Locating grants for non-profits is an interesting volunteer position.  Anyone can do this task, which requires only a bit of time here and there to spend fishing around on the Internet.  By the way, I have gleaned this knowledge from years of volunteer work with my son’s academic and sports activities, and I want to pass it on. 

It’s been my observation over the years that it’s easy to assemble a talented and seasoned grantwriting staff.  Grantwriting involves both writing and creative talent, and for some reason a disproportionately greater number of people want to do this, versus hunting down likely sources of grants.  And once the grant is finally awarded, it would seem as if the grantwriter is the one who gets to bask in all the glory.  But that isn’t the whole picture.  Everyone within the non-profit realizes the importance of tracking down potential leads.  And if you can provide your non-profit with even a handful of solid leads, you will be noticed and greatly appreciated within your organization.

So how does one go about tracking down potential grantors?  Well, let’s look at why people or organizations grant money in the first place.  In the case of a foundation, which is comprised of one or more affluent families who wish to share their good fortune with others, they are trying to achieve a particular social objective, such as mitigating the effects of poverty, or extending scholastic or athletic opportunities to a socioeconomic group that would otherwise not have access to them.  Many are interested in bettering the situation of a particular culture, such as a particular religious or ethnic group.  In the case of a corporation, it is usually seeking to improve its standing within the community in which it operates, or to improve its public relations in general, by rounding out its philanthropic profile.  A third, but scarcer, source of grants would be the city or town in which your organization is located, and the objective here is to use public funds in the most effective manner possible – by outsourcing the task.  Typically these types of funds cover such general social issues such as afterschool activities for kids or addressing domestic violence.  And fourth, the United States government awards grants, but I should warn you that you will be competing with the rest of the country for these.  Don’t be deterred by this – I’m just saying that it does take some patience and a lot of effort. 

Applying for a grant often involves telling a story, or painting a picture.  It’s easier to tell a compelling story if it is directly relatable to oneself.  Thus, a corporation is much more likely to fund an interest located in the community in which it operates, and this is true of your typical foundation as well.  Thus, my first advice in locating a grant is to look within the community in which your non-profit is located.  Think of it this way — the further away from home you look, the more persuasively your grantwriter is going to have to state the case, and the more competition your organization will have.  So that’s my first advice to you:  look close to home, first and foremost, and then proceed outward from there. 

My second piece of advice is to review the grantor’s grantmaking requirements very carefully.  If a particular organization is only interested in funding conceptual art projects, they’re probably not going to award you a grant for a kids’ sports team.   So make sure you are absolutely clear on how and where the grantor is seeking to invest its money, and whether or not your non-profit fits within the scope of what they hope to accomplish, before you include them on your list.  After awhile, you will get sort of a “second sense” of what kinds of projects foundations are interested in funding.

So how does one track down a potential lead for a grant?  There are a lot of databases out there to help you do this.  Remember my advice to look close to home?  Go to Google and type in the name of your community and then the word “foundations.”  Take note of the results – you should have a list of somewhere in the millions of hits.  These should yield you quite a number of leads.  Another approach is to type in a keyword that relates to your non-profit, and then the word “grants.”  That will yield you another million hits or so from which to choose.  Through these searches, you will also run into specialized fundraising databases for the community in which you live, and these can be incredibly helpful as well.  For example, my community, which is the San Francisco Bay Area, has the wonderful www.ncg.org, which is a compilation of many of the grantmaking institutions which award grants to Northern California non-profits.  These databases can save you lots of time and energy and I heartily recommend them.

I have listed at the end of this article some useful databases to help you find grants.  The first is a link to Grants.gov, which is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ database to help you locate a federal grant for your organization.  The second is a more general federal database, www.usa.govfor non-profits.  The last link I’m listing, npguides.org, is a link to “a searchable database of more than 620000 nonprofit organizations in the US,” which should give you plenty to start with.

When you finally assemble your list of leads (and Microsoft Excel is great for this purpose, by the way, with Microsoft Word’s Tables feature a close second), your spreadsheet should include the complete name, address and all phone numbers for the grantors, as well as a list of the materials they require in order to process the grant request.  These typically include such materials as a summary of the non-profit’s history, financials, non-profit status and tax ID number, to which your grantwriter should have access.  Make sure you keep a copy of the spreadsheet before you submit it, so if anyone else in the organization needs it, you’ll have it to give to them.  Also keep a copy of all of the materials you collect in the process of your search, as those might be needed as well.

One more word – before you begin searching for grants, have a chat with the fundraising staff in place for your organization.  They should be able to provide you with a list of the organization’s current grantors (if any) and the institutions they have already approached for grants.  There’s no point in reinventing the wheel, after all.  If the staff is not keeping track of the institutions they have approached, it may be necessary to let them know that it is important to do so. 

It’s also best not to directly contact a foundation or corporation about a grant unless you have express permission from the non-profit’s board of directors or governing members to do so, and you have the knowledge base to represent the non-profit accurately and effectively.  Your job is to collect the information and pass it on to the grantwriters. 

The payback for doing this research is seeing the look of gratitude on the face(s) of your organization’s grantwriters, watching your non-profit flourish, and knowing that you played a huge part in its success.  Good luck!

References:

Personal experience

www.ncg.org

http://www.grants.gov/

http://www.usa.gov/Business/Nonprofit.shtml

http://www.npguides.org/links.htm