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.
