Eye on FDO

FDO Techniques and Strategies

Philanthropy Front and Center posted a very thorough and useful overview of some search techniques and strategies that even seasoned users maybe not have tried recently — or at all. I've reposted a long excerpt below; be sure to click through to read the rest.

Explore Connections
FDO posts affiliation information for the trustees, officers, and donors of foundations, so, in addition to searching for board and staff working within a foundation by name (which you can do as a Keyword search), you can also:

Use the Trustees, Officers, and Donors search field to enter the name of a company ("Time Warner"); college or university ("Smith College"); nonprofit or association ("Harlem Children's Zone"); or institution ("New York Public Library") to find foundations whose board members, officers, or donors are associated with a company or institution with which your organization is also connected.

Find All the Angles
Power Search, the search engine within FDO that allows simultaneous searches of Foundation Center content, connects you to news and research that can make you a savvier grantseeker. For example:

Enter a phrase like "Venture philanthropy" in Power Search.

• Your results will list the grantmakers that the Foundation Center classifies under this descriptor and the grants awarded in this subject.

• The same search results will also point to news that keeps you current on the topic (since your funders may know a lot about it); to books and articles to broaden your perspective; a current grant opportunity that a funder has announced; and maybe even a job or two.

This is crucial in the data-rich and competitive environment in which nonprofits vie for support.

Online and Common Grant Applications
You can search Foundation Directory Online using the keywords "online application" (in quotes) to find foundations that are working with this type of format. You can also search for foundations in your area that accept the "common grant application" (in quotes, as well), and if these are available online, FDO will provide the link. 

Read the rest of the post to learn more about location-based searching and getting the most out of the Search Grants database.

Be Smart About Your Nonprofit's Finances - Philanthropy Front and Center

New post from Philanthropy Front and Center on an upcoming workshop about preparing for filing your 990. Of particular interest to New York-based nonprofits:

Are you tackling your financial records in preparation for filing your organization's Form 990? Need a little guidance? You're just in time to attend an evening workshop at the Arts & Business Council of New York! Gary M. Flaum, Certified Public Accountant, will explain how to comply with IRS and New York State guidelines and make your organization's audit or review easier.

Read the whole post for more details>>

FDO vs. CGO, Revisited

Today I'm rerunning a post from 2008 by Dave Clark explaining the differences and similarities between Corporate Giving Online and Foundation Directory Online. It's an evergreen question that comes up now and again, so I thought it would be helpful to repost the explanation.

I'm occasionally asked to explain the difference between Foundation Directory Online and one of our other online subscription services, Corporate Giving Online.

Corporate Giving Online provides access to the profiles of company-sponsored foundations, corporate giving programs, and company-sponsored grantmaking public charities. It also includes the profiles of the companies that sponsor these grantmaking programs.

CGO doesn't contain any data that isn't also included in FDO's two top-tier plans, Platinum and Professional. Likewise, CGO's Search Companies database, enabling users to search across the corporate information of sponsoring companies, is also included in FDO Professional.

So, if you're already an FDO Professional subscriber, no worries. You already have the best of the best. Corporate Giving Online was designed for grantseekers and others interested exclusively in corporate giving but desiring a lower-priced alternative to all-inclusive Professional.

If you're an FDO Platinum subscriber, again, you're not lacking any data. You have access to all of the corporate grantmaker profiles included in CGO. And you'll notice a Company tab at the top of corporate grantmaker records providing access to the corporate information of sponsoring companies. If you'd like the ability to search across the corporate information of sponsoring companies, you can upgrade to Professional at any time and take advantage of that and everything else a subscription to Professional includes.

California Foundations Twitter Widget

Social media tools, like Twitter, allow us all access to the messages institutional philanthropists are highlighting, increasing transparency for philanthropy news and trend data. Thanks to support from the James Irvine Foundation, we are piloting a regional approach to Glasspockets with this California Foundations Twitter widget. Just click on the "Get Widget" button to give your audience a window on California philanthropy on your own web site.

via blog.glasspockets.org

Useful new tool from Glasspockets, opening a window into California philanthropy.

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.