Eye on FDO

More on the New Foundation Grants to Individuals Online

I wrote a guest post for Small Act's blog all about the new Foundation Grants to Individuals Online, which I discussed in my previous post here.

I encourage you to go read the post on their site, but here's an excerpt:

Foundation grants to individuals can be tough to come by. After all, foundation support overwhelmingly goes to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. However, support is available in the form of scholarships, fellowships, arts and research grants, support for attending conferences and seminars, and fiscal sponsorship, among others. With Foundation Grants to Individuals Online you can customize a search based on 15 different search fields including types of support, plus geographic criteria, fields of interest, and keywords.

How can this help you? By conducting a targeted search you’ll find detailed funder profiles including valuable information such as program areas, limitations, application information, financial data, links to social media, and more. What you learn about these funding prospects will help you throughout your proposal development process, from choosing your best matches, to making an initial approach, to the formal application or proposal, and beyond to maintaining a relationship with that funder after the grant.

 

The All-New Foundation Grants to Individuals Online

We're proud to announce that, very soon, we'll be releasing a new version of our premier database product for students, artists, researchers, and other individual grantseekers, Foundation Grants to Individuals Online.

As challenging as nonprofit fundraising can be, individual grantseekers face greater challenges, as most foundations reserve all or most of their support for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. We believe that having a separate, affordable resource for those individuals is invaluable. Many libraries and universities that subscribe to Foundation Directory Online also have Foundation Grants to Individuals Online subscriptions so that they can offer both to their patrons, so we wanted to let all of you know what's coming in redesign.

In short, there are new ways to search; a completely redesigned, more user-friendly interface, more foundation information including social media links, and essential tools for working with your results.

Keep and eye out for the changes, and learn more about the new Foundation Grants to Individuals Online today!

Common Grant Applications

We've made a small but useful improvement to grantmaker profiles in Foundation Directory Online I'd like to share with you all.

Many funders—and an increasing number of them—accept one or more common grant applications offered by regional associations of grantmakers or other groups. You can now link directly to the common application(s) accepted by the funder right from their profile.

It's a simple change, but something that should make your work a little bit easier as you go through the proposal development process!

Capacity Building from a Funder's Perspective

Lauren Cronin for PhilanTopic recently interviewed Karen Brown, who oversees grantmaking and advises grantees for the Fairfield County Community Foundation (FCCF). Ms. Brown had some interesting things to say about capacity building for nonprofits in trying economic times from a funder's perspective. 

Ms. Brown advises nonprofits to focus on transparency and communication with their funders.  She give the example of an executive director who sends her a synopisis of his nonprofit's board meetings, which is a small but effective way of keeping her in the loop and maintaining that relationship between the grantee and the funder. She also points out that nonprofits should continue to pursue team-building and professional development initatives, and she suggests that it might be beneficial to look strategically at near-term goals to provide better focus than the usual five-year outlook. Foundations, in turn, can help by funding organizational assesments to analyze where nonprofits are succeeding and where they could boost their efforts.

When asked what foundations can do to build capacity in their nonprofits, she points out the informative workshops and follow-up consulting offered by the FCCF through their Center for Nonprofit Excellence. She also encourages foundations to provide grants for technical assistance and consulting and to ask the grantees directly about their specifc needs, because frequently foundations are capable of providing cheap or even non-monetary assistance.

Read the full post on PhilanTopic.

For more information on capacity building for nonprofits see the GrantSpace knowledge base entry on capacity building.

 

Foundations and Mission Investing

The Foundation Center has just released a new report on the increasing use of mission-related investing by foundations. Key Facts on Mission Investing documents how foundations are trying to achieve social benefits through market-rate and below-market-rate investments known as mission-related investments (MRIs) and program-related investments (PRIs), respectively.

While grants and PRIs generally count toward foundations' charitable distribution requirements, MRIs do not, so they can represent a way for foundations to leverage their endowment investments to further social goals over and above their charitable distributions.

To learn more, read the Foundation Center press release on the new report and download the report iteslf, Key Facts on Mission Investing (4 pages, PDF)

 

 

From PhilanTopic - Introducing WASHfunders.org

The following is reposted from PhilanTopic, the Philanthropy News Digest blog.

Exciting news from the Foundation Center, which today launched WASHfunders.org.

Designed with philanthropic donors in mind, WASHfunders.org gives funders — and others interested in WASH-related issues — a "one-stop shop" for the data and information they need to improve water access, sanitation, and hygiene around the world.

