the filter gives you a tangible "query" to work with so that you can continually add criteria as you build your query. for example, i can say: grants = Gran

the filter gives you a tangible "query" to work with so that you can continually add criteria as you build your query. for example, i can say: grants = Grants.objects.filter(is_approved=True) to get all of the Grants to an Organization, and then if not request.user.is_superuser: grants = grant.filter(sponsoring_trustee=request.user) to filter out grants that only pertain to a certain user. "grants" isnt evaluated (queried) until its iterated over or otherwise called (print, for example), so i can keep building what i want as i go without having several sql calls or managing building a query via string concatenation. personally, i've always found django's orm to feel natural.