Foundation Center offers help for nonprofits

Published in the Culpeper Star Exponent on October 11, 2010 

The Foundation Center is known in the Non-Profit community as “The” resource for funding, grants, and grant writing resources. I have been attending free webinars at the Culpeper County Library which are offered by the Foundation Center. The topics for the webinars were Grant Writing Basics, Online Grantseeker Resources, Proposal Writing Basics, and Grant Database Navigation.

The Online Grantseeker Resources webinar covered questions like: 1) I’m new to the field. How do I begin? 2) How can I find information on the Grant makers that will fund me? 3) How can I grow my knowledge of nonprofits and philanthropy today? 4) I’m looking for a job in the nonprofit sector. What resources do you have for job seekers?

There are several new additions to the Foundation Center website. For example, the new TRASI section provides Tools and Resources for Affecting Social Impact. This database of tools allows one to develop strategies in measuring the social impact and the social change of your program. Thus allowing for better support in grant and funding recruitment.

Grantspace.org is another new addition to the Foundation Center resources. The website will include much of the current Foundation Center training resources. In addition, it will allow the Non-Profit grant seeking community to collaborate in efforts to achieve their missions.

Glasspockets.org is an interesting part of the Foundation Center resource. The site allows us to track giving and special opportunities available from philanthropists. One of my favorite aspects of this site is that it aggregates the foundations that push information out thru Facebook and Twitter. It is easy to find the foundations that you are interested in and then tune into their style of giving. They call this Foundation Transparency 2.0 – very cool!!

The map on the front of the Foundation Center website shows the areas of the country where some $450 million has been distributed to help those affected in the downturn by Foundation Grants. The map allows detailed drill downs by state and by date range. It reports that Virginia recipients have received over $16 million for 2009 and 2010.

The Foundation Center database is carefully controlled allowing access at special Foundation Center locations throughout the US. Our Culpeper County Library is one of those locations thanks to support from many local Non-Profit groups such as Healthy Culpeper, Non-Profit Council of the Culpeper Chamber of Commerce, Private Donors, and the Culpeper County Library.

We have the opportunity to bring funds into our community organizations, create jobs, and strengthen our local economy one grant at a time… The database is free, the opportunity is powerful, and the results can mean everything.

Best Regards

Jim Charapich
President / CEO
Culpeper Chamber of Commerce