Transcription
Today we're going to learn a little bit about Directory Online and how to find foundations that do similar work to you and who has funded them in the past. So, this is one of the big things I encourage people to learn, and it's really twofold. You can look for who has funded you in the past, which is really helpful. And then you can also look for who has funded not necessarily competitors, but people that are doing similar work to you, maybe in different areas of your state or different areas of the country, to find out who are other local or national funders who have supported them, because there's a good chance that they may also want to support you.
So, what we're going to look at here is Foundation Directory Online. And for those of you who have never used this before, there are many libraries around the country that you can go to and access this software for free. Let me go ahead and start by showing you how to how to find that. The first thing I do is typically I'll put in, um, Foundation Center, and I just search that in Google or whatever your search engine is. And the thing I'm looking for is this Foundation Center locations. And when I click on that link, it's going to take me into a page that looks like this, Foundation Center locations, and it's under the About Us tab on Foundation Center. But what we're interested in is on the right-hand side of the screen, it says Foundation Information Network. And so we want to search for location. This is going to allow you to put in your zip code and find the libraries that have this software close to you that you can go and access for free.
So, we scroll down the page until we get to the map, and then we're going to put in our zip code in the upper left-hand corner. And I'm just going to put in my local zip code so you can see the type of information that's going to come up. So, it's going to show you a map, and then it's going to give you a list. So, this list shows the closest libraries to that zip code. So, Catawba County Library in Newton, which is nine miles from that zip code, has the software, you can go there and use it for free, or the Alleghany County Library in Statesville, so on and so forth. So, if you'd like to access this particular software, I encourage you to go here, um, foundationcenter.org, connect with us, find us. We'll put that link in at the bottom of the video for you so you can find that easily, find the libraries that have this software so you don't have to pay for it. Most folks aren't doing enough grant research, um, a week to really justify spending on the software, but you can access it through the library for free. So, take your thumb drive, go spend an hour at the library, find some great prospects, take them back to your office, PDF versions, and do a little more digging that way. You can save some money at your organization and not have to purchase this.
Um, excuse me. So, how do we find the foundations that do similar work to us and who's funding them? Well, this is the first thing that's going to come up. And what we do is we go right over to the big blue search box. And above it, there is a tab that says Advanced Search and Filters. I want to, I want to click that once, and it's going to open up this box. Now, if you look in the lower left, um, row on the left side, it says Organization Name, and it says the name of a specific grant maker or recipient. Right now, you have to have the specific name of the organization. If it changed last year and you put the new name in, you're only going to see grants that have been funded to them under their new name. Then, if you go and search their old name, you'll find all the grants that were funded to them with their previous name. Okay.
So, I'm going to show you an organization that had that happened so you can kind of see what it looks like. Um, so it's the American Pit Bull Foundation. And if you see right down here at the bottom of the page, where did it go? Previously, their address was in Mint Hill. So, they are as a recipient with that name in Mint Hill. Currently, their address is in Charlotte, and so as a recipient, it's the same organization. So, I would want to click both of them to see who had funded them in the past. Right.
So, let's go look at a different organization, um, just one up that I know is here locally, so Safe Harbor Rescue Mission. Here it is, Hickory, North Carolina. So, I'm, I'm going to click them. It's going to populate that organization name box, and then I'm going to go to the bottom of the page and hit search. And what this is going to do is it's going to pull up all the information they have about Safe Harbor and who has funded them in the past. So, if your organization happened to be similar to Safe Harbor, then this would be helpful for you. It currently shows one recipient, which is Safe Harbor, has received 73 grants from 23 different grant makers. Right.
So, then if I scroll down, I click view all, and it's going to show me all of these foundations. So, this can be really helpful because some of these may be foundations you've heard of, some of them may not. So, one of the things that we learn is that General Electric typically is a matching grant or, um, employee matching gifts. So, that's probably not a grant that they wrote, it's probably matching gifts. TSH is a local foundation, they have received six grants. If you look at the far right column, they've received six grants from the TSH Charitable Foundation totaling $81,000. Okay.
Now, if I want to know a little bit more and I'm like, what did they get money for? Then I can click that little six, and it's going to open up for me this box. So, this box says to me that they received one, two different grants in 2018. One for $1,000 that says it was for homeless service, and one for $15,000 that says it was for shelter and residential care. I can go back and look at all the funding that they've received from them in the past. I can click view all, and it'll open up all of them for me, and then I can even take a deeper dive into that and find out what each one of those individual fundings was for.
So, let's say, um, that I'm curious about this $15,000. I can click that $15,000, and it's going to open up yet another tab, and it's going to say to me that in 2018, they got $15,000 and it was a matching gift campaign. Okay. The other thing you want to be aware of here is how is this foundation identifying this organization? So, they're saying that they want to fund shelter, residential care, and substance abuse treatment. So, if your organization is similar, you might want to search foundations who are also supporting shelter and residential care or substance abuse treatment. They're also identifying the population and groups that this particular organization serves as people with psychosocial disabilities, substance abusers, women and children, or women and girls. Um, so this tells you a little bit about the foundation.
Now, if you decide, oh my gosh, this looks perfect for us, I want to learn more about the foundation, you can go to the blue box, you can click that, and it will take you to the foundation page on the, um, Foundation Directory Online. So, you can learn all about them. This is five years at a glance. It's where they fund. So, a majority of their grants are in North Carolina. They have funded some in Texas, some in California, some in other states. So, the way this map works is the lighter the color blue, they haven't funded that area. Right. So, there's no funding here, but the darker that the blue gets, the more grants they have given in that area. Obviously, North Carolina is the darkest, that's where they give the majority of their money. And then you can scroll on down and learn more. You can actually click this map and learn more about each of the donors in that area.
So, let's say we wanted to see who did they fund in, trying to see if there's one that's any bigger than North Carolina. Um, Kentucky got one grant for $10,000. So, let's click Kentucky and see who they got funding from in Kentucky. Okay. So, Kentucky was $110,000. I click Kentucky again, it says it was in Jefferson County, and then I click it again, and it says it was the Presbyterian Church USA Core got $10,000. And then you can just keep clicking that, and it will keep taking you down the rabbit hole of how much did they fund, what was it for, and all of that sort of stuff. So, it's really helpful for you to be able to figure out, um, if it is a good match for you.
And when you open up their page, you can see, like I said, who they funded, their most common grant amount, a history of who they funded, you can see all of them. So, you can see other people and what they have received. You can see the subject areas that this particular foundation has a priority on. You can see the geographic focus, the populations they want to support, what their support strategies are. So, they want to fund general operating and program support. And then you want to, these are some similar organizations, so you can click on those and go down that little rabbit hole. It tells you that unlisted funds are not accepted, so unlisted requests are not accepted. So, this is one where you have to go through a gatekeeper to get permission to apply. You can check out their 990s and you can see who's on their board. So, lots and lots of information here. I would encourage you to use this search if you have an opportunity so you can find the folks that have supported similar organizations to you in the past. And then again, you also want to look for yourself and see who's funded you in the past. Hope this is helpful. Again, this is on Foundation Directory Online, and we will put the link on how to get to their main page, but I would encourage you to find a local library in your area so you can access the full site and all of its resources.