What are Foundation Research Databases?

And why do I need one? Because 90% of foundations do not have a website.

If you are serious about finding funding for your organization or project, you will want to subscribe to a foundation research database to find grant opportunities from the over 240,000 foundations in the United States. Let me walk you through this. Nonprofit organizations, including foundations, are required to submit a 990 tax return to the IRS each year. This information is open to the public, meaning that if you know the name of a foundation, you can review its tax return and learn how much money it has in assets, how much it gave away last year, what organizations it gave money to, how much money it gave them, what the purpose of the grant was, and who is on the foundation’s board of directors. Whew that’s a lot!

But what if you don’t know the name of a foundation? What if you just want to find out if there are any foundations out there that fund projects like yours?

Savvy companies have done the heavy lifting for you. These companies have created foundation research databases that takes all these tax returns and scans them into a database that is searchable down to the key word. Want to know what foundations give grants to animal causes in Wyoming? You can find out. What to know what foundations gave at least $10,000 to a nonprofit organization in Texas that provides services for elders? You can find that out too.

Below is a list of my three favorite foundation databases and the reasons why I recommend them. Some of them even offer discounts for Spark the Fire students, but I loved them before they offered a discount.