Chapter 6

Researching Potential Private Sector Funders

In This Chapter

Conducting a private sector search the right way

Utilizing the Foundation Center’s resources and other online databases

Paying attention to the funder’s criteria

Organizing your potential funder’s list

The earlier chapters in this Part focus on grant-making agencies in the public sector. In this chapter, I take a look at the other segment of funding possibilities: private sector grant makers. Private sector funding comes from foundations and corporations. This philanthropic well represents corporate and foundation grant makers whose endowments (the funds that start each giving entity) came from individuals, families, and for-profit corporations or businesses. These funders are plentiful at the local, state, national, and international levels.

How do you find out who these philanthropic organizations are and what they like to fund? In this chapter, I take you on a treasure hunt to find out. But rather than hunting for endless flowing water in a philanthropic well with a divining rod, you’re hunting grant-maker profiles with diligence and direction.

Getting Started with Private Sector Grant Research

Conducting a thorough Internet search is the best way to find private sector grant-funding opportunities. I can’t shout loudly enough about the importance of reading grant research database funder profiles (which provide an overview of what they fund, how to make the initial contact, and whom to contact) and then searching the Internet for every bit of information you can find on each funder before you e-mail, write, or call their office. If you don’t do this homework, I guarantee you’re going to destroy a valuable relationship bridge with a potential grant maker. Don’t be a time waster by trying to skip protocol — unless of course you actually want to commit grant-seeking suicide.

Devoting time and building numbers

How do you set up your search? Start by writing down every possible descriptor of your project and its target population (who will benefit or be served). Then begin researching those keywords and fishing for clues in the resulting links. Sometimes the links returned by the search engine can be misleading, so you have to click through to see whether your hit is a relevant funding lead for your project. Time consuming? Yes! This is a daily process that can take upward from 10 to 30 days working with keywords and possible link leads for an hour or two at a time.

Not all potential funders become actual funders, and you don’t want to spend 9 to 12 months counting on yeses from only one or two funders only to have them respond with a no. If you need up to $25,000, you must search for at least 5 potential funders. For up to $50,000, search for at least 10 possible funders, and for needs of up to $100,000, search for 20 potential funders. For amounts of more than $100,000, be sure to have at least 25 to 30 names on your list of possible funders.

Subscribing and making yourself known

After doing Internet searches, the next best tactic is to subscribe to e-newsletters that contain private sector funding alerts. These give you the inside scoop on what private sector funders are currently funding. My favorite e-newsletters are the Philanthropy News Digest (foundationcenter.org/pnd) and the RFP Bulletin (foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/), both of which are produced by the Foundation Center.

Here are some additional ways to set yourself apart from the grant-seeking bunch:

• Review each funder’s online resource materials to help you tailor your grant application to the funder’s current interest area. I’m talking grant application guidelines and an annual report (which contains financial information on the funder and usually a section on previous grants funded).
• Look for lists of previous grantees on the funder’s website. This list can tell you how much the funder funds, whether grants have been awarded in your geographic area, and who the funder has invested grant monies in (look for grantees similar to your own grant applicant organization).
• E-mail each funder to inquire about grant writing guideline updates that may not be posted on the funder’s website yet. It’s always possible they exist; asking never hurts. Be sure to keep your e-mail focused on guideline updates, though. Don’t ask for money or write endless paragraphs about your organization.
• Follow to a T all the directions provided by the funding source on how to apply for grants. If you get one item wrong, your proposal can be disqualified, even if everything else is golden.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some pitfalls to avoid when grant seeking:

• Don’t rely on outdated print (hard copy) funding publications or websites for current contact information. Don’t use anything older than one year (scroll down to the bottom of a website’s homepage to see the date it was last updated). Current information is crucial because funders don’t forward snail mail or e-mail when a key contact person is no longer working for them. With snail mail, if you address your funding request to the wrong person, you simply get it back stamped return to sender. With e-mail, you may get a message that this person is no longer with the funder, or you may not get any notice. So although you think you’ve initiated the first step to build a relationship with a program officer or foundation director, your mail is hanging out unread in some dormant e-mail system.

