Fund-raising Resource Center launched at NCPL

by Betsy O’Neil, Reference Librarian
Tuesday, July 24, 2007 2:45 PM MDT

Are you interested in finding grants and other fundraising resources for your nonprofit or personal projects? If so, look no further than the new Fundraising Resource Center at Natrona County Public Library. 

NCPL recently acquired a collection of almost 20 new books and two new databases to aid grant seekers. These resources are available for use within the library, and will help both nonprofits and individuals in their fundraising process.

The new books and databases are published by the Foundation Center, the nation's leading authority on philanthropy. One book, titled “Foundation Fundamentals,” provides beginners with a complete overview of the funding research process, helping grant seekers identify and cultivate the most receptive foundation funders.

The process of seeking (and winning) grants can be very challenging, and your library’s Fundraising Resource Center can be of great service. The hard work begins with identifying foundations that appear most likely to support your organization or your project. Once you have a good list of possible foundations, it’s important to carefully research the funders you've identified.

The online database, Foundation Directory Online, is especially useful to nonprofit grant seekers in this phase of the fund raising process. FDO is perhaps the most powerful tool available to professional grant seekers looking to explore grant makers and their grants. The database includes profiles of almost 90,000 grant makers and more than 950,000 searchable grants, and is updated weekly.

Carol Plummer, development director at the NIC, discovered the library’s new resources at a meeting she attended, after which she immediately went to the library to use the FDO database.

“I looked up Wyoming and found hundreds of leads, printed them off, put them in our database and we’re now cultivating them,” Plummer said.

A second database geared for individual grant seekers is called Foundation Grants to Individuals Online. This database features 6,200 entries on foundations that award educational, general welfare and arts and cultural support to individuals.

After finding and researching grant makers, and developing the program or project you’d like funded, it’s time to begin the grant-writing process. With the vast majority of grant proposals rejected, it is important that grant seekers use all resources available to them to succeed in this process.

Grant-writing books, such as “Guide to Proposal Writing,” are guaranteed to help grant seekers. Another perennial favorite, “Guide to Winning Proposals,” includes the complete text of winning proposals with candid commentary from the funding decision makers who awarded the grants.  

To augment the collection of books and databases, librarians are always available to help nonprofits and individuals using these resources. 

This summer, NCPL reference librarians will attend a special conference to become experts on the databases and print materials included in this collection. Later in the year, the library will begin offering classes on the grant seeking process for nonprofits and individuals.

Stay tuned for a schedule to be released this fall. If you have any questions about the Library’s Fund Raising Resource Center, please call 577-READ, ext. 2.

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