Office of Sponsored Research and Programs
Foundation Center - Frequently Asked Questions
I. Searching
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1. Where can I find indexes for the search fields, and how do I use them?
2. Do I need to fill in all of the search boxes?
3. What's a Boolean search?
4. How can I exclude records that say they don't accept applications or only give to pre-selected organizations?
5. How does the Text Search field work?
6. How can I run a search that will extract all company-sponsored foundations or corporate giving programs?
7. Every search I run brings back zero results, even when I have all the search-field boxes filled in. What am I doing wrong?
II. The Foundation Directory Online Professional
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8. What new information is available with The Foundation Directory Online Professional ?
9. Why do some grantmaker records have more menu tabs at the top than others?
10. What is the reason some grantmaker records do not have a 990s menu tab?
11. How is the Grants Tab “SEARCH” feature on a funder profile different from the grants database I can access from my Welcome screen?
12. Which foundation search are we using?
III. 990 Search
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13. What is 990 Search?
14. Why would I want to use 990 Search?
15. What’s the best way to target my searches to find what I’m looking for using 990 Search?
16. Can I narrow or expand my list of search results using Boolean search terms?
17. What happens if I run a search without entering anything in the Text Search field?
18. How can I find out if a Text Search term I’ve searched on appears more than once in a 990 document?
19. Why is it when I run a search that it’s not always highlighting the right words?
20. How is 990 Search different from 990 Finder, the free search tool on the Foundation Center’s Web site?
21. What is the difference between a 990 and a 990-PF?
IV. Questions About the Data
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22. How often is The Foundation Directory Online information updated?
23. After the assets listing in a foundation's financial data field I see (M) or (L). What do these mean?
24. Many trustee listings include an asterisk (*) after the name. What does this mean?
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25. Where can I find examples of nonprofit documents such as letters of inquiry, proposals, budgets, and by-laws?
26. Where can I find information on foundation grants to individuals?
27. Where can I find information about grant-tracking software and other products tailored to the needs of nonprofits?
1. Q. Where can I find indexes for the search fields, and how do I use them?
Fourteen of The Foundation Directory Online search fields are linked to an index of terms that
are used to build a search. The indexes are among the most commonly used in funding research, and they are the fastest route to locating pertinent information.
Try to think creatively about other ways to describe your area of interest. For example, in the Search Foundations database you might not find the word "Retirement" listed in any index. So, instead you could try searching on "Aging" as your Field of Interest. By also entering the word "retirement" into the Text Search field, you could then find all foundation records that include both terms.
A note about the Fields of Interest index: This list of search terms is based on the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE), originally developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Since 1989, the Foundation Center has been using the NTEE not only to classify the exempt purposes of nonprofit organizations, but also to track the subject areas supported by the grants they receive. During 1995, the IRS began incorporating NTEE subject classifications into its file on nonprofit organizations in order to make note of their primary exempt purpose. To learn more about the history of the national taxonomy and the Foundation Center's use of it, visit our web site.
2. Q. Do I need to fill in all of the search boxes?
No, and you'll find that filling in all of the fields will generally work against you. Selecting too many criteria will unnecessarily limit or expand your list of results, while searching on a few carefully selected terms will help you target the funders most likely to be interested in your organization.
If you choose, you can run a search on a minimum of one term. Try starting with simple searches, gradually refining your strategy by adding to and/or modifying your criteria with new search terms.
3. Q. What's a Boolean search?
Boolean Searching lets you combine multiple search criteria in various ways, broadening or narrowing search results based on index entries and/or keywords you select. Boolean searching is a powerful tool, providing great flexibility in designing complex search strategies. However, this flexibility can also be confusing. Experimentation is the best way to ensure you get accurate results. To perform a search with more than one term per search field, you place a Boolean operator between each term. There are three Boolean operators that can be incorporated into a search. They are the words: AND, OR and NOT.
To eliminate foundations that do not accept applications and/or only give to pre-selected organizations from your search results list, enter the term in question into the Text Search field, preceded by the word NOT. This is a Boolean search.
Entering NOT "applications not accepted" (include the quotation marks in your entry) into Text Search tells the search engine NOT to include any foundation profiles that contain that phrase in the search results list. Entering NOT "pre-selected organizations" will accomplish the same goal for foundation records that include this specification. For more information on Boolean searching, please refer to the Help file and our Search Tutorials.
