How a nonprofit finds its first grant
Most of the work of a first grant is ruling things out. This is the order to do it in, and the fields that let you do it quickly.
What goes wrong
A directory row tells you a name and an amount. Whether you may apply is decided by eligibility text further down the funder’s own page, and that text is where most first attempts end. Read it before anything else.
A programme announcing $34,000,000 is stating what it will award in total. What one applicant may receive is a different number, often stated only in prose and sometimes not stated at all. The two are never the same figure.
A listing that says nothing about matching funds has not told you matching is unnecessary. It has told you nothing, and filing on that assumption costs a cycle.
What to do instead
Work in the order the funder decides in: who may apply, then what the money is for, then how much, then when it closes. Three of those four rule you out faster than the fourth rules you in — so read them first, and treat any field the source did not state as unknown rather than as permission.
Browse open records for nonprofits →Step by step
Start from your entity type, not from a subject
Open the nonprofit slice and read what is actually open. Subject-first searching finds programmes you cannot apply to, and it takes several minutes each to discover that.
Read the eligibility clauses before the amount
Every record lists its stored eligibility with the field it came from and links to the official page. A clause that disqualifies you is worth finding in ten seconds rather than after a budget draft.
Separate the pool from the ceiling
Check whether the record states a per-award maximum at all. Where it does not, it reads “Not stated”, and the total programme figure is not a substitute for it.
Check the verification date before you plan around it
Every record carries the date we last confirmed it against its source. An older date is not evidence the programme closed — it is evidence we have not looked recently, and the official link is the thing to open.
Questions
Do I need an account to read the eligibility fields?
No. A record’s name, amounts, deadline, source link and verification date are visible without an account, and there is no field shown to a subscriber and hidden from you.
How do I know a listing is still open?
You do not know it from us alone. We publish the date we last checked and the link to the funder’s own page; that link is authoritative and this database is not. A record we failed to fetch is not marked closed on that basis.
Is a bigger programme easier or harder to win?
We do not publish an answer, because we do not observe applications or outcomes. Any figure resembling a success rate would be a fact about our catalogue dressed as a fact about your chances.