6 Types of Grants for Nonprofits (and how to find them)

Grants are just one of the many ways that your nonprofit can find funding to launch or expand a program but where do you find grants, and who are the organizations giving them out? So in this video i am going to talk about six different types of organizations that give out grants for non-profits, where to find them, how they work, and how to think through if they are the best fit for your cause. Welcome back to my channel! My name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I make these videos here on youtube t

o help aspiring change makers with tips and strategies to help you change the world while living a life of impact and purpose. So some of you know my story - years ago I started a non-profit organization that i now run full-time, and throughout that whole time grants were just one of the ways that we were able to generate the funds to grow our impact. And I learned throughout this process that there are many many different types of organizations that offer grants. In this video, I'm going to tal

k about six types of grantmakers in particular - and that includes corporate foundations, corporate giving programs, private or family foundations, public or community foundations, grants from the federal government, and grants from your local government. And for each of these types of grant makers I'm going to talk through what they are, how you find these types of grants, the pros and cons of all these types of grants, and how to think through whether or not that type of grant could be a good

fit for your specific non-profit organization. All right, so let's get down to it. Grant maker type number one is a corporate foundation. What is a corporate foundation? A corporate foundation is a separate organization set up by a company for the explicit purpose of giving out charitable grants to nonprofits now this would fall under the private foundation category since it is owned and operated by the company in its own interest they make all the decisions there are a couple of different ways

you could find corporate foundations one is by using a search tool online something like foundationcenter.org where you can search around for different foundations different company foundations you can also just go directly to a company's website and look for something called charitable giving or corporate social responsibility a page that has that title and usually that is where they will describe whether they have a corporate foundation and a little bit about how it works and how to get more i

nformation not all companies have a foundation but of course you can roll the dice and google something like company name plus foundation and see what comes up maybe you'll find one okay so what are the pros and the cons of going after corporate foundation funding for your nonprofit the pros are that these grants can sometimes come in fairly large amounts and once you're able to get your foot in the door and establish a relationship with a company they might be likely to continue to fund your wo

rk year after year not indefinitely of course but you might be able to have a long-term relationship with a particular corporate foundation the cons are of course that like many grants and dare i say most grants they can be quite competitive and it's a little bit hard to get your foot in the door having a relationship with a company before you apply for a grant through their foundation might help you get a leg up so you could try something like inviting that company to have their employees come

volunteer with you or do a talk for that company something to get them to build a relationship with you before you go ahead and apply for a grant could increase your odds so how do you know if a corporate foundation grant is a good fit for your nonprofit in another video i talk about corporate sponsorships and i talk about this idea of brand alignment and that applies here too companies are looking for causes to fund that align with the issue areas that they care about and that also have some go

od brand alignment with what they do as a company on the one hand companies tend to fund issues and causes that have some kind of correlating relationship with what they do as a company for example banks will often fund something like financial literacy programs or education or housing and homelessness programs because they have the sort of direct and or indirect relationship with the banking process meaning in this case that these issues and causes relate to a community's need for banking servi

ces on the other hand sometimes a company decides what to fund based on the interests of the ceo or the leadership of the company if if they're particularly personally passionate about a cause they might direct their entire company and its foundation to support that cause as a result here i'm showing you an example of the bank of america corporate foundation page where you can see that they have identified specific issues and causes they are interested in funding through their foundation so this

is what a page might look like on any other company's foundation page you're looking for the language that talks about the issues and pri and priorities that they have in terms of what they want to fund the second type of grant maker is still within the corporate structure but it looks a lot different and that is a corporate giving program this could take a couple of different forms a corporate giving program might allow their own employees to form a committee and vote on a particular cause tha

t they want to give some sponsorship dollars to or some of the corporate funding to it could be an employee matching program where if an employee of that company makes a personal donation to a cause the company promises to match the donation by also donating that same amount up to a certain cap for example um okay so how do you find opportunities to benefit from a corporate giving program oftentimes a charity will end up on a particular company's corporate giving program approved charities list

because the employees of that company have asked their higher-ups to add the non-profit to that list so to get on these approved charity lists at different companies you really want to be getting to know the employees of these different companies you want to be inviting them to volunteer with you and then tell them hey you know if your company has a corporate giving program or an employee matching program please let us know and help us get on your approved charities list because we'd love to be

able to work with you all and receive your support in this way there are also some great websites out there that list the different companies across the country that offer employee matching programs some of them include double the donation or matchinggifts.com so check those out sometimes you can just do a search to see if a particular company you have in mind has a matching program and sometimes those sites will even link you to information about how those programs work and who to contact to ge

t on those programs lists so let's talk pros and cons of corporate giving programs one major pro is that it is a little bit easier to get your foot in the door for an opportunity like this because all you really need to do is to meet and convince a couple of the employees of that company to help you get on that list for your nonprofit this can be a little bit easier than trying to convince the ceo of a company to give you a grant the cons are that these donations tend to be a little bit smaller