Note: Even when a funder says it does not accept applications or gives only to pre-selected organizations, grantseekers should not completely disregard it as a prospect. For such grantmakers a different approach is necessary. You must cultivate a relationship with these grantmakers, and this takes time, effort, and creativity. Click for information on cultivating individual and institutional donors.
5. Q. How does the Text Search field work?
Text (or Keyword) Search allows you to retrieve a record by searching its complete contents (unlike an Index Search which only searches indexed text fields). If you are searching for specific information not found in the indexes, or you do not want to limit your search to a particular field, use the Text Search option. When entering search terms into the Text Search field, be aware of a few things:
Consistent writing styles and policies. Becoming familiar with the styles used makes it easier to construct more accurate searches. Since the Text Search feature searches for exact words or phrases, you get better results if you type your search terms in the same manner in which the data is presented in the database.
Commonly used words or phrases. It's best to avoid them in constructing your search. Searching for words like foundation, or giving, or phrases like application information will probably not get you any closer to the information you're looking for, because those words exist in most records.
Don't be too specific. Just as searching for commonly used words will yield too many results, searching for words that are too specific won't yield enough. Take some time to browse the data to get a feel for the way in which it is presented. Review the indexes and experiment by combining a keyword with an index entry. Index entries tend to be broad, so including a moderately specific keyword could yield a more manageable list of results.
In all five levels of Foundation Directory Online service, you can identify company-sponsored foundations in the Search Foundations database by selecting "company-sponsored foundation" from the Type of Grantmaker field. Platinum subscribers can find corporate giving programs using the same technique, selecting "corporate giving program" from the Type of Grantmaker field.
You're probably either entering too many search terms, or you're entering terms that don't exist in the search field you're using. Instead of trying to enter all of your criteria into one search, begin by selecting one or two search terms from the indexes, which you'll find by clicking on the underlined search-field headings (e.g., Types of Support). Run your search and review the records. After you've done a few simple searches, you'll have a better sense of which terms will glean the most useful results.
II. The Foundation Directory Online Professional
8. What new information is available with The Foundation Directory Online Professional?
The Foundation Directory Online Professional, our top-tier grantseeking research tool, includes a wealth of new information and features in addition to our comprehensive database of 80,000 grantmakers and half a million grants. A new, unique Professional tool, 990 Search, allows you to search across the text of our entire database of over 230,000 IRS 990s for private foundations, community foundations, and grantmaking public charities. And, exclusive funder portfolios organize in one convenient place a foundation's current and archived news, requests for proposals, job postings, key staff affiliations, publications, printable color charts illustrating grant distributions, and customized searching within a funder's grants list. New menu tabs at the top of the funder record help you navigate through the funder's information portfolio.
9. Why do some grantmaker records have more menu tabs at the top than others?
The number of menu tabs at the top of a grantmaker record is determined by the amount of information available. Generally speaking, larger foundations will have more content — and therefore more tabs available — than smaller grantmakers, as the former tend to be covered more often in the news, more active in their grantmaking activities, and more readily tracked because they publish annual reports and maintain Web sites.
10. What is the reason some grantmaker records do not have a 990s menu tab?
Corporations do not file a Form 990 and are not required to make their IRS filings available to the public; therefore, corporate giving program profiles will not include a 990s tab.
11. How is the Grants Tab “SEARCH” feature on a funder profile different from the grants database I can access from my Welcome screen?
The Grants SEARCH Tab in Professional allows you to perform customized searches within a particular foundation's grants list. All of the indexes for the search fields on this search screen are specific to the grantmaking activities of the foundation whose profile you are viewing, listing only those terms that appear in that foundation's grant records. Any searches you perform using this screen will only return grants awarded by this foundation.
12. Which foundation search are we using?
Missouri State University is using the Professional version to The Foundation Directory Online.
III. 990 Search
990 Search is a unique new tool available to subscribers of The Foundation Directory Online Professional subscription plan. It offers subscribers the ability to search across the Foundation Center's unique database of over 230,000 Forms 990 for all private and public grantmaking organizations in the Professional database. These 990 documents are the annual information returns that grantmakers must file with the Internal Revenue Service. Private foundations file the Form 990-PF, while community foundations and other public charities file the Form 990.
14. Why would I want to use 990 Search?
Used in conjunction with Foundation Search and Grants Search, 990 Search can help you uncover additional information about grantmakers and their grants. It is particularly useful for quickly retrieving specific information found in the grants lists of 990s filed by smaller foundations (whose grants we do not index and therefore do not appear in The Foundation Directory Online's grants database). By entering key words or phrases in the Text Search field in 990 Search (e.g., subject-based terms or names of recipient organizations), you can identify instances where those words or phrases are highlighted in grantmaker 990s, oftentimes in funder grants lists. Using this unique Text Search feature you can also search across our database of 990s to find information on people, contributions, issues and concepts (e.g., social justice), and more.
15. What's the best way to target my searches to find what I'm looking for using 990 Search?
The best way to find what you're looking for is to combine text searching with terms entered in one or more of the six other fields available. For example, if you type “environment” in the Text Search field, “NY” in the Foundation State field, and “2004” in the Fiscal Year field, your search will retrieve only those 990s that include the word “environment” and were filed by grantmakers based in New York for fiscal year 2004.
16. Can I narrow or expand my list of search results using Boolean search terms?
Yes. Just as with Foundation Search and Grant Search, you can use the Boolean terms AND, OR, and NOT to expand or narrow your search results. In 990 Search, however, if you choose to use the NOT operator, be sure it is always preceded with the word and, e.g., Soros and NOT George.
17. What happens if I run a search without entering anything in the Text Search field?
Running a search without words or phrases in the Text Search field will yield a list of results that meet your search criteria; however, these terms will not be highlighted in the 990 documents as this feature is activated exclusively for text searching.
18. How can I find out if a Text Search term I've searched on appears more than once in a 990 document?
When you open a 990 document that includes highlighted search terms, the small triangle next to the “Page” icon at the top of the screen will be black. Clicking it will take you to the next instance where the term(s) appear. When there are no more instances of the term(s) in the document, the triangle will turn gray and become disabled.
19. Why is it when I run a search that it's not always highlighting the right words?
The technology used to scan the text in the 990 Search documents—optical character recognition or OCR—looks for matches to words you type into the Text Search field, highlighting them when it finds one. This technology is not a perfect science, and there may be occasional instances where you find highlighting to be slightly off its mark, or you may find a different word highlighted because the search was not able to differentiate it from the term you were searching on.
20. How is 990 Search different from 990 Finder, the free search tool on the Foundation Center 's Web site?
Only 990 Search, available in the Professional subscription plan, includes the unique Text Search feature that makes it so valuable in locating and highlighting key words or phrases across our entire 990 database. 990 Search also includes the ability to combine text searching with six additional search fields to narrow results. In addition, 990 Search allows you to re-sort your 990 results lists by relevance, foundation name or state, document type, or fiscal year. Another exclusive feature of 990 Search is the ability to link from the funder's 990 directly to their profile in The Foundation Directory Online Professional.
21. What is the difference between a 990 and a 990-PF?
Forms 990 are filed with the IRS by community foundations and other public charities. Forms 990-PF are filed with the IRS by private foundations only.
II. Questions About the Data
22. Q. How often is The Foundation Directory Online information updated?
Both the Search Foundations database and the Search Grants database are updated
every week.
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23. Q. After the assets listing I see (M) or (L). What do these mean?
These are accounting terms. Generally, assets are reported at market value (M) or ledger value (L).
24. Q. Many trustee listings include an asterisk (*) after the name. What does this mean?
Foundations use different terms to describe their governing boards, i.e., trustees, directors, managers, and members. In each of our profiles the terminology preferred by the foundation is used. An asterisk following an individual's name indicates an officer who is also a trustee or a director.
III. Resources for Nonprofits and Individual Grantseekers
25. Q. Where can I find examples of nonprofit documents such as by-laws, articles of incorporation, and business?
Please refer to the Foundation Center's Frequently Asked Questions , where you'll find a list of resources for these documents.
26. Q. Where can I find information on foundation grants to individuals?
Please refer to the Foundation Center's Frequently Asked Questions , where you'll find a list of resources for individual grantseekers.
27. Q. Where can I find information about grant-tracking software and other products and services tailored to the needs of nonprofits?
Have you visited Techsoup-The Technology Place For Nonprofits? You'll find a wide range of useful information at their site, including product reviews, discounted products, message boards where users can exchange information and opinions, and help in finding tools and resources created for the nonprofit community. You can also check out the Foundation Center's PND Classifieds area.
©2005 The Foundation Center
Important:
The above information seeks to provide guidance and is taken from the Frequently Asked Questions list found on the Foundation Center website.