Foundation Directory Online Alternatives

Foundation Directory online is a relatively popular fundraising tool, but is it the most effective platform available?

These common challenges often push grant professionals to consider an alternative:

• The database includes a large number of outdated, inactive grant opportunities.
• There isn’t any “intelligent matching”. Instead, you have to manually search through hundreds of opportunities to find the right fit.
• You can’t manage your entire grant pipeline from start to finish.
• It’s difficult to track progress and collaborate with your team effectively.
• You can’t integrate FDO with other systems and tools.

For grant professionals wanting more from their grant database, the best next step is a comprehensive grant management platform that covers the entire grant lifecycle, not just manually reviewing grant listings.

To help you discover the best solution to your needs, we’ll provide an overview of six top FDO alternatives, including Instrumentl.

Note: Instrumentl was built to solve all of the pains identified above. You can read about it in detail below or start a free trial if you want to see exactly how it can help improve your grant prospecting and management.

Founded in 2014, Instrumentl was designed specifically to streamline the grant finding, tracking, and management process for nonprofit professionals.
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Within one easy-to-use platform, you can search and prospect for new funding sources, collaborate with others on your team, and track and manage your grant pipeline from start to finish.

While other tools have features to support pieces of the grant process, Instrumentl is the strongest solution to carry your team through the entire grant lifecycle.

Below we’ll take a look at the unique features and capabilities of Instrumentl that make it stand out from the rest of the popular FDO alternatives we’ll explore.

Key Feature 1: Active RFPs and RFP Profiles

Unlike FDO and several of the FDO alternatives, Instrumentl ensures users only see grant opportunities that are available for them to apply to. While this may seem obvious, not all tools have the ability to filter out inactive RFPs.

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No busy nonprofit professional wants to spend their time searching for the perfect funding opportunity to then realize it’s no longer open or accepting applications. Unfortunately, with other grant management systems this can be a frequent struggle.

With Instrumentl, you can search at ease knowing the system has filtered out opportunities that have closed or expired, saving you time and energy.

RFPs in Instrumentl’s platform also include the following helpful information:

• Eligibility requirements
• Grant amount
• Fields of work supported by the funder
• Grant deadlines
• Most recent 990
• Funding history (amounts, locations, openness to new grantees)
• And more!

All the information you need is right there in one place!

Key Feature 2: Grant Matching Based on Your Needs

Intelligent matching within the Instrumentl system allows users to narrow down RFPs and target those that match their mission, needs, requirements, and more.
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Instead of time-consuming searches, you tell Instrumentl about your funding needs, and it will scan its entire database to show you the most relevant opportunities.

On platforms like FDO, busy nonprofit professionals are forced to manually search through a large number of opportunities to find those that they would consider applying to. Why waste that time when you could have a more advanced, precise, and updated system do the work for you?

Once you’ve completed your “project details” or search criteria, Instrumentl will work its magic.

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Instrumentl's Intelligent Matching saves valuable time and uncovers opportunities you might miss with FDO's manual search. Instrumentl will also update you when new opportunities open up that match your search criteria. That’s hard to beat!

Key Feature 3: In-depth Funder Insights Beyond 990s

Many grant platforms provide information on funders within their systems—but why settle for the bare minimum when you could get more valuable funder insights with the click of a button?
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Instrumentl's funder insights are specifically designed to help you strategically target grant applications and increase your chances of success, unlike FDO's more general information.

Instrumentl pulls out the information you need so that you’re not searching through hefty documentation to find it. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of trying to quickly digest a 990, you know how valuable this breakdown can be.

Instrumentl breaks down funder 990s into easy, palatable snapshots including;

• Funder Overview
• Funding History
• Key People
• Key Financial Stats (giving average & median, number of grants, assets)
• Grant Amounts
• Past Grantees
• Openness to New Grantees

Key Feature 4: Grant Teams and Collaborative Management

What’s the use of a grants management platform if you can’t work in it with your team?

While Instrumentl fosters teamwork, FDO offers limited collaboration tools and manual deadline tracking. In short, it lacks multi-user collaboration.
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Instrumentl fosters clear responsibility and ownership within your team, ensuring everyone knows their role in the grant-seeking process. With automated deadline tracking, shared workspaces, task assignments, and document sharing, Instrumentl increases productivity across the whole team.

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Instrumentl’s calendar also keeps teams organized and on track with automatic notifications and reminders, and the ability to assign team members to tasks/deadlines.

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Because Instrumentl was built for supporting grants professionals through the entire lifecycle, there’s no need for supplementary tools or tracking documents.

From sourcing to applying to reporting, Instrumentl keeps you on track.

We admit—Instrumentl is tough to compete with. Its features, capabilities, cutting edge technology, and user friendliness set it apart.

If you’re not convinced it’s the best alternative to FDO, you don’t have to take our word for it! Below you’ll find a quick summary of the other popular FDO alternatives so you can decide for yourself what tool best matches your team’s needs.