  Save postage and embarrassment by calling for the current contact person, the correct spelling of the person’s name, and the correct position title. Most importantly, ask how the person prefers to be addressed: Mr., Mrs., or Ms. Double-checking the mailing or e-mail address doesn’t hurt, either.

• Don’t look for national funders before you start to contact local funders. Look for money at home first. Check sources in your own community and county. You have a better chance of getting your first grant award from a funder that already knows about your organization.
• Don’t call the funding source with a dozen questions before you read its grant application guidelines. If you have new questions about instructions or information not found in the grant application guidelines, feel free to call. However, don’t call repeatedly with questions that the guidelines answer.

  If you decide to call, make sure to jot down some notes about the call and the person you speak with. Write down her name and title, the date and time of the call, and what you discussed. Having a contact at the funder’s office can help if your grant application is rejected and you want the inside scoop on why.

• Don’t write a grant application or proposal and mail or e-mail it without having completed extensive research. Know what your targeted funders fund — their grant-making priorities — and only submit requests that meet their current interests.
• Don’t broadcast your funding sources to colleagues working for other nonprofits. Keep in mind that you’re competing for funding. Learn to treasure, or keep quiet about, your findings, lest others apply as well and lessen your chances of winning.

Wading Through the Best and the Rest of Private Funders

When you’re seeking grants in the private sector, you have tons of websites to screen. This section gives you my favorite hits on the Internet. Using these resources is a must and saves lots of time.

Checking out the Foundation Center’s funding resources

In the United States, the most affordable nonprofit website with the largest database for corporate and foundation funding sources is that of the Foundation Center at www.foundationcenter.org. Headquartered in New York City, the Foundation Center has field offices in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

If you’re looking for freebies, the Foundation Center has Cooperating Collections across the United States and in Puerto Rico. These are free funding-information centers in libraries, community foundations, and other nonprofit resource centers. They provide a core collection of the Foundation Center’s publications and a variety of supplemental materials and services in areas useful to grant seekers. If you have a Cooperating Collection near you, you don’t have to pay for a subscription to access the Center’s online materials.

Paid online subscriptions

The Foundation Center’s online directory, called the Foundation Directory Online, has multiple subscription levels ranging from basic (top 10,000 foundations) to professional (nearly 100,000 detailed foundation and corporate profiles). If you decide to pay for a subscription, you get access to detailed information on foundation and corporate funders at your fingertips when you need it — at home or at work. The pages of info you pull up on these funders are referred to as funder profiles.

Look under the Find Funders link for a bolded subsection labeled Identifying Funding Sources. Under this subsection, you can find links to Foundation Directory Online, Corporate Giving Online, and Foundation Grants to Individuals Online. Get out your credit card if you want to subscribe to these bountiful directories. The minimum basic monthly subscription costs about $20 per month. The maximum professional monthly subscription sets you back about $180 per month. Of course, you can save a few bucks by subscribing annually. Annual subscriptions start at $195 and go as high as $1,295.

What do you get for your money? That depends on your subscription level. At the lowest and least expensive level in the Foundation Directory Online, you can peruse 10,000 foundations and more than 73,000 indexed trustees, officers, and donors with adequate search fields plus a keyword search. At the highest and most expensive level, you can search through more than 108,000 foundations, corporate donors, and public grant-making charities; more than 3 million recent grant awards; more than 500,000 trustees, officers, and donors; and more than 1 million IRS 990 forms. With this level of subscription, you get to search with 54 search fields and a keyword search.

After you become a paid subscriber to the Foundation Directory Online, you can start your funder research in four different ways, depending on your subscription level:

• Grant makers (available at all subscription levels): This type of search allows you to search by the following:
  • Grant maker name
  • Grant maker location (state, county, city, metro area, and zip code)
  • Fields of interest
  • Types of support
  • Geographic focus
  • Trustees, officers, and donors
  • Type of grant maker
  • Total giving
  • Keyword

  Searching by grant maker is easy and productive. With this search, I usually find at least 10 to 20 potential private sector funding sources for each project I’m working on.

