resources

Bobbing and weaving on
the ocean of information.

GOOGLE
www.google.com
Start with Google, it’s not the only search engine, but typing in a term as general as “nonprofit funding sources” leads to multiple millions of prospective hits.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
https://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/index/htm
Michigan State University Library offers a wonderful one-stop shop for funding research as a quick look-see will attest. While it is set up for use only within the university community, the beauty is that you can find your own way to the multiplicity of links it contains.

FEDERAL REGISTER
https://www.federalregister.gov/
More information than you'll ever need, but what will find useful is detailed information in the form of proposed and final regulations that will relate to Notices of Funding Availability that also emerge in this ongoing document. Using the search term, NOFA, one click one day led to 2500 items.

FEDERAL FUNDING WEBSITE
www.grants.gov
FirstGov.Gov, the original site for much of the voluminous data that emanates from the feds has morphed into usa.gov. If you sign on @ usa.gov, one of the categories you will see is Benefits, Grants and Loans and shortly thereafter this leads to access to Grants.Gov. While I suspect that you may find some of the other categories on usa.gov valuable, you can go directly to grants.gov. Simply put, you will find no larger, more comprehensive data source about federal funding. You will also learn about the extent to which the feds are concentrating on the internet as the preferred medium for submitting funding proposals.

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MANUAL
www.usgovernmentmanual.gov

Arguably, my favorite external resource related to the varied manifestations of seeking out resources to support a given nonprofit. This is in no small way because the manual includes an external link to GovSpeak, a listing of government acronyms and abbreviations along with the Declaration of Independence and Constitution!!

STATE GOVERNMENT
www.statelocalgov.net
Don’t forget state government in the scheme of resource development possibilities for your nonprofit. Federal funds get passed through state agencies, and state legislatures have been known to make money available for use by competing nonprofits. Go to the above site and poke around your very own state.

CANDID
www.candid.org
This site is largely comprised of information about grant making foundations formerly available at foundationcenter.org along with substantive information about nonprofits formerly available at guidestar.org. It ain't for free however, and a subscription is necessary for access.

990 PFs
https://oag.ca.gov/charities
The above is the link to the California State Attorney’s office which includes a substantial section labelled Registry of Charities and Fundraisers. With enough roaming around on this recently changed site one can learn about individual nonprofits, including information contained in the most recent Federal Information Returns (990 PF) of grantmaking foundations. For those of you located in the other 49, or in U.S.territories, check your own Attorney General’s office to see if you can dig up indigenous foundation data.

INTERNET RESOURCES
http://www.internet-resources.com/nonprofit/
When looking for the FAQs formerly published by the Internet Nonprofit Center, I found this grab bag site with a collection of links that share a common focus on nonprofits that you might find useful.

EVALUATION WEBSITES
https://www.cdc.gov/evaluation/
https://www.orsimpact.com
These two sites, among many, seem useful because each offers a number of links to resources related to program evaluation. The reasoning for including them is to, as ever, reinforce the importance of measuring the impact of your organization’s work.

CROWDFUNDING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crowdfunding
There's lots of information about this outgrowth of social media, and this Wikipedia treatment seems appropriate as a starting point and includes references to plenty of additional reading.