Find Grantmakers & Nonprofit Funders

Once you’ve compiled a list of feasible prospects and put them through wealth screening, it’s time to start appending the records already in your database. If you’ve used a wealth-screening tool, you’ll find that some of them—WealthEngine or Blackbaud’s Target Analytics, for example—will integrate with your existing donor database or CRM, while others will require you to import the list manually. You also should check over the profiles you get back from these tools—to make sure, for instance, that the John Smith they’ve highlighted as your most likely prospect is the John Smith you think it is—before you import the list wholesale into your system.

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Smaller organizations with limited budgets and nonprofits just starting their grant research may find spreadsheet applications likeMicrosoft ExcelorGoogle Driveto be terrific low-budget options for managing foundation prospect lists. If you choose to go this route, create columns to track such information as foundation names, website links, giving interests, and potential giving capacities, as well as dates of RFPs and their due dates. If your organization’s internal deadline for proposals is different from the foundation’s deadline, be sure to record both dates. Do you absolutely need a subscription to a grant database to uncover grant opportunities? There are ways to research grant opportunities without subscribing to a grant database. You can regularly read philanthropy-related news to learn about recent grant awards, which may lead you to a suitable funder. You can research organizations similar to yours to see who funds them and explore whether these same funders might be good for your organization as well.

The Place For Grant Professionals

They have chosen to omit foundations that do not accept unsolicited proposals and those that only run scholarship funds. That really cuts out a lot of funders, but those are funders inaccessible to many nonprofits anyway. GrantStation’s weekly GrantStation Insider newsletter includes information on recently issued RFPs from foundations, corporate foundations and giving programs, and government agencies, as well as reminders of upcoming deadlines. As you can see, the technology exists to help you find available grants and track their grant cycle, but there still isn’t software to replace the human element—say, to write your proposals for you. Wealth-screening services can quickly track down information for your list that would take hours and hours of staff time, but they can’t sit down with each prospect and build a relationship. It’s still essential to have a seasoned fundraiser with the knowledge and capabilities to write good proposals and/or wine and dine potential donors. It’s a good idea to use the high-tech databases and wealth-screening services to help you find the door, but it’s still your job to get your foot in it.

The database includes private and corporate foundations as well as U.S. and Canadian government agencies. We have frequently recommended GrantStation to our readers because it is one of the more affordable funder databases on the market. Foundation Directory Online by Candid is one of the most well-known databases among US-based nonprofits. FDO advertises that it contains profiles of 235,000+ US-based foundations and other grantmakers such as federal agencies.

Finding Funding

Some of the most comprehensive databases, which offer not only an extensive listing of funders but also numerous ways to search and view the data, can be overwhelming, making it difficult to find the information most relevant to your search. The greatest advantage to NAVSO is the Foundation Map created by Candid which features a map view, chart view, list view, and constellation view. Charts show funding trends and allow for comparisons of funding by subject areas over time.

Although most offer free online demonstrations, you don’t get to test drive them to search for data that’s relevant to you. Find 10,000+ sources of funding for students, artists, researchers, and other individuals. Give your entire organization unlimited access to Foundation Directory Online at a special rate with an Enterprise Solutions subscription.

Creating Tools And Processes To Report Impact

If you’re interested in becoming a grant writing consultant, check out this free training on how you can pull off a meaningful career change. You can use drop-down lists for many search fields or type text directly into the fields, although you get more reliable results when you use the drop-downs. When you enter multiple criteria, you get real results without having to be a mathematician specializing in Boolean operators. Use of the databases linked from these pages is governed by the UConn Library’s Use of Licensed Electronic Resources Policy. Identify a few key people in your community who aren’t currently on your list but are known to donate to other organizations. You may find through your research that these people have greater giving capacity than you expected.

You also may find from your research that your current long-term donors have greater capacity than you expected. Because you already have a relationship with them, you can consider asking them to increase their contributions. Before you can start your research, you’ll need to create a list of current and potential donors.

Free Grant Notices

If your focus is on identifying grantmakers and you have a limited budget, a database that only includes funder descriptions, such as GrantStation, may meet your needs. GrantStation provides grantmaker profiles only for foundations, not detailed descriptions of open funding opportunities. Each profile includes a link to the grantmaker’s website, contact information, a description of the funder’s current programmatic priorities, its geographic scope, grant guidelines, and application deadlines. All funder profiles are updated at least annually, with a corresponding date-stamp. Grantmaker profiles are also revised periodically throughout the year to reflect any changes in application procedures and funding priorities. The first step in vetting a potential funder involves reading the database’s description of the grantmaker.

