Eye on FDO

New Guided Tour

We have a brand-new guided tour introducing new and prospective Foundation Directory Online users to the features and benefits of FDO. Even seasoned users can benefit from a wide-angle look at what FDO has to offer. Check it out and share!

Foundation Directory Online from Foundation Center on Vimeo.

 

 

Faces of FDO

Do you want an opportunity to tell others about your organization and share your experiences using Foundation Directory Online in your funding research? You might want to consider contributing to Faces of FDO, the page where we share testimonial videos and text with the FDO community. 

Take a look at what has been contributed to date, and consider telling us your own story. Contact faces@foundationcenter.org to learn more.

 

Rumors, Myths, and Legends: Nonprofit Edition

Found on Twitter: This fun, inspiring video from Nonprofit Roundtable about the myths and realities of the nonprofit sector. 

 

PhilanTopic: 'Usability' and Your Nonprofit

Interesting PhilanTopic post about the concept of usability. This is a concept that's long been used in reference to web design, but the author explores it as a way of thinking about how your nonprofit approaches the whole online donation process, not just the tech part. Is it easy for the potential donor to understand what your organization does? Is it clear why you're asking for support generally and the specific level of support? 

It's a new way of thinking about a familiar concept, and a good read to start the new year! 

IssueLab

PubHub is now IssueLab in Foundation Directory Online Professional Power Search results and on the Publications tab on grantmaker profiles. 

Earlier this year, the Foundation Center merged the PubHub database of foundation-sponsored research reports with IssueLab, a Chicago-based online publishing forum containing an extensive and diverse body of research produced by the philanthropic sector. What that means for FDO is that now when you run a Power Search, the publication results that come back are now pulled from a much larger pool of reports, produced by a larger segment of the sector than before. 

Learn more about IssueLab and explore the new platform. You don't have to change anything about how you use FDO Professional; just use Power Search as you always have, or click the Publications tab on a foundation profile. For non-Professional-level subscribers, you can get access to these features by upgrading your subscription.

Hurricane Sandy Grants Feed

The Foundation Center has launched an RSS feed of grants related to Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery. You can browse these grants, sign up for an email for notifications, or subscribe to the RSS feed. The Business Civic Leadership Center assisted in the tracking of the corporate response.

See the complete grants feed.

Grant Milestone

Quick update: Foundation Directory Online just passed a milestone we're pretty proud of. There are now over 3 million grants in the Search Grants database!

The full set is available for searching in FDO Platinum and Professional. Plus includes the grants from the top 10,000 foundations (determined by total giving); Premium has the grants from the top 20,000. Our indexed grants are generally of $10,000 or above, although we do have a growing number grants of $1,000 or above from the largest foundations as well. Because several hundred foundations participate in our eGrant Reporters program sending records of their grants to us directly, we're able to publish those foundations' grants even before they're available in their 900-PFs. For example, a quick search in FDO Professional just now returned over 13,000 grants from 2012 (year authorized) and another 157,000 from 2011. 

We're always working hard to add more and more grants to the database while at the same time maintaining high standards for the accuracy and quality of our data. We hope this pays off for you in your search for funding.

Chat Live with Our Online Librarian

Take a look at the top menu next time you're using Foundation Directory Online: you can now chat live with a Foundation Center Online Librarian! If you hit a snag finding what you're looking for in FDO, the librarian can point you in the right direction or refer you to someone who can follow up with an answer. Chat hours are Monday through Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm (all times Eastern).

 

Before you initiate a chat, be sure to check the FAQs and the Help documentation (click Help in the top menu). The answer to your query might be there, but if you need more information, live help is now just a click away!

A Look Inside Our Annual User Survey

We recently concluded our 2012 annual user survey of Foundation Directory Online users. We wanted to know a little more about you, what you like about FDO, and what areas of improvement you've identified. We got a much higher response rate than we have in past years, so this was a particularly valuable survey for us. I want to summarize a few interesting findings here, then in future posts dig more deeply into a few of the questions. 

What we learned:

95% of you would recommend FDO to a friend/colleague. That's great news, except in past years it's been over 99%, so we're focused on listening to your suggestions for making FDO even better. 

30% of you use other fee-based funding search products. Most of these are tools for finding individual donors, such as Wealth Engine.

Users are most satisfied with the breadth of data and the overall value of FDO. But many of you indicate that you'd like to see the data be even more up to date, so we're working hard on collecting, indexing, and publishing accurate data as quickly as we can. 

Your top three preferred enhancements:

• More grants from small foundations (70%)
• “Predictive analysis,” i.e., good-match rankings (61%)
• Suggested search terms based on your keywords to make better use of the indexed search terms (53%)

64% of you are nonprofit grantseekers; 16% are independent consultants working with one or more nonprofit clients; 9% are nonprofit execs. Others include academics, librarians, and grantmakers.

You have a very wide range of budgets from very small organizations all the way up to large universities, hospitals, and national organizations.

Personally, I found this last data point most interesting: A large plurality of you (45%) first heard of FDO from a friend or colleague. This far outstripped other options: 17% from our print brochures and catalogues and 5% from email marketing. This tells me that, as indicated by the 95% stat above, you are eager to tell others about Foundation Directory Online. This is really gratifying. So thank you all for spreading the word about FDO, and thanks again for sharing your thoughts with us!

In the coming days I'll dive deeper into some other findings, including suggested enhancements and other feedback on how you'd like to see FDO improve.

Are You Following Your Funders on Social Media?

If not, you're not alone. The Center for Effective Philanthropy conducted a survey recently and discovered that only 16% of grantees surveyed report using social media created by funders or their staff. 

Why is that? The nonprofit sector has a reputation—fairly or unfairly—for being late to adopt new technologies and forms of communication. But it's not that foundations aren't on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest, and it's not that the nonprofits aren't—everyone's there, they're just not talking to each other. On CEP's blog, Elizabeth Christopherson of the Rita Allen Foundation compares the situation to an informal meeting planned by a foundation where nonprofit leaders can meet one another and talk with the funder, but nobody shows up. So if you're a nonprofit leader and you don't know why it's important to follow foundations on Twitter and elsewhere, think of it this way: you're missing a chance to meet a prospective funder! 

Users of Foundation Directory Online Professional can find funders' social media feeds right on their grantmaker profiles. The Social Media tab includes live feeds of the foundations' Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo, Flickr, and blogs. And even if you don't subscribe at the Professional level, you can still find links to all those feeds in the Online Communication field on the main profile tab.

So as an FDO user, you already have all the tools you need to seek out and connect with your current and prospective funders.