and of course you still have to convince the employees at the company to pick your charity for charitable giving at the company it's one thing to be on a list of approved charities but that's just the first step the employees need to know who you are they need to care about your cause and then they need to pick your cause when they're choosing where they want their donations to go as for whether this is a good option for you employee giving programs and corporate giving programs can be a good fi

t for organizations that are smaller just starting out because it takes a little bit less to get your foot in the door you don't necessarily need to have this long established reputation yet though that always helps because then more people know about you and might choose you to donate to and get their money matched from their company of course but really it's a great option for organizations of any size because if you can accumulate enough of these individual employees donating money and then h

aving their company match it through a corporate giving program it can add up to quite a bit the third type of grant maker i'm going to talk about is a family foundation now this is another type of private foundation meaning that it is run and all the decisions for it are made by a specific person or in this case a private individual or a family people establish family foundations when they want to organize the way that they give to charity or perhaps they need some help administering grants but

it's a way for folks to be able to give out their money in a more organized way it's also a way some people put their funding into a tax exempt entity to get that benefit of that but you do have a requirement when you have a family foundation that you have to be giving out at least some percent of your your funding that's available in the foundation every year in order to keep your irs tax-exempt status so how do you find family foundations once again you can use a foundation search tool someth

ing like foundationcenter.org or guidestar.org some of these resources do cost a membership fee in order to be able to access their database of foundations but there are also some ways that if you are savvy at doing some internet searches you can get a lot of this information for free too for example here is one way i might try to find some family foundations in my city using guidestar.org first you have to create a free login at guidestar so you go ahead and do that you log in and then you go t

o their search tool and you narrow it down you filter by the state that you're located in and then your city and then what i do is i type the search keywords family foundation in the search bar which tends to narrow down the list of non-profits in my city to the family foundations keep in mind that the word foundation is not a legal term other types of charities can put the word foundation in their name too so you really just kind of have to uh observe the list that results from from this search

and guide star with a keen eye to look for which ones are actually family foundations that give out grants to other non-profits another cool thing you can do is once you find some foundations in guidestar you can look at their 990s or their tax forms from year to year and kind of look at what other nonprofits they have funded what types of patterns you're seeing in terms of the types of causes they seem to be interested in so that'll give you some good clues as to whether that family foundation

might be a good fit for you as well so pros of trying to get a grant from a family foundation once you establish a trusting relationship with a family foundation you might be able to get support in larger amounts and you might be able to get ongoing support if you become one of their favorite causes they might choose to support you year after year it's never guaranteed but it might be able to help the major con of trying to get grant support from a family foundation is that it can be quite diff

icult sometimes to get on the radar for these foundations they're often very private many of them don't even have websites so it can take a while to find and build a relationship with one of these foundations thinking through whether this could be a good fit for you this type of grant funding just like every other type of grant funding i've discussed so far it's always about the priorities of the individual or in this case the family giving out the funding so what are their priorities what are t

he causes that they care about and i talked earlier about how you can kind of get a clue about the things that they care about based on what they funded in the past looking at their tax records that you can find on guidestar or other places for example a family that's very interested in the arts might be interested in funding arts-related non-profits but nothing else you've just got to take a look at what they have funded and if they do have a website see what they describe as their priorities t

here and that's one of the ways you'll know if you're a good fit for them then of course like all of the grant makers that i am talking about there will be some kind of process to actually request a grant i could be a formal letter like you might see in a corporate foundation it might be that you simply get to know the family in this case with a family foundation and they decide they're going to make a grant to you you really have to learn the different ways that different types of grant makers

ask you to request funds and follow those instructions in order to be able to access that support the fourth type of grant maker i'm going to talk about is a community foundation and i might also actually include some united ways in this as well but these are public charities that pool together funds from usually multiple sources around the community it could be multiple individual donors could be many companies all working together putting their funds together and then that entity makes decisio

ns about where to invest the funds in non-profits in the community based on the region or communities needs or their giving priorities for that year how do you find community foundations you can do an online search for community foundations in your city just to add your city's name to your search with community foundation you can also go to the website of council of foundations they have a whole map across the united states showing where all of the community foundations are located so for exampl

e here's one i found in philadelphia you can check out their site they talk about the different types of grants that they offer as a community foundation and they have instructions here on how you would go about applying for some of this grant support so one of the major pros of community foundations is it's often easier to start a conversation with community foundations they're more open so they will invite non-profits from around the community to come share what they do tell their story to the

ir staff they want to know about all of the non-profits in the community as much as possible because it helps inform their giving priorities and their giving decisions that said a major con is that you have to understand that a community foundation is likely to choose its giving priorities based on the biggest gap or the biggest need in the region at that time so for example in my area childhood literacy and education was a major topic for a couple of years and they primarily just wanted to fund

organizations that did work around that topic so it might end up that they are only looking at a very narrow list of causes at that time it really depends so you might just need to look at what they're doing what issues they're prioritizing and see if your cause aligns with what they're trying to do in that period of time and thinking through if a community foundation is a good fit for you just have a conversation with them they will tell you straight out if you are a good fit for them or if yo