The site's central feature is an interactive mapping application that shows where foundation grants are going, to which organizations, and for what purpose. WASHfunders.org is the first and only site with this critical data. What's more, foundation funding flows are shown within the context of international aid funding and key development indicators, providing a robust picture of the WASH landscape in any given country or region.

WASHfunders.org also provides free access to a broad set of knowledge resources, including:

• funder profiles documenting the WASH strategies of leading foundations;
• case studies that illustrate the successes and challenges of WASH projects around the world;
• tools and resources for assessing project outcomes; and
• a searchable archive of research reports recommended by sector leaders.

The Inside View section of the site is the place to go for updates on new content and features, and/or to share newsworthy events in the WASH sector. Go to the home page and you can register to get Inside View posts delivered to your e-mailbox.

Take a few minutes to look around the site. Then tell your friends and colleagues.

And let us know what you think of WASHfunders.org and how we can make it as useful and user-friendly as possible.

It's Annual Survey Time!

It's that time of year again, when we ask you to tell us what you think of Foundation Directory Online. If you give us just a few moments to complete the annual user survey and tell us about how you use FDO, how satisfied you are with different elements of it, and what enhancements to data and functionality you'd like to see us implement, you'll get more than our gratitude. If you'd like, we'll send you a promo code you can redeem for the free Digital Grant Guide (a $39.95 value) of your choice!

Grant guides are available for 25 different subject areas, covering everything grants for everything from AIDS/HIV research, to information technology, to the environment, to housing, and more.These PDF guides provide you with descriptions of hundreds—often thousands—of recent foundation grants of $10,000 or more, with convenient hyperlinks to essential funder information to help you identify prospects and get the grants you need. Just complete the survey, then keep an eye out for an email containing your promo gift code, which you can redeem for the guide of your choice. We'll start sending out the gift codes in about two weeks.

The feedback you provide is an invaluable resource for us as we strive to keep Foundation Directory Online up to your standards and make sure it remains an indispensable source for helping you meet your funding needs. So please, tell us what you think!

Foundation Directory Mobile

We recently reached an exciting milestone for the Foundation Directory Mobile app for iPhone: 1,000 downloads since its release!

We're excited about this not because we reached a nice round number, but because it means more and more of you think your access to Foundation Directory Online Professional is valuable enough to take it with you on the go, which tells us that you find FDO integral to your fundraising.

If you want to get the app for your iPhone (we're working on a version for Android to be released in the coming weeks) visit the FD Mobile home page and click through to the iTunes App Store. It's free to download, but you'll need your FDO Professional login to use it. You can also use it for free without a login at certain Foundation Center libraries and Cooperating Collections — just make sure your local collection has IP access to FDO and an open WiFi network.

Jumo-GOOD Rundown

Last week on the Philanthropy News Digest blog PhilanTopic, President Bradford K. Smith posed a question about a social networking nonprofit portal: 

Jumo — a nonprofit portal built with grant funds from some of America's largest philanthropic foundations — is being acquired by GOOD, which despite its altruistic-sounding name and mission is a for-profit company. Is this what grants are for? 

Brad goes on to pose some interesting questions about the relationship between non- and for-profits, and whether philanthropies — and their grant agreements in particular — are keeping up with the times. 

Read: Jumo: Get Grant, Do Good, Sell

Brad's article sparked a Twitter debate, summarized in another PhilanTopic post:

Read: Jumo and Some GOOD Unanswered Questions

Finally, Antony Bugg-Levine, a managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation, approached the debate in a follow-up post:

Read: Jumo-GOOD: The Future Is Now

Giving USA 2011

Robert Bruno from the Foundation Center's Nonprofit Literature Blog summarizes the just-released Giving USA report:

The full report of Giving USA was released last week, and it continues to provide valuable data on giving by individuals, foundations, estates (bequests) and corporations.  The latest findings of Giving USA 2011: the Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2010 published by the Giving USA Foundation include:

• Total estimated charitable giving in the U.S. rose 3.8 percent in 2010, reflecting the modest economic recovery achieved that year
• Giving by individuals rose an estimated 2.7 percent   
• Foundation giving remained steady, falling 0.2 percent. Family foundations provided approximately 48 percent of all grants by independent, community, and operating foundations
• Giving to international affairs rose an estimated 15.3 percent, the largest percentage increase of any subsector, in part due to various global political and humanitarian crises, specifically the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Read the full post»

Visit Giving USA to get the report»