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.

 

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.

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.

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»

Transparency "Heat Map"

There's a cool new feature on Glasspockets.org to see which foundations are using different kinds of communication vehicles — everything from news feeds and social media channels to official documents like financial statements, annual reports, bylaws, and more.

The Transparency Heat Map arranges the foundations and communication types on a grid arranged by "heat," from the more frequently used channels to the less common. You can also sort by category to see the grid that way. 

 

Foundation Directory Online also has tools to find foundations with "glass pockets." Look for the icon in a grantmaker profile and click on it to link to the foundation's "Who Has Glass Pockets" profile. There are currently 25 foundations with profiles (see the full list here), and that number is growing.

You can also connect with foundations' social and multimedia channels with the FDO Professional social media tab. Read live Twitter updates, see recent videos and blog posts, follow Facebook updates, and more.

Free Shipping in January on the Foundations Today Series

Free Shipping in January on the Foundations Today Series

  
This January, the Foundation Center is offering free shipping on our Foundations Today series.   

Expand your knowledge about foundation philanthropy with this unique collection of facts and figures on private and community foundations and their giving. Order individual copies listed below or save when you order the entire set. You'll receive each report as it becomes available.

Foundation Giving Trends: Update on Funding Priorities
Examines 2008 grantmaking patterns of a sample of more than 1,000 larger U.S. foundations, and compares current giving priorities with trends since 1980.
June 2010 / 104 pgs.
View the Table of Contents (.pdf)

Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates: Current Outlook
Provides a first look at estimates of foundation giving for 2009 and final statistics on actual giving and assets for 2008. It also presents new top 100 foundation lists.
April 2010 / 13 pgs.

Foundation Yearbook: Facts and Figures on Private and Community Foundations
Documents the growth in number, giving, and assets of all active U.S. foundations from 1977 through 2008.
November 2010 / 56 pgs.

 

More on Social Media

PhilanTopic, the blog of the Foundation Center's Philanthropy News Digest, just posted an interview with social entrepreneur Alison Fine. Her second cook, co-authored with Beth Kanter, is The Networked Non-profit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Social Change, which develops the concept of a "networked on-profit" and describes how organizations comfortable with social media can use it effectively as part of a greater overall strategy. The interview provides some great expert insight into why everyone should reconsider their engagement with social media - particularly if this engagement is currently non-existant - and addresses some of the common concerns of skeptics.

 A recent article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted, clearly establishes him as one of these skeptics. In the article, Gladwell highlights the famous Woolworth's sit-in of the civil rights movement, comparing this sort of social activism to that generated by social media. He argues that outlets like Facebook and Twitter will never be able to produce social change on the scale of the civil rights movement, primarily because such change requires more personal investment than simply virtual support of a cause. This has prompted a number of critical responses in the blogosphere, and Beth Kanter highlights a number of them in her own blog. Whatever your views on social media, it is important to at least be aware of the discussions surrounding its role in the realm of philanthropy.  

Introducting TRASI

For anyone who seeks to maximize social change—investors, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs alike—assessing the social impact of a given project is an important aspect of strategic planning. It can help to determine whether goals are being met, if a project is ready to be scaled up, and provide a sense of accountability. However, due to the diversity of the field, determining how to go about assessing a project can be difficult, even controversial. How can you measure to what extent you change lives, particularly when there are such diverse ways to go about doing so?

To respond to these concerns, the Foundation Center has launched a new database: Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact (TRASI). Developed in conjunction with McKinsey & Company, and with additional input from experts in the field, TRASI contains over 150 approaches to measuring and analyzing social impact for programs and investments, collected in a single searchable database. 

These tools have been authored by social investors, foundations, NGOs, microfinance institutions, and others in the field who seek social change. Besides the assessment tools, the web portal provides additional resources including videos, podcasts, articles, an experts section, and TRASI Community, a social networking site for connecting with peers.

I encourage all of you to spend a few minutes browsing TRASI and considering the available tools for assessing your organization's own social impact. McKinsey's Learning for Social Impact page is also worth looking over to get some additional perspective on the subject.

Statistical Update

It's time once again for a regular statistical update:

• 98,314 grantmakers
• 504,492 trustees, officers, and donors
• 2,135,693 grants
• 4,040 companies (We just recently went up over 4,000!)
• 686,836 keyword-searchable 990s

For more on what these numbers mean, see the last update. 

New Publication: The Global Role of U.S. Foundations

The Global Role of U.S. Foundations is a new study authored by Joan Spero, visiting fellow at the the Foundation Center and former president of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. In it, Spero draws upon interviews with foundation presidents, program officers, and philanthropic experts; Foundation Center data; and her own professional experience to paint a detailed historical picture of international work by U.S. foundations from the Cold War to the present. 

The study focuses on how foundations have addressed five global challenges — health disparities, poverty, climate change, democracy and civil society, and peace and security — and raises important questions regarding the assessment of foundation impact, the role of foundations in global governance, and institutional accountability.

If you're interested in the global reach of foundations, this study is a valuable look into their international policies and practices and the nature of their impact and influence. It's available as a free download or for $19.95 for the print edition. Download or purchase The Global Role of U.S. Foundations.

You can also use your Foundation Directory Online Professional subscription to see the reach of foundations around the world. Grantmaker profiles include interactive world maps of grants by recipient type or grant subject. Also, Professional subscribers have free access to Map of Cross-Border Giving, which shows grants from U.S. grantmakers to international recipients. 

Learn more about Professional maps and charts.

Learn more about Map of Cross-Border Giving.