• Companies (available at the professional level only): This search option allows you to search corporate grant makers (businesses that have developed corporate giving programs). When you can’t find funders in the Foundation-Only section, searching for grant opportunities in the Companies section is a good idea.
• Grants (available at all subscription levels): This option allows you to search by the following:
  • Grant maker name
  • Grant maker state
  • Recipient name
  • Recipient state/county
  • Recipient city
  • Recipient type
  • Subjects
  • Types of support
  • Keyword

  Searching with the Grants option is good when you want to know funders that have awarded grants in a specific county or region. However, this option doesn’t give you a detailed profile of the funder.

• Form 990s (available at the professional level only): Why would you look at an organization’s Form 990 (nonprofit tax return)? To find out the total number of grants awarded in the grant maker’s most recent fiscal year (the 12-month operating period determined by when the organization filed for IRS nonprofit status). Looking at the total number of grants awarded gives you an idea of the funder’s financial capacity. If I find a funder awarding only ten grants per year, I see a red flag. That number usually means not too much philanthropy is going on there. However, when I see that a funder has awarded 100 grants, I’m ready to be a winner in next year’s competition!

  If you don’t want to fork over the cash to subscribe at the professional level, remember that you can find most IRS Form 990s for nonprofit organizations, including grant makers, on the GuideStar website (www.guidestar.org).

Digital resources

The Foundation Center offers several digital resources that contain information on national, regional, and international funding sources. In addition to the Foundation Directory Online (described in the preceding section), the following digital resources are available:

• Corporate Giving Online: This comprehensive database gives you access to more than 3,800 company profiles; more than 2,800 company-sponsored foundations; almost 1,400 direct corporate-giving programs; and more than 380,000 recently awarded grants.
• Grant Guides: Available for order through the Foundation Center’s website (www.foundationcenter.org), these guides contain profiles of grant makers and are available in the following funding areas:
  • Grants for the Aging
  • Grants for AIDS/HIV Research & Patient Care
  • Grants for the Arts, Culture & The Humanities
  • Grants for Cancer Research & Patient Care
  • Grants for Capacity Building, Management & Technical Assistance
  • Grants for Children & Youth
  • Grants for Community and Economic Development
  • Grants for Disaster Relief & Recovery: U.S. & International
  • Grants for Elementary & Secondary Education
  • Grants for Employment
  • Grants for Environment Protection & Animal Welfare
  • Grants for Foreign & International Programs
  • Grants for Higher Education
  • Grants for Hospitals & Health Organizations
  • Grants for Housing
  • Grants for Information & Technology
  • Grants for Libraries & Information Services
  • Grants for Medical Research
  • Grants for Mental Health, Addictions & Crisis Services
  • Grants for Minorities
  • Grants for People with Disabilities
  • Grants for Public Health
  • Grants for Religion, Religious Welfare & Religious Education
  • Grants for Services for the Homeless
  • Grants for Women & Girls
• Celebrity Foundation Directory: Available as a downloadable PDF, this resource includes detailed descriptions of more than 1,600 foundations created by well-known individuals in the worlds of business, entertainment, politics, and sports.
• Foundation Grants to Individuals Online: As you might expect, this directory features entries geared toward individual grant seekers. The amount of information — nearly 10,000 entries — makes it a valuable resource.
• Guide to Funding for International and Foreign Programs: This directory provides funding resources for international relief, disaster assistance, human rights, civil liberties, community development, conferences, and education.

You can access these digital resources for free at any library that’s designated as a Cooperating Collections site. Most libraries have one or more computers dedicated to Foundation Center subscription resources.

