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Discover which foundations fund your peers

Understand the top funders for a group of your peers and learn where a specific organization gets its grants from

In this help article...

Looking at which foundations make grants to your peers (other organizations like yours) can be a great way to identify potential funders for your nonprofit. Cause IQ's foundation search allows you to do just that; in addition to seeing a list of foundations that make grants to organizations like yours, you can view details about the grants received by your peers, with the ability download this information into Excel spreadsheets (only available for Pro subscribers). Further in-depth research can be done on a peer organization's profile page to help you understand where their grants and other income comes from.

The first step is to open Cause IQ's foundation search. To do so, click 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:

Access the foundation search from your dashboard

Next, create a search that contains a couple of grant recipient filters, along with any other criteria. This will enable you to narrow down on foundations that support nonprofits like yours (e.g., organizations of the same type or location). This is easily done by adding a Grant recipient types and/or Grant recipient location filter from the top of the foundation search, or click the blue "See all filters" button to open the Advanced search and access the following additional grant recipient filters:

  • Grant recipient description
  • Grant recipient NTEE code, primary
  • Grant recipient revenues
  • Num. grant recipient employees
  • Grant recipient types
  • Grant recipient characteristics
  • Grant recipient issues
  • Grant recipient location
  • Grant recipient EIN
  • Grant recipient name

The screenshot below shows where you can find and add the Grant recipient types and Grant recipient location filters from the top of the foundation search:

Grant recipient types and Grant recipient location in the foundation search

And, here's a look at all grant recipient filters you can access by clicking the "See all filters" button:

Foundation search - Advanced search grant recipient filters

Let's go through an example of creating a peer search using a couple of grant recipient filters, along with a few other filter types. In this scenario, a Development Director at an animal shelter in Albany, New York wants to find private foundations that support their peers (other animal shelters in the Albany area), with grants over $10,000 from the most recently reported year. Here are the filters needed to identify this list of foundations:

  • Grant recipient types - Animal shelters
  • Grant recipient location - Metro: Albany-Schenectady-Troy
  • Foundation types - Private foundations
  • Grant amounts - minimum $10,000
  • Most recent grants only - Yes

Note that four of these filters above are located at the top of the foundation search, while one (Most recent grants only) requires opening the Advanced search with the "See all filters" button. Here's a quick video that demonstrates how to create this search:

After adding filters, it's time to view the search results. The Foundations tab shows the list of foundations that support animal shelters in the Albany metro area, while the Grants tab shows the specific grants those funders made to your peers. The Grants tab is also where you can see the name of the recipient nonprofit, how much the grant was for, in which fiscal year it was made, and a brief grant description.

The Grants tab screenshot below displays the information you can gather about your peer segment:

Foundation search - Grants tab containing peer information

Download foundation lists into Excel spreadsheets (Pro subscribers only)

Pro subscription customers have the ability to download the list of foundations supporting their peers, the list of grants their peers received, or a list of personnel associated with those foundations. To do so, click the "Download" tab and follow the steps to customize your report. The downloaded Excel file will contain a different set of preselected columns depending on the report type. Here are the steps to download from the foundation search:

Step one: What to download - Pick from three available report options:

  • Listing of grants made (choose this option if you want the list of grants received by your peers)
  • Foundations
  • Key staff or board members at foundations

Step two: Additional details - All three download types come with preselected columns of data that will be displayed in this step. For personnel downloads, you'll need to select which titles of individuals you want to include. The options are:

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

Step three: Confirm - The last step shows you the number of grant or foundation records your download will contain, or the number of foundations that your personnel records will come from. To proceed with the download, click the "Start download" button. The Excel file will download directly to your computer.

Note that Foundations and Listing of grants made downloads are limited to 3,000 results per report, while the Key staff or board members download allows you to pull personnel from up to 1,000 foundations at once.

Here's a look at the Download tab with the "Listing of grants made" report type selected:

Foundation search - Download tab Listing of grants made selection

See where a specific organization gets its grants from

Conducting in-depth research into the funding sources of a specific peer organization can be a great way to discover foundations that may not already be on your team's radar. The funding tab on an organization's profile page provides a detailed look at their funding sources, including grants, and gives you the complete picture of where a peer organization gets its money from.

To access the funding tab, first you'll need to open up the Cause IQ profile page for the organization. There are few ways to do this:

  1. If you've already created a foundation search, click the Grants tab and click on an organization's name in the Recipient column.
  2. Alternatively, click the "See all filters" button to open the Advanced search and add a Grant recipient name filter for the organization you want to research. Then click open the "Grants" tab and click on the organization's name.
  3. From the Dashboard, type the organization's name, EIN, or website URL into the smart search box found at the top of the page.

With the desired profile page open, scroll down to where you see several tabs along the lefthand side of the page and click "Funding".

This screenshot shows where to locate the funding tab at the bottom of an organization's profile page:

Funding tab - organization profile page


Here you can view the organization's funding sources, including grants and contributions, fundraising event income, program service revenues, and other investments. A "Grants from foundations and other nonprofits" section displays the total number of grants Cause IQ identifies the organization receiving, the total value of the identified grants, and a list of the specific grants they received.

The list of grants shows you the:

  • Grantmaker
  • Grantmaker tax period
  • Description
  • Amount

By default, Cause IQ displays the grants from largest to smallest (based on amount), and you can sort the grants accordingly by column header. You can also search for keywords in grant descriptions or specific grantmaker organizations by using the "Search grants..." search field.

Here's what the "Grants from foundations and other nonprofits" section looks like:

Funding tab - "Grants from foundations and other nonprofits" section

Note that individual funder names are linked, and you can click on them to open their organization profile page and do further research into their grantmaking.