Online Sources

The Foundation Center

There is a great deal of information about applying for grants on the internet. The Foundation Center has a website that is a clearinghouse for material on foundations that grant funds. The site also has information about workshops and has some grant applications.

For a fee, however, it is possible to use the Foundation Center's database. The Center says it has detailed information about more than 6,000 foundation programs that provide money for individual artists, students, and other researchers. These foundations in the database provide educational, research, professional, and arts support, as well as different kinds of awards and grants.

For organizations looking for foundation support, the Foundation Center has a variety of subscription services. The Foundation Directory Online's basic service allows users access to information on the 10,0000 largest foundations in the United States by using multiple search fields. The online service also includes information about more than 60,000 individual trustees, officers, and donors.

The Foundation Directory Online's more sophisticated services provide information about more than 80,000 foundations, corporate grant programs, and public charities that offer grant funding. Additionally, this service permits searchers to look for more than half a million grants and more than 350,000 trustee, officer, and donor names.

Grants.gov

Grants.gov (www.grants.gov/) has a search feature that allows grant seekers to look for grant opportunities from all 26 federal grant-making agencies.

The site, one of President Bush’s Management Agenda E-Government initiatives, has information about more than 900 individual grant programs that provide more than $350 billion in grants each year.

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) (www.cfda.gov), operated by the General Services Administration, provides information on 15 types of government assistance, including material on federal grants. While some of these grant funds go to individuals and nonprofit organizations, many go to state and local governments or other organizations, who then distribute the funds.

Offline Research

Many public libraries have information about grants, and some libraries have printed versions of the information from the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. The Federal Register, published every weekday except holidays by the U.S. Government Printing Office, also has announcements about grant programs of the federal government. The Federal register is also available online.