Free information

The following list highlights some online links through which you can access free information on the Foundation Center’s website (www.foundationcenter.org):

• The Find Funders tab: When you click this tab, you see these key subheadings: Fact Finder, Identify Funding Sources, Related Tools, Check Statistics, and Local Resources. Each of these subheadings has a bevy of click-through resources ranging from 990 Finder and the Foundation Directory Online to the Common Grant Application Forms and Top Funders.
• Newsletters link: Click this link to find a list of e-mail newsletters you can subscribe to free of charge. You don’t even have to register for online access. You can use the free newsletters to find topic-specific Requests for Proposals (RFPs) released by foundation and corporate funders and to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world of grant making. I have subscriptions for the following:
  • Philanthropy News Digest: The PND is the Foundation Center’s award-winning weekly news publication. It tells you what’s happening in the world of philanthropy. Staying up to date on philanthropy is important if you want to know when foundation or corporate contact personnel are leaving or are hired. PND also fills you in on what each listed funder is doing that relates to its grant-making policies and trends.
  • RFP Bulletin: This freebie is a weekly gathering of recently announced RFPs from private, corporate, and government sources.
  • Job Bulletin: This newsletter provides a summary of recent job postings in Philanthropy News Digest.
  • Connections: This biweekly newsletter provides philanthropy-related content.

Accessing other online grant research databases

Although the nonprofit Foundation Center is one of my preferred databases because of the size of its grant maker and grant-making collection, I also use other online funding resources. Here’s a brief list of the others I use, free and subscription-based:

• www.ecivis.com/products-services/grants-network-research.html: The eCivis.com Grants Network: Research (GNR) database is the first all-in-one database with extensive profiles for federal, state, foundation, and corporate grant makers. Fees are quoted based on the size of your organization or municipality and the number of users and aren’t published; you have to use the website link to inquire about a subscription.
• www.fundsnetservices.com: Fundsnet Services is the blue-light special approach to online grant seeking. When you pull up the Fundsnet Services homepage, you find so many useful links that you may just have a dizzy spell. It’s a virtual flea market with a plethora of information. Some of the links I find tremendously helpful are Arts & Culture Grants, Disability Grants, Education Grants, Environment & Conservation Grants, Foundation Directory, Community Foundations, Women Grants, and Computers & Technology. Each of the links on this website is topic-specific and includes click-through features to send you to a funder’s website to read about grant opportunities firsthand.

  The downside of this site is that the information isn’t updated with the same frequency as the Foundation Directory Online.

• money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500: This free website is full of news about the corporate world. I like to use the Fortune 500 lists to quickly find financially healthy potential corporate grant makers out of the top 500 U.S.-based corporations. The Fortune site saves you search time and gives you the companies’ rankings where financial assets are concerned. You can choose to view the entire list of Fortune 500 corporations, search for corporations near you, search by the name of the CEO, or view the top companies and industries.

  If you’re looking for international companies that may award grants, visit money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/index.html for Fortune’s Global 500 list, which provides access to a full list of the global corporate rankings and the search options of the Fortune 500 list.

• www.urbanministry.org: UrbanMinistry.org is a free online directory for churches, ministries, and other grant seekers looking for monies to start or expand religiously affiliated programs and projects. This site lists more than 1,800 church and ministry grant makers that fund a range of programs including building projects, program support, equipment, renovations, youth programs, capital campaigns, outreach ministries, general operating support, mission trips, and seed money.

Scanning a Funder’s Criteria

After you locate information on a foundation or corporate funding source, you need to quickly scan its profile to determine whether you have a perfect match. A perfect match means that you fit the funder’s organizational, geographic, and programming criteria and that the funder provides the kind of funding you need in an amount to make an approach worthwhile.

You can’t persuade a funder to change its award guidelines or funding priorities; you’re the one who has to do the changing to fit the funder’s funding criteria. If you can’t change your program or project, that particular funding source isn’t the best one for you. In that case, simply keep looking for a better match.

Every resource that lists funding sources presents the information on the funder in a generalized profile format. When you look at a funder’s profile, you can scan some specific information fields to determine whether reading about this particular funding source is worth your time. Focus on the following fields:

• Limitations: Look at the limitations field first. Your organization may be eliminated before it can even get to the starting gate. Does the wording in this section eliminate your program or project? If so, move on to the next funder’s profile. If not, move on to the next critical information field.

  Typical limitations you may see listed in the grant maker’s online profile include

  • Specific geographic giving area (countries, states, and counties)
  • Restrictions on who it funds and what it funds

  Most mainstream foundation funders don’t award grants for religious purposes, to individuals, or for capital projects (building construction or renovation or major equipment purchases).

