Help Center

Cause IQ's foundation search is used by development directors, grant writers, consultants, and other Cause IQ users looking to search for foundations, view grants, and better understand the relationships between grantmakers and grant recipients.

You can open the foundation search by clicking the "New foundation search" button from your dashboard (you can also click the magnifying glass icon in the navigation bar on any Cause IQ webpage and select "New foundation search").

Here's what this button looks like on the Cause IQ dashboard:

There are three different kinds of filters available in the foundation search to help you narrow down on the funders you're looking for: foundation, grant, and grant recipient. You can access all filters from the top of the page. The four most commonly-used filters are pinned to the top of the display and feature one-click functionality to help you start your searches quickly and easily. These filters include:

• Foundation type
• Grant recipient types
• Grant recipient location
• Grant amounts

You can view and select additional filters by clicking the blue "See all filters" button to open the Advanced search.

Here's a screenshot of the foundation search that shows the most commonly-used filters at the top and the "See all filters" button just below:

Advanced search

Clicking the "See all filters" button opens the Advanced search, a feature designed to help you find additional foundation, grant, and grant recipient filters to add to your search, view the number of matching organizations for specific filter values, and setup advanced queries (e.g., excluding certain kinds of organizations). There are two ways to find the filters you're looking for in the Advanced search:

1. You can search for filters by name (e.g., "Grant recipient issues") or value (e.g., "Education") using the search box in the upper-left of the page.
2. You can scroll the full list of foundation search filters on the left side of the popup, selecting whichever one(s) you want.

Here's a screenshot that shows the two places to search for filters within the Advanced search:

After selecting a filter on the left side of the popup, you'll see corresponding values and match counts for that filter displayed in the center section. The "Add filter" button must be clicked to update your results. Note that this is also where you can tell the system to exclude certain kinds of foundations from your search results.

Here's a quick video that shows the Advanced search in action:

Explain results popup

After you’ve added filters to your search, an "Explain results" link appears next to your filters. Click this link to open a popup that explains how your added filters interact to produce your current search results. This feature includes:

• Venn diagram - A Venn diagram provides a visual representation of the filters applied to your search. This diagram helps you see the overlap and interaction between different filter types, and indicates where your results fall.
• Your current search - The "Your current search" section explains which filters are applied to your current search, which helps you understand the specific criteria that shape your search results.
• Next Steps - The "Next steps" section suggests a few commonly-used filters you might want to add to your search to further narrow down your results.

Here's a look at the Explain results popup:

There are three separate tabs within the foundation search: Foundations, Grants, and Download. The Foundations tab contains all the foundations that match your search criteria, while the Grants tab contains all the grants those foundations have made to other nonprofits. The Download tab enables customers with a Pro Subscription to download lists of foundations, grants, and foundation personnel to Excel spreadsheets. Simply click on any of the three tabs to open them.

Here's a look at the three-tab layout of the foundation search:

The Foundations tab shows all the grantmaking organizations that meet your foundation, grant, and grant recipient filter criteria. For example, if you want to segment private foundations supporting nonprofits in the Miami, FL metro area with grants of at least $25,000, you'd add the following filters from the top of the foundation search:

• Foundation type: Private foundations
• Grant recipient location: Metro: Miami - Fort Lauderdale - Pompano Beach, FL
• Grant amounts: minimum $25,000

By default, foundation results are sorted by popularity, but you have the option to change the order (by clicking the "Sort" button on the right) to sort by number of grantees, name, or total asset size. Within each foundation's listing, you'll find an "Exclude foundation" button that you can click to remove a specific funder from your results.

Clicking a foundation's name takes you to their organization profile, where you can view all the information we have on the grantmaker, including all the grants we've identified the foundation making. The Foundations tab displays 10 grantmakers per page. To see additional foundations meeting your search criteria, page through the search results at the bottom of the list of results.

Here's a screenshot that highlights the location of the Foundations tab, the sort function, and the button to exclude a specific foundation from your results:

The Grants tab displays the grants made by the funders in the Foundations tab. Here you can view grantmaker names, grant amounts, grant recipient names, the fiscal year when each grant was made, and grant descriptions. You can filter the grants displayed by adding grant-specific filters to your search. This includes the Grant amounts filter located at the top of the foundation search, or click the "See all filters" button to access a few additional grant filters.

For example, if you want to see grants of at least $50,000 made for research purposes, you can add the following two grant filters to your search:

• Grant amounts: minimum $50,000
• :Grant purpose: "research"

Here's a quick video showing you how to filter the grants displayed within the Grants tab:

Note that you can sort information in the Grants tab by grant amount, grantmaker name, recipient name, or fiscal year by clicking the column headers.

Pro subscription customers have the ability to download foundation, grant, and foundation personnel lists from the foundation search to Excel spreadsheets. Foundation and grant downloads are limited to 3,000 records each, while you can download foundation personnel lists from up to 1,000 foundations at a time.

There are three steps to complete a foundation search download:

Step 1: What to download - start by selecting the type of download you want to do: Listing of grants made, Foundations, or Key staff or board members at foundations.

Step 2: Additional details - this is where you can view the preselected columns of information that each report type contains. For personnel downloads, you will need to select what kinds of people to include on the report. The options include:

• Board Chair / President
• Executive Director / CEO
• Grants / Development
• Programs

Step 3: Confirm - here you'll see a preview of the number of foundation or grant records your report will contain, or the number of foundations your personnel records will be pulled from. If your results exceed the download limit for the type of report you're doing, a notification will let you know. When this happens, you'll need to add additional filters to narrow down your results.

Here's a screenshot of the Download tab with the "Key staff or board members at foundations" report type selected: