I received the following question from a reader: "I serve on the Board of a new foundation that is ready to identify potential grants. However, all of the grant databases that we have found are prohibitively expensive. Can you recommend an affordable grants database?" My answer: Is FREE affordable enough?
The Foundation Center (www.fdncenter.org) has an initiative to serve under-resourced and underserved populations and has done so by setting up Cooperative Collections. These are "free funding information centers in libraries, community foundations, and other nonprofit resource centers that provide a core collection of Foundation Center publications and a variety of supplementary materials and services in areas useful to grantseekers." Among the many resources provided are The Foundation Directory Online Professional, FC Search: The Foundation Center's Database on CD-ROM, and Foundation Grants to Individuals Online.
I actually started my grant-writing career in the Cooperative Collection in Madison, WI where a patient colleague volunteered to teach me how to locate appropriate grants. I spent an afternoon picking the librarians brain with questions about how to find grants, which keywords to use, which databases were the best for my particular project and which books could help me write the grants once I found those that I wanted to apply for. I was amazed that this woman was getting paid to help teach me grant writing - but by someone other than me!
To find out where the closest Cooperative Collection is in your State, visit the Foundation Center's website at http://foundationcenter.org/collections/