In addition to being able to search by grantmaker, through its professional plan, FDO also allows you to search by grant recipient and see the names of foundation staff and board members. Other features include a range of data visualization options, such as the ability to view the awarded grants in a map or chart view. All pricing plans also offer the ability to view foundations’ IRS filings (990-PFs). You are able to search for grantmakers based on the geographic location of the planned project or the implementing organization. The second type of database focuses on funding opportunity listings and is what we would call an “opportunity first” database. When you type keywords and filters into an opportunity-first database, the results generated will be a list of active funding opportunities, with the funder’s name usually appearing as part of the name of the listed opportunity. Grant Gopher, an affordable database that costs $9/month and does not require an annual contract, is an example of a database that focuses on grant opportunities.

Search Uni

In this post, we’re going to focus on a different topic for a more targeted audience. However, many of the principles also apply to researchers based outside of the US as well as to nonprofits. In addition to the databases profiled here, you can find a list of other grant databases on our General Resources page. If you want a database that is intuitive to use and has an attractive interface, these are important preferences to note.

• Because you already have a relationship with them, you can consider asking them to increase their contributions.
• This is similar to the process you would use to research individual prospects yourself.
• GrantStation’s databases profile thousands of active funders willing to review requests.
• The David Prize celebrates extraordinary individuals with ideas, projects, products, and passions that are making New York City a better place.
• We don’t assess the quality of support, “extra” features , or educational resources offered by each organization.
• While you won’t find these grants in private and corporate foundation databases, you can search for U.S. federal grant opportunities atGrants.gov.

Researching grants and prospects is the first step in the process, and navigating the upper levels of major-gift fundraising often requires a different approach than individual gift campaigns. Within the database, grants available include foundation, corporate, state, city, and federal funding sources.

And, when you save a grantmaker to your dashboard you will receive an email alert of changes we make to the profile, such as application deadlines, giving priorities, and grant range. Provides access to reports, data, and analyses of NIH research activities, including information on grants awarded, expenditures, and the results of NIH supported research. Searchable database of federal and private funding opportunities in all fields. We appreciate when the company is able to include all of the extra bits of information to compose a complete grant record—it’s just such good information to know. With over 225,000+ expanded grant-maker profiles available with FDO Professional and 108,000+ expanded profiles with FDO Essential, Foundational Directory Online is a decent option for a grant database. The wide range of options now available makes it difficult to make sure you’re picking the best one for you.

Most grantmaker associations, also known as philanthropy centers, will house a publicly available list of foundations specific to a geographic area. You can also find associations of grantmakers centered on a mission area, such asGrantmakers in Film and Electronic Media, or by other criteria, like theAssociation of Small Foundations. Searching member lists for these associations may help identify potential grant prospects. GrantStation’s database includes private foundations, community foundations, and corporate giving programs, as well as programs from the US and Canadian governments. GrantStation includes grantmakers from around the world and offers the option of searching for international funding by geographic region or country. All four allow you to upload a list of potential donors in order to approximate their individual giving potential. This is similar to the process you would use to research individual prospects yourself.

After the overview, we’ll segue into a review of Editorr.com, an online service that connects editing jobs to real editors. After you finish writing an important document like a grant application, it’s always a good idea to have it edited. Cost-wise, the Standard plan allows for 5 users and starts at $150/month. Instrumentl also offers a Custom plan that allows for 10+ users and the price is determined upon the customization. Of note is that the free trial subscriptions are open only to faculty, staff and administrators at academic institutions or libraries.

Choosing A Grant Database Based On Your Needs And Budget

Users are able to save grants and also have the option to set up deadline reminders. Includes special sections for those seeking funding in education and for libraries. “The Prospect Research team at the American Cancer Society has been utilizing Foundation Directory Online for over 10 years to uncover and research potential new funders to support our programs and mission.” We are pleased to be able to offer our readers an annual subscription to the funder database GrantStation at a significant discount. Finding the right database—the content you want, the features you need, and the interface you like—can take time. Once you find the database that meets all your specifications, you shouldn’t have to revisit your decision for many years.