• Individuals: The Foundation does not make grants to individuals. Scholarships are awarded by our partner schools and senior care institutions. You should contact your institution’s financial aid office for all questions regarding receiving, renewing or transferring Lettie Pate Whitehead funds.
• Institutions not currently receiving Foundation support: The Foundation rarely adds new institutions to its grants program. For more information, contact Carrie Conway at conway@woodruff.org.
• Institutions currently receiving Foundation support: You must submit a grant request letter by Sept. 30 of each year to be considered for a grant in the coming year. Letters do not need to request a specific amount of funding but should provide a brief (no more than 2 pages) update on your institution. The letter should be submitted online but it does not appear automatically in our grantee portal. You must click this link to access the grant request letter.

Our founder, Conkey Pate Whitehead, required that Foundation funds be awarded only to female, Christian women who demonstrate financial need and live in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia. We recommend that institutions review the conditions upon which our grants are made to ensure funds are awarded properly. Conditions statements are available here for educational institutions and here for senior care institutions.

Grant decisions are made at the November meeting of our Board of Trustees and grant award letters are mailed in mid-January. For educational institutions, we consider your SACS accreditation status, the strength of your leadership, enrollment and financial health, academic program quality, commitment to serving students with financial need, and student success factors. We are careful to consider the context in which each institution operates and do our best to direct resources to schools that successfully serve women with significant need.

For senior care institutions, we consider your quality of care, commitment to serving seniors with financial need, fiscal health and the strength of your leadership. Our investments are guided by an interest in supporting institutions that provide high-quality, compassionate care to individuals regardless of their financial means.

For all institutions, the Foundation values transparency and good stewardship. Institutions that fail to meet our eligibility and reporting requirements may see their funding decrease or may not receive further support. We also follow closely any institutions that are placed on SACS warning or probation.

The Lettie Pate Whitehead, Joseph B. Whitehead and Lettie Pate Evans Foundations were founded by members of the Whitehead family. These Foundations share an office and staff with the Woodruff Foundation, though each is led by an independent Board of Trustees. Robert W. Woodruff was a good friend and trusted advisor to Mrs. Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans, and their Foundations agreed on a common administrative arrangement to allow for greater flexibility and efficiency in responding to community needs.

Grants from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation are limited to Georgia’s research universities. Independent colleges in Georgia and schools in Virginia that Mrs. Evans supported during her life may be eligible for a grant from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation. Please review each foundation’s grant guidelines to determine if your request is a fit for funding.

Reporting requirements are specified in your grant award letter and listed on our Grantees page. All requirements must be submitted online using our grantee portal. Please do not send hard copies of any requirements through the mail unless otherwise instructed.

All information is kept confidential. We use the information internally to ensure compliance with eligibility requirements, to inform future funding decisions, and to evaluate the effectiveness of our grants program.

Our grant portal permits only one account per institution. Please designate a single point of contact to manage your institution’s account and to oversee all submissions to the Foundation. This contact does not need to be the person who signs letters. Institutions often designate a development or financial aid officer to manage their grant portal account. Please note you may share grant portal login information with other staff so different departments can complete different requirements. However, they must log in with the credentials of the primary contact or they will be unable to see or submit requirements.

Notify Carrie Conway (conway@woodruff.org) so we can transfer your institution’s grant portal account to your email address. This is not a change you can make on your own. You will not be able to view or submit requirements for your institution until we complete this change.

Typically, the username is the email address of the designated primary contact for your institution. Some institutions choose to use a general email address for their portal account. You should contact your institution’s primary contact to find out what credentials are used to log in to the account.  

If you do not know your institution’s primary contact or the correct username, you may email Carrie Conway (conway@woodruff.org) for help.

On the grant portal login page, click “Forgot Password?” below the Password field. You will receive a temporary password from mail@grantapplication.com (be sure to add this to your safe senders list). The temporary password will expire 48 hours after you click “Forgot Password?” If more than 48 hours have passed, click “Forgot Password?” again.

Check to make sure you are the primary contact for your institution. Only the primary contact will be able to see and submit requirements.

Once you have logged in with the credentials of the primary contact, you must click the Requirements tab to see grant acceptance letters, scholarship reports, statistical reports or senior care reports assigned to your institution. Typically, these requirements will be available in the grant portal in June of each year.

New grant request letters do not appear automatically in the portal. You must click this link to access this requirement.

If you open or start a requirement and exit the portal without submitting, you must return to the portal, click the Requirements tab and go to the dropdown menu on the right side of the screen. There, you can change the view to show “In Progress Requirements”.

Notify Carrie Conway (conway@woodruff.org) so she can republish your report to the grantee portal for resubmission. You will be unable to resubmit on your own.

The Fellowship is a one-year opportunity for a recent college graduate to gain experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in Atlanta. Our Fellow works closely with Foundation staff on a range of activities, including participating in meetings, drafting memoranda, assisting with database management and administrative tasks, and preparing research and presentations related to the Foundation’s grantmaking.

The Foundation accepts applications from seniors graduating from Agnes Scott College, Berry College, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Morehouse College, Oglethorpe University, Spelman College and the University of Georgia. Applicants should be bright, curious, self-motivated, humble and detail-oriented, with strong written and oral communication skills and demonstrated interest in nonprofit work.

Berry College and Emory University have internal selection processes. Interested applicants should contact Stacey Spillers (sspillers@berry.edu) at Berry and Dr. Megan Friddle (mfriddl@emory.edu) at Emory for information on how to apply. Applicants from other schools may contact Jenny Zhang Morgan (morgan@woodruff.org) or our current Fellow for details on our application process. Generally, we publicize the Fellowship in late fall and accept applications through mid-January. Interviews typically begin in February, and a final decision is made no later than April. Fellows start their appointment on August 1 and end on July 31 one year later.

There is no typical career path for our Fellows. They have continued on to graduate school or careers in education, law, medicine, and nonprofits. Many have said they valued the Fellowship for broadening their perspective of philanthropy, deepening their understanding of social issues, and strengthening their commitment to community and service.