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Finding Grants
A great many nonprofit organizations depend on grants for at least part of their funding. So where do these grants come from? The two major sources of grant funding in the United States are the federal government and private foundations. Each and every working day, various government agencies and foundations large and small are announcing new grant opportunities, and the most aggressive nonprofits are jumping on them, making for fierce competition for the best grants. Fortunately, the Internet has made keeping up with major announcements easier than ever before.
The U.S. government has created a central clearing house for all federal grants at Grants.gov. The site includes up-to-date info on grants as they are announced by the various federal agencies but also has helpful tips, a glossary of terms used on the site, and the opportunity to subscribe to their email newsletter. Currently, all federal agencies are required to list their new announcements on the site, so keeping up with its announcements means that you don't have to worry about making any other efforts to track federal grant announcements.
Grants.gov is an important innovation, but it doesn't cover many grants made by state governments or regional planning agencies. Finding those grants may take a little more legwork. A good place to start is your state government website. These are usually easy to find (the URL is often structured as www.state.[state abbreviation].us/ or http://www.[state abbreviation].gov/); if you're not sure where to look, try going to a search engine such as Google and entering only the name of your state as a search term. Once you get to the site for your state, you can try visiting the page of the appropriate state agency or using the site's search function.
When searching for foundation grants, a good starting point is The Foundation Center. The site is an invaluable source of news and information on the world of grants, and has commonly used application forms, a glossary, useful announcements on upcoming conferences and training sessions, and a variety of other helpful resources for both organizations and individuals seeking grants. It offers (for a fee) a comprehensive online database of U.S. grantmakers and their grants. It also has free grant updates, which are available by visiting this page or by subscribing to their email newsletter.
As good as The Foundation Center is, its updates don't include every foundation grant available in the United States. To keep up with the latest announcements, it's best to use a variety of sources. One that's worth checking out is Guidestar. For a fee that varies by the number of authorized users and the terms of service, its Grant Explorer offers information on 42,000 U.S. grantmakers. SRA International offers a number of resources on both foundation grants and government grants, including state and local grant opportunities. Fundsnet Services offers grant listings and a variety of useful guides for the grantseeker. There are also a number of sites that specialize in a specific type of grant: Grants.Net offers information on grants in the sciences; techLEARNING.com covers grants for educators; Join Together offers email updates on grants to prevent substance abuse and gun violence.
Some grantseekers may also find it useful to subscribe to print publications that offer grant information in a particular field. The Quinlan Publishing Group publishes monthly and biweekly grant guides for educators, librarians, and municipal agencies. Thompson Publishing offers weekly grant guides as well as general publications on effective strategies for finding and applying for grants.
If these resources aren't producing the results you're looking for, you could try visiting any Internet search engine and simply searching for the type of grant you need. This may be quite time consuming, as you'll have to sift through a lot of links that don't contain the information you seek, but it can help you locate some grants that are not as well publicized and thus less competitive. Organizations whose missions are particularly specialized may find the Google Web Alert useful. To use this system, you simply visit the Google Alert page, enter your search terms and the frequency with which you'd like to receive updates, and Google will send you an email each time your terms show up in a new web document or news story. Again, this service will be most useful to organizations with an uncommon goal; commonly used search terms will result in an influx of dozens of links that will not be useful.
Finding Grants
A great many nonprofit organizations depend on grants for at least part of their funding. So where do these grants come from? The two major sources of grant funding in the United States are the federal government and private foundations. Each and every working day, various government agencies and foundations large and small are announcing new grant opportunities, and the most aggressive nonprofits are jumping on them, making for fierce competition for the best grants. Fortunately, the Internet has made keeping up with major announcements easier than ever before.
The U.S. government has created a central clearing house for all federal grants at Grants.gov. The site includes up-to-date info on grants as they are announced by the various federal agencies but also has helpful tips, a glossary of terms used on the site, and the opportunity to subscribe to their email newsletter. Currently, all federal agencies are required to list their new announcements on the site, so keeping up with its announcements means that you don't have to worry about making any other efforts to track federal grant announcements.
Grants.gov is an important innovation, but it doesn't cover many grants made by state governments or regional planning agencies. Finding those grants may take a little more legwork. A good place to start is your state government website. These are usually easy to find (the URL is often structured as www.state.[state abbreviation].us/ or http://www.[state abbreviation].gov/); if you're not sure where to look, try going to a search engine such as Google and entering only the name of your state as a search term. Once you get to the site for your state, you can try visiting the page of the appropriate state agency or using the site's search function.
When searching for foundation grants, a good starting point is The Foundation Center. The site is an invaluable source of news and information on the world of grants, and has commonly used application forms, a glossary, useful announcements on upcoming conferences and training sessions, and a variety of other helpful resources for both organizations and individuals seeking grants. It offers (for a fee) a comprehensive online database of U.S. grantmakers and their grants. It also has free grant updates, which are available by visiting this page or by subscribing to their email newsletter.
As good as The Foundation Center is, its updates don't include every foundation grant available in the United States. To keep up with the latest announcements, it's best to use a variety of sources. One that's worth checking out is Guidestar. For a fee that varies by the number of authorized users and the terms of service, its Grant Explorer offers information on 42,000 U.S. grantmakers. SRA International offers a number of resources on both foundation grants and government grants, including state and local grant opportunities. Fundsnet Services offers grant listings and a variety of useful guides for the grantseeker. There are also a number of sites that specialize in a specific type of grant: Grants.Net offers information on grants in the sciences; techLEARNING.com covers grants for educators; Join Together offers email updates on grants to prevent substance abuse and gun violence.
Some grantseekers may also find it useful to subscribe to print publications that offer grant information in a particular field. The Quinlan Publishing Group publishes monthly and biweekly grant guides for educators, librarians, and municipal agencies. Thompson Publishing offers weekly grant guides as well as general publications on effective strategies for finding and applying for grants.
If these resources aren't producing the results you're looking for, you could try visiting any Internet search engine and simply searching for the type of grant you need. This may be quite time consuming, as you'll have to sift through a lot of links that don't contain the information you seek, but it can help you locate some grants that are not as well publicized and thus less competitive. Organizations whose missions are particularly specialized may find the Google Web Alert useful. To use this system, you simply visit the Google Alert page, enter your search terms and the frequency with which you'd like to receive updates, and Google will send you an email each time your terms show up in a new web document or news story. Again, this service will be most useful to organizations with an uncommon goal; commonly used search terms will result in an influx of dozens of links that will not be useful.
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