A note about the resources listed in the boxes below--

• The Foundation Directory Online database is a great resource for grant prospecting. You can search Foundation Directory Online by subject and geography, to find funders who support nonprofits that match your search criteria. Search Foundation Directory Online by subject (what type of service your organization provides or population it serves) + geographic focus (the geographic area the organization serves) to find potential funders/grants to support your organization.
• Guidestar, while not very useful for grant prospecting, is a great tool for gathering detailed information about a nonprofit organization (either a funder or a recipient). Guidestar is also great for conducting a census of nonprofits in a given geographical area. Guidestar profiles contain details about the organization's programmatic activity, staffing, financial information (including staff salaries), history, and mission. Search for the name of your chosen nonprofit organization in Guidestar, to find details about your the organization you have selected to work with.

• Candid Learning is a website that contains many helpful articles and recorded webinars, related to nonprofit grant-seeking.

Foundation Directory Online contains profiles for grantmakers who fund organizations and includes:

• Over 300,000 private & independent foundations, corporate foundations, U.S. federal funders, public charities, and international foundations
• Over 28 million grants
• 1.5 million indexed trustee, officer, and donor names
• Over 2 million recipient profiles
• 54 search fields including keyword search
• Detailed grantmaker profiles including contact information, key financial data, application information, and more

Foundation Directory Enterprise is available to UNT affiliated users from anywhere on campus or remotely via the UNT vpn.

Foundation Directory is available to non-UNT community members in-person on the desktop computers inside the Sycamore Library. For non-UNT users, Sycamore Library has two dedicated community use stations. If you need help finding these community-use computers stations, please ask at our service desk.

To access FD Enterprise, from the Sycamore Library computers, you can click through the link above or go to library.unt.edu, click on the "Databases" tab, search for the database name, and click through to FDO. Please contact the subject librarian if you experience any trouble accessing the database.

Foundation Directory Online video tutorials

Candid Learning, a freely available website of Candid (formerly the Foundation Center), offers information and resources that are specifically designed to meet the needs of nonprofits worldwide in need of know-how for securing funding and operating effective organizations. At Candid Learning, you can-

•   View video recordings of live discussions with funders
•   Listen to podcasts featuring experts in the field
•   Get information about opportunities in your field of interest
•   Increase your expertise in fundraising and management
•   Attend training and events, in-person and online
•   Search for Funding Information Network locations by zipcode

Grant applications require the applicant to describe the service that the nonprofit organization intends to provide and justify the need for that service in the community. Providing data to back up the need for service is always a good idea. For example, if you are asking for grant money to support services to homeless people in the community, you would want to provide data regarding the number of homeless individuals in the area and the lack of services available to help those individuals. Below are a few of the types of resources that you could use to gather information (but obviously you may need other types of data from sources not represented here).