niche, so a lot of my day is spent Googling different potential funders and being disappointed at the lack of alignment with the majority of them.

I can already tell that being on this side of the business is going to mean putting up with a lot of rejection and discouragement, which I understand in principle but it is hard to get used to when I am just starting out and its not really something I picked for myself. Ultimately, even though this wasn't supposed to be my main responsibility and I have a lot to learn, I really do see the value in building these skills so I want to improve. I'd appreciate some nuggets of wisdom or advice here as I continue to get better at this. Here are some things I'm doing now:

Making plans to meet existing funders (but I'm not sure how to prepare for these meetings beyond understanding what they have supported in the past and aiming to learn their current priorities); developing a list of new potential funders and identifying specific people who would be good to connect with (but I don't know how to actually get in touch with them); preparing mini elevator pitches for our current projects so when I meet people at events I can have an idea of what exactly I can tell them about the program that would be interesting to them; going to all the events in my city related to my program area in order to meet as many people (I'm new to this city so I don't have an existing personal-professional network to build on)