Eye on FDO

Taxonomy Tip

I've mentioned before that the Foundation Center utilizes a standardized taxonomy when indexing, for example, the giving interests of grantmakers and the purpose of grants. This taxonomy is the backbone that enables subscribers to retrieve extremely targeted lists of results. But frequently, users will contact me to make a valid point: with a taxonomy consisting of over 1,100 terms, how does one know which term is being used for a particular area of interest? For example, if you're looking for support for a job-related program, how would you know that this area of interest falls under "Employment" in our taxonomy? Here's a simple tip that I think can help:

When you're stumped, use the Keyword Search field. Let's say you're looking for a grant for a pre-school curriculum program. If you enter "pre-school" in the Keyword Search field on the Search Grantmakers Screen, you'll retrieve a list of grantmaker records containing "pre-school" anywhere in the text of their profiles. Next, open up a few of the records and take a look at the Fields of Interest section. Chances are good that "Education, early childhood education" will be listed. That's the taxonomy term that we assign to funders that support organizations working in the area of pre-school curriculum. You might need to review a few records before you detect a trend that indicates the correct term for your area of interest. Then, you can go back to the Search Grantmakers Screen and select "Education, early childhood education" from the Fields of Interest index and retrieve a targeted list of all grantmakers identified by our editorial staff as supporters of early childhood education-related programs.

If you're a Plus subscriber or higher, I also encourage you to use the Search Grants database in the same way. With over 1.7 million grant descriptions, you'll find plenty of examples showing what taxonomy term is being used for any area of interest.

I've mentioned before that the Foundation Center utilizes a standardized taxonomy when indexing, for example, the giving interests of grantmakers and the purpose of grants. This taxonomy is the backbone that enables subscribers to retrieve extremely targeted lists of results. But frequently, users will contact me to make a valid point: with a taxonomy consisting of over 1,100 terms, how does one know which term is being used for a particular area of interest? For example, if you're looking for support for a job-related program, how would you know that this area of interest falls under "Employment" in our taxonomy? Here's a simple tip that I think can help:

When you're stumped, use the Keyword Search field. Let's say you're looking for a grant for a pre-school curriculum program. If you enter "pre-school" in the Keyword Search field on the Search Grantmakers Screen, you'll retrieve a list of grantmaker records containing "pre-school" anywhere in the text of their profiles. Next, open up a few of the records and take a look at the Fields of Interest section. Chances are good that "Education, early childhood education" will be listed. That's the taxonomy term that we assign to funders that support organizations working in the area of pre-school curriculum. You might need to review a few records before you detect a trend that indicates the correct term for your area of interest. Then, you can go back to the Search Grantmakers Screen and select "Education, early childhood education" from the Fields of Interest index and retrieve a targeted list of all grantmakers identified by our editorial staff as supporters of early childhood education-related programs.

If you're a Plus subscriber or higher, I also encourage you to use the Search Grants database in the same way. With over 1.7 million grant descriptions, you'll find plenty of examples showing what taxonomy term is being used for any area of interest.

Trustees, Officers, and Donors

Today, a few words about FDO's Trustees, Officers, and Donors index. Did you know that this index, accessible from the Search Grantmakers Screen, currently contains almost half a million names at the Professional level? Let's think about the possibilities... Maybe you want to search for grantmakers associated with each of your organization's board members or volunteers. What a great way to introduce yourself (or be introduced) to a new prospect! Or perhaps you want to identify the foundations that your individual donors are affiliated with. Might those grantmakers also be willing to support your programs?

When searching for grantmakers in this way, be sure to select names from the index rather than typing them directly into the Trustees, Officers, and Donors search field. Otherwise, if you don't know the exact way the name of the person you're trying to find appears in the index, your search will be unsuccessful. For example, if a name is listed in the index as "Doe, John Q.," typing "John Doe" into the search field won't retrieve the grantmaker record you're looking for—the "Q." must be included. To open the Trustees, Officers, and Donors index, click on the View Index link located beneath the search field title.

Have you used this index in other ways to find new sources of support? Click the Comments link below and let us know.

2009 Grants

As I search FDO Professional today for grants authorized in 2009 [Search Grants Screen: Year Authorized = From: 2009], I find 5,969 individual awards. Many of these grants were reported to us electronically by grantmakers that recognize the fact that currency is extremely important to grantseekers. Without the cooperation of these eReporters, many of these recently awarded grants would remain unknown until tax returns were filed, processed by the IRS, and released to the public. Currently, 256 grantmakers are participating in our eGrant Reporting Program, submitting grants lists to us on a regular basis: quarterly, annually, even monthly.

