It's Monkey See, Monkey Do for the David Bohnett Foundation

The David Bohnett Foundation is rightfully known for being a philanthropic leader in the LGBT community, but the foundation is a passionate giver to other arenas too, one of them being animal welfare and research.

And if the animal your most in to is a great ape or a chimpanzee, you're particularly in luck.

The foundation's animal welfare program is called Animal Language, named for the foundation's interest in “understanding great apes and chimps through scientific and academic animal language research.” More generally speaking, its approach to any animal's well-being comes from a supportive research and treatment mindset, and this overall program approach is gift-wrapped in the foundation's overall commitment to "improving society through social activism."

That's a lot of layers to work through, but if you're a nonprofit working in the realm of "improving the research and treatment of animals" (the program area's sub-mission), then you better take care to unwrap the layers. The foundation gave out $157,500 through this program in 2013 and $82,500 through this program in 2014, and the vast majority of that went directly to the apes and chimps.

If you're ape and/or chimp-based that's great. If you're not, there's still opportunity here, but be mindful of the foundation's mission and approach. It's an open two-page LOI process, so once you're on-message, let them know you deserve to be top banana (sorry, it had to be done).