Scam Grants?
I'm fairly new to the grants world, and am sort of learning as I go without any real formal training as of yet. Recently the non-profit that I work with on grants has been receiving emails from other nonprofits. The email addresses appear to be legitimate, and some even include what appear to be their organization's signatures (including links, and help tips, and more). They send an email with no text (save for their signature) just a PDF attachment. The PDF attachment says "official grant invitation," includes information about the Organizational Development Grant Initiative (ODGI), and includes the organization's logo, name, address, and details about the grant. So far, all have been from Fidelity Foundations or Fidelity Charitable. Each PDF has a link to access the grant portal. When I put my mouse over it, it appears to redirect to an amazon aws website. And they are all like that, none redirect to a website that appears to be affiliated with the organization. They come out of the blue. As far as we know, no one has signed us up for any grant service with Fidelity, though there have been a few folks who have worked with this organization on grants over the past few years, so it's possible that we were signed up and just don't know it. The PDFs have different names and include "reference numbers." And finally, so far, all of the invitations we have received are from other non-profits (who I would expect to be requesting grant funds, not giving them out), and they are all from different states. Our non-profit tends to serve our immediate area, and isn't something big and national.
To me, this is just too many red flags to justify clicking the link. They haven't made any additional attempts to contact us, and if I try to call the orgs or email them directly, I receive no response. Am I being overly cautious? Is this a normal grant process, and are these safe to apply to?
I'm also going to include a censored image of one of the grant letters here. I'm censoring it because, if this is a scam, I don't think the organization included in the letter is actually the one doing the work, and I don't want them to potentially have their name dragged through the mud in relation to this scam.