Search Broadly, Refine Gradually

Occasionally, I'm asked to teach the Foundation Center's Introduction to Foundation Directory Online class here at our New York library. There's a major point I always try to emphasize during this class, and I thought I'd share that with you today

In FDO, the Boolean operator and is automatically inserted "behind the scenes" between each search field. Why is this important? When you conduct a search in FDO, your results will only include records that contain criteria you've entered in all of the search fields you've used. So, entering criteria in too many search fields all at once will generally work against you because you'll narrow your search too much to be useful.

Here's an example:

Imagine that a nonprofit organization located in New York is looking for support for a new health program. Let's search FDO Professional for grantmakers with a known giving interest in health with a giving focus either in New York or on a national basis [Search Grantmakers Screen: Fields of Interest = Health care; Geographic Focus = National or New York]. Imagine, also, that this organization is looking for a program development grant [Types of Support = Program development]. Finally, imagine that this new health program is specifically focused on the eradication of measles and the nonprofit wants to target foundations with at least $10 million in total giving that accept unsolicited requests [Keyword Search = Measles; Total Giving = From: 10000000; Grantmakers not accepting applications = excluded].

That's a nicely developed search strategy! However, when we click the Search button, zero records are retrieved. We've simply narrowed our search too much.

Let's try this again, using what I like to call a "search broadly, refine gradually" approach:

Since subject and geographic criteria are usually the core of any search for funders, we'll once again start off by searching FDO Professional for grantmakers with a known giving interest in health with a giving focus either in New York or on a national basis [Search Grantmakers Screen: Fields of Interest = Health care; Geographic Focus = National or New York]. This time, when we click the Search button before going any further, we find 1,636 funders. Big difference.

Now, let's go back to the search screen by clicking the Modify Search link and begin to refine our search gradually, one step at a time:

With our current criteria pre-filled, let's search for grantmakers that accept unsolicited requests [Grantmakers not accepting applications = excluded]. Now, when we click the Search button, we find 750 funders. This is still a pretty broad search and such a long list of prospects might be a little unmanageable. Plus, we can probably target our search even better. Back to the search screen again...

With our current criteria pre-filled, let's search for grantmakers with at least $10,000,000 in total giving [Total Giving = From: 10000000]. When we click the Search button one last time, we find 63 funders. A nice, targeted, manageable list of prospects. Not too many, not too few.

Granted, we didn't narrow our search by type of support or keyword, but no worries. First, there's no reason to believe that a grantmaker with a known giving interest in health wouldn't fund a measles eradication program. Many grantmakers describe their giving in broad terms, indicating only the major program areas within which they fund. Second, the absence of type of support criteria in a grantmaker record doesn't necessarily mean that a grantmaker doesn't provide that type of support. FDO's grantmaker profiles don't always include information about type of support when the data is not available.

Funding for Education Month

June is Funding for Education Month at the Foundation Center!

As I search FDO Professional today for grantmakers with a known giving interest in education [Search Grantmakers Screen: Fields of Interest = Education], I find 46,161 funders. A search for grants awarded in support of education [Search Grants Screen: Subjects = Education] retrieves 430,615 individual awards. Of course, you can easily narrow these searches down to target particular areas of education-related funding; just select a more specific search term from the applicable FDO index.

Interested in learning more about using FDO to find funding for education-related programs? We're offering a special Researching Education Funders with Foundation Directory Online webinar on June 12. Please visit the Webinars section of our web site for full details and registration information.

FDO Indexes

Among the many key features that distinguish FDO from other funding research tools on the market are its indexes. When data is carefully indexed, it's immeasurably easier to find exactly what you're looking for. So, today, a few important words about FDO's indexes and how they make targeted searching possible.

The Foundation Center's editorial staff analyzes and indexes a great deal of data. For example, grantmakers are assigned any of almost 1,100 terms identifying their giving interests; grants are assigned any of almost 1,100 terms identifying their purpose. When this standardized terminology is employed in a field-specific search, you can retrieve an extremely targeted list of results.