• Purpose and activities: Every foundation and corporate giver has a purpose statement, located at the beginning of the funding profile. Does the funding source’s purpose statement reflect your organization’s values? Do any of the activities that the funder prefers to fund match activities that your organization is or will be undertaking? If not, read no further. Move on to another funder’s information profile. If you can identify with this funder’s purpose, move on to the next critical information field.
• Fields of interest: Does the program area that you’re seeking grant funds for match with any of the funding source’s fields of interest?

  Keep in mind that the language you use to describe your program may not be the language the funder uses to list its fields of interest. Think of your program area in broad terms and generic categories. For example, say you need grant funding for a program that will tutor and mentor at-risk elementary school students after school and on the weekends. You probably won’t find terms/phrases such as tutoring, mentoring, at-risk, or after-school in the funder’s fields of interest entry. Rather, you may find terms such as education (K–12), elementary education, public education, private education, and youth programs and services. The second list is broader than the first.

• Types of support: What types of activities does this funder pay for? If you’re trying to erect a new building and the funder lists only general operating support, conferences, and seed money under types of support, this funding source isn’t the one you want to approach with a construction project.

  Even if this funder isn’t willing to support the type of activity you’re currently seeking funds for, save the funder’s information if you think it may be willing to support some other aspect of your organization.

• Previous grants or grantees: Have any previous grants been funded in your state? Have any previous grants been for projects similar to yours or in your project area? Getting a funder to award grant monies in a state where it hasn’t previously awarded grants is difficult. If a funder has a track record for previous grants in your state or previous grants for projects similar to yours, the door is open to receive your funding request. (You can search by location of foundation or geographic limitations to help narrow your search.) However, if these aren’t the circumstances you face, you may have to e-mail or call the funder to determine whether proceeding with a funding request is worth your time.
• Amounts of grants previously funded: Does your guesstimated project budget fit into the range of prior grant awards? Use the funder’s prior grant-making amounts to gauge where your request should fall.

  You never want to request a grant amount that exceeds the top grant awarded by the funder — that strategy’s a bit too risky. If you’re looking for $100,000 and the largest grant awarded was $5,000, you need to find multiple funders for your project.

Prioritizing Your Funding Sources

After you identify the potential private funders that are the best fit for your program, follow these steps:

1. Contact each funding source (via e-mail, letter, or phone call) and ask to be included in the funder’s mailing list.

   Doing so normally means that you get annual reports, grant-making guidelines, research, and other information that keeps you up-to-date. Armed with this information, you’re ready to take the next step.

   You can also use this contact point to inquire whether the funding-request guidelines listed on the organization’s website are current.

2. Organize your potential foundation and corporate sources by the application due dates.

   This step is critical because some private sector funders have only once-yearly competitions. You may be a few weeks or many months away from the annual date for grant submissions. After all your hard work, you don’t want to miss an opportunity to get a grant funded because you submitted your application late.

   Develop a good paper or electronic filing system for applications and for funder information in general. Use a separate manila or digital folder for each funder. You should have massive amounts of information at this point, and keeping everything in order is crucial. Sorting by due date helps you anticipate how much work you’ll have in any given month. Be as organized as possible to maximize your chances of getting the grants you want. Grant-management software can be extremely helpful for organizing (see the nearby sidebar for advice on what to look for in this type of software).

3. When you’re ready to write, focus first on the proposals and applications that have due dates in 60 days or less.

   Get busy! Check out Part IV for all the details on completing an outstanding application.

4. Move on to the foundation and corporate funders who accept the Common Grant Application format anytime during the year.

   The Common Grant Application (CGA) format is fairly easy to follow and is the best way to apply for grants from corporations and foundations that accept unsolicited proposals but don’t have their own specific grant application formatting guidelines. You can access the CGA here: chfs.ky.gov/nr/rdonlyres/635f46a0-8ef6-4ce7-a6ae-b33d3dbe35a6/0/nngcommongrantapplication.pdf. (For more on the CGA, see Chapter 1.)

   I also include a CGA template at www.dummies.com/go/grantwritingfd.