u'd be wasting your time trying to apply for a grant through their processes at that time have a good conversation with them send them an email these are open organizations that want to hear from you so just ask the fifth type of grantmaker i'm going to talk about is the federal government now the federal government offers a variety of types of economic aid such as to small businesses but in this case i'm specifically talking about grants made to nonprofits through federally available dollars ho

w do you find federal government grants you go to grants.gov it's as simple as that there you can search for what grants or requests for proposals they have out a request for proposal is what it sounds like it's when a grant-making entity wants to hear from you for you to make a proposal a pitch for what they should spend their money on so they're asking for you to send them your pitch essentially by a certain deadline the pro of getting a federal grant is that it can be a significant amount of

money and it's often multi-year grants so you'd be getting that support for several years in a row presumably the big con of a federal grant is there's so much paperwork to qualify for a federal grant first you have to have a lot of things in place like you have to have had a recent audit and it has to have come out as a clean audit for your nonprofit so this is probably not something you would be able to get as a very small non-profit who hasn't even had an audit yet or a track record of succes

s the reporting required and the record-keeping required for federal grants is so intense that i know of many non-profits who when they get a federal grant they have to hire a new staff person whose sole job it is to just report and keep records for that grant that's how much there is to do in terms of the reporting and record keeping for a federal grant you can kind of see why this would make sense they are using taxpayer dollars to fund the organization so they really need to make sure that th

e organization is proving itself that it is meeting the goals that it said it would otherwise they could get in trouble with the public and rightly so for spending the money in a way that the public might deem inappropriate is a federal grant a good fit for you so here's how it works consider that usually the federal government is giving out a grant because the non-profit receiving the grant is fulfilling some kind of need or service that the government itself might have needed to fulfill if it

weren't for that nonprofit so for example developing affordable housing solutions in this case the government has determined that it is more cost effective and efficient to just pay a non-profit who specializes in that because they are the experts in that topic than it would be to try to do it themselves so think about whether your nonprofit is offering some kind of service to the community the state or the whole country that could typically fall under the domain of something the government woul

d need to do and there might be a grant out there that aligns with your work and the sixth and final type of grant maker i'm going to talk about is the local government or municipal grant maker these grants are grants made to non-profits by the local government the city or the county usually from dollars that are part of the city or county's annual approved budget these are not to be confused with city or county contracts which might be a situation similar to what i described previously about th

e federal government where a city or county has basically hired a non-profit to fulfill some kind of service for the city this is not what i'm talking about here i'm talking about the city or county's decision to actually make charitable grants to nonprofits in the community the contracts might also be a good fit for you and you should check that out you can find nonprofit grants available through your city or county by doing a simple internet search do city name plus non-profit grants or county

name plus non-profit grants i'm showing an example here of my my own city raleigh has grants that they offer non-profits you can see how they describe the different types of grants available here so a lot of city or county pages will have something that looks probably similar to this so pros of city or county grants some of them can be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars so the size of the grant is a pro also getting a grant from your city or county government really raises you

r nonprofit's visibility and reputation which could then in turn lead to even more funding opportunities this is because it shows a lot of trust usually city and county governments will only fund non-profits with some really solid program model or proven success so it adds a lot of credibility to your name if you can get a grant of this nature cons similar to all these other types of grants these types of grants can be hard to get and once again your nonprofit and its work must align with the gi

ving priorities of the city or county government at the time also similar to federal grants some of these uh grant opportunities from the city or county might require things that smaller non-profits or newer nonprofits typically don't have in place yet like their annual audit done of their tax records there's also likely a bit of paperwork and reporting and record keeping related to getting a local government grant but not nearly as much as a federal grant i can promise you that is it a good fit

for you i have found that these municipal grants their priorities their giving priorities might change every couple of years based on what the city and county's needs are at that time so i would say it's always a good idea to keep your eye on them and see what their funding interests are at that time and maybe it will just align with what you've got going on so which of these are the best or the easiest grants to go after so keep in mind all grants can be somewhat competitive to go after if you

're looking for an easier or fast way to raise money i always recommend working on building up your individual donor base having a fundraising event or this one is very important checking out an earned income or fee for service model grants are great when you are trying to start up a new program or expand or build on something that has had a track record of success but you can't necessarily count on them for all the support you're going to need to grow your nonprofit and keep it sustained in ter

ms of the grant opportunities i discussed here in this video it's less about ease and more about what is the best fit some are a better fit for smaller organizations or newer organizations and some are great for larger and more well-established organizations it also depends on what cause that you are working on and what the funding priorities are of those grant makers there's really no one-size-fits-all solution for all organizations so you really have to think about what is going to be the best

model for you and act accordingly so i want to hear from you have you applied for any grants in these categories what have your experiences been share with us tell us about your challenges or if you've had success getting a grant in one of these categories tell us about that too i really hope this video was helpful don't forget my name is amber melanie smith and i really hope that you enjoyed this and the other videos on my channel please don't forget to subscribe and hit that little bell so yo

u can get alerts next time i launch my next video also if you are on facebook check out my group change the world or bust where myself and other change makers are having amazing conversations around social change non-profits making a difference and more thank you so much for watching i hope to see you next time