Use bash to find first folder name that contains a string

You can use the -quit option of find:

find <dir> -maxdepth 1 -type d -name '*foo*' -print -quit

pattern="foo"
for _dir in *"${pattern}"*; do
    [ -d "${_dir}" ] && dir="${_dir}" && break
done
echo "${dir}"

This is better than the other shell solution provided because

it will be faster for huge directories as the pattern is part of the glob and not checked inside the loop
actually works as expected when there is no directory matching your pattern (then ${dir} will be empty)
it will work in any POSIX-compliant shell since it does not rely on the =~ operator (if you need this depends on your pattern)
it will work for directories containing newlines in their name (vs. find)

for example:

dir1=$(find . -name \*foo\* -type d -maxdepth 1 -print | head -n1)
echo "$dir1"

or (For the better shell solution see Adrian Frühwirth's answer)

for dir1 in *
do
    [[ -d "$dir1" && "$dir1" =~ foo ]] && break
    dir1=        #fix based on comment
done
echo "$dir1"

dir1=$(find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -print | grep 'foo' | head -n1)
echo "$dir1"

Edited head -n1 based on @ hek2mgl comment

Next based on @chepner's comments

dir1=$(find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -print | grep -m1 'foo')

dir1=$(find . -name \*foo\* -type d -maxdepth 1 -print -quit)

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