Here's an example: a grantseeker searching for support for a welfare-to-work program might enter "jobs" in the Keyword Search field on the Search Grantmakers Screen. The results list will include grantmaker records containing the word "jobs" anywhere in the text of their profiles, including those with profiles that might state that support isn't provided for "jobs." See where I'm going here? 

On the other hand, a grantseeker selecting "employment" from the Fields of Interest Index will retrieve a list of all grantmakers identified by our editorial staff as supporters of employment-related programs, regardless of whether the word "jobs" is used to describe this giving interest or not. That's the power of FDO's indexes!

Accessing FDO's indexes is easy. Open an index by clicking on a View Index link located beneath a search field title. Clicking on an index entry automatically inserts it into the corresponding search field.

Economic Crisis Grants

The Foundation Center is actively collecting data from a variety of sources on grants made in support of those affected by the current economic crisis. As part of this effort, we've added a new "Economic crisis" index entry for the Subjects search field in FDO's Search Grants database. Subscribers to our Plus, Premium, Platinum, and Professional plans can use this search term to identify these recently awarded grants related to the downturn. Each grant record will include details on the recipient receiving the grant, the grantmaker awarding the grant, the amount and duration of the grant, and the purpose of the grant, include food assistance, employment services, health care, and housing and shelter.

Are you aware of an economic crisis-related grant that's not in FDO? Send an e-mail to mr@foundationcenter.org and let us know.

Funding for Arts Month

October is Funding for Arts Month at the Foundation Center!

As I search FDO Professional today for grantmakers with a known giving interest in arts [Search Grantmakers Screen: Fields of Interest = Arts], I find 15,665 funders. A search for grants awarded in support of arts [Search Grants Screen: Subjects = Arts] retrieves 131,474 individual awards. Obviously, you'd want to narrow these extremely broad searches down by adding additional criteria to find support that meets your particular needs.

Interested in learning more about using FDO to find funding for arts-related programs? We're offering a special arts-focused Introduction to Finding Funders webinar on October 21. Please visit the Webinars section of our web site for full details and registration information.

Search Companies Database

In my last post, I explained the difference between Foundation Directory Online and one of our other online subscription services, Corporate Giving Online. One of the features shared by CGO and top-tier FDO Professional is our Search Companies database and I promised in last week's post to explain the unique benefits of this database and outline a couple of searches that are popular with users. So, here goes...

Our Search Companies database enables you to search across the corporate information of over 3,500 sponsoring companies. This is a database of corporate information, not corporate grantmaker information; corporate grantmaker profiles can be found in FDO's Search Grantmakers database. So, what's the point of searching across corporate information? It enables you to identify corporate grantmakers based on the nature of the companies that sponsor them.

Let's imagine that we're looking for support for a nonprofit organization located in the state of New York. As I search FDO today for companies with business operations (i.e., subsidiaries, divisions, plants, offices, and joint ventures) located in New York [Search Companies Screen: Subsidiary State/Country = New York], I find 267 of them. The Grantmaker(s) tab at the top of each company record provides access to the profile(s) of the corporate grantmaker(s) through which each company gives. Since many companies give in areas of company operations, some of these grantmakers could be prospects for an organization located in New York. I could also search for companies with headquarters in New York, or in a particular city, or with business operations in a particular city or country.   

Next, let's imagine that we're looking for support for a nonprofit women's organization. As I search FDO today for companies that manufacture cosmetics [Search Companies Screen: Business Type (SIC) = Soaps, cleaners, and toiletries], I find 37 of them. Again, I can access the profiles(s) of the corporate grantmaker(s) through which each company gives by clicking the Grantmaker(s) tab at the top of each company record. The logic here is simple: the nature of a company's business might suggest an area of support. This approach works equally well when seeking non-monetary product donations. For instance, a nonprofit health organization looking for donations of pharmaceuticals might want to identify companies that manufacture them and then determine whether their respective grantmaking programs do in fact provide in-kind support.

2008 Grants

As I search FDO Professional today for grants authorized in 2008 [Search Grants Screen: Year Authorized = From: 2008], I find 10,313 individual awards. Wondering how this is possible, considering most foundations haven't even filed their 2008 990s yet?

It's possible because the Foundation Center doesn't rely solely on the IRS Form 990-PF to update the data in our Search Grants database. Our editorial team scours the Internet to collect data on recently awarded grants and many grantmakers even report their grants to us electronically. We understand that currency is important to grantseekers and we work hard to ensure that you can base your fundraising decisions on the most recent data available.