GrantHub Pro

GrantHub Pro is Foundant Technologies’ grant management software—but it links to GrantStation’s funder search, meaning it does not actually host the grant finding database.

GrantHub Pro offers centralized pre- and post-award grant management at a low price point. However, GrantHub Pro users often complain about bugs on the system, the volume of inactive funders listed, and the lack of an internal calendar feature.

Key features:

1. Easy Collaboration: Since GrantHub is cloud-based, it allows for collaboration on the go. Although manual work is required to do so, GrantHub Pro allows users to set up deadline reminders, assign tasks and grant ownership, and track spending.‍
2. Integrations: GrantHub Pro partners with GrantStation and FDO, which gives users a vast database of funding opportunities and additional resources to help with the search. It will soon integrate with Quickbooks as well which will improve the financial related management pieces.
3. ‍Custom Dashboards and Reports: On GrantHub Pro users can create customizable reports and dashboards, which can then be shared externally via email.

GrantStation

GrantStation is a tool that is more ideal for newer/less-experienced grants professionals and/or organizations that have less dedicated capacity to grantseeking. Organizations that prefer to conduct their own research without needing personalized guidance or advanced features may appreciate the simplicity of GrantStation.

While GrantStation may be an affordable option, it is dated. In addition, GrantStation offers no multi-user collaboration, and the lack of a robust submission tracker and proper grant calendar means that your team has to rely on other tools to support the post-application process.

Key features:

1. Affordability: GrantStation offers quarterly, annual, and multi-year subscriptions at varying prices. An annual subscription is $699 and a two-year subscription is $1,258. GrantStation does offer multi-user packages for larger organizations, but no stated pricing tier is available.
2. ‍Access to a Large Funder Pool: GrantStation lists private foundations, corporate foundations, community foundations, and corporate contribution programs in the U.S., Canada, and abroad. They also include faith-based funders, associations, and other grant opportunities available.
3. ‍Educational Resources and Support Materials: GrantStation offers extensive educational resources for grantseekers as well. Materials such as writing tutorials, learning tools, and templates to guide the grantseeking process are included.

Fluxx Grantseeker

Fluxx Grantseeker offers a modern interface and some strong features that may make it a good alternative to FDO.

Fluxx is a grants management platform, so it has some basic grant lifecycle support tools, but it does not include governmental funders, corporate funding information is spotty, and some updates are needed for funder records to remain useful and timely.

Key features:

1. Strong Pool of Specific Funders: Fluxx offers a fairly robust list of family foundations, as well as charitable foundations. In general Fluxx has the ability to filter out available opportunities versus those that have closed, but this can be inconsistent at times.
2. ‍Affordability: Among smaller nonprofits, Fluxx Grantseeker is fairly popular due to its low price point and robust ability to manage grants. Fluxx Grantseeker’s pricing tiers are among the lowest available for grant management and prospecting tools, but for prospecting new funders, users must sign up for the top tier which is $39.99 per month ($479.88 annually.)
3. ‍Effective Collaboration Tools: Fluxx’s user interface looks nice and clean, which makes the platform relatively easy to navigate. It also offers features that make collaboration more straightforward—calendars, multi-user capabilities, task assignment, and tracking.

FoundationSearch

FoundationSearch includes more than 120,000 foundations and corporate funders throughout North America. FoundationSearch is primarily a database for researching grant opportunities.

FoundationSearch’s user experience is quite outdated, and its search pool does not include government sources of funding. FoundationSearch is not well known to many in the nonprofit world except those working in academia. The platform’s parent company has started to add more grants management pieces but they sit under another tool “SilkStart”.

Finally, a six-month subscription costs upwards of $3,000 U.S.

Key features:

1. Filtering Options to Narrow Down Searches: FoundationSearch offers a myriad of filters to narrow down searches; for instance, you can search by geography, funder name, average size of grant awarded, and more.
2. ‍Management Features: Although limited, FoundationSearch does offer some capacity for application management, including basic prospect listing. However, post-application support is not its specialty.
3. ‍Introduction of New Features: FoundationSearch is not well known to many in the nonprofit world except those working in academia. It is certainly not in the top five of foundation seeking resources. Its newly added grant management tools may help it become more popular, but it will come with a cost!

GrantWatch

GrantWatch is a grants database that features a wide assortment of funders in a simple system with a very low price point.

GrantWatch is solely a grant search tool so other processes have to happen on separate, external platforms.

Key features:

1. Affordability: At $200 annually, GrantWatch is one of the most affordable options available.
2. ‍Simplicity: A strength of GrantWatch is its simplicity. Users who may be more intimidated by newer, more technologically advanced systems, claim to feel more comfortable with the simple search tool.
3. ‍Large database: GrantWatch offers a large pool of nearly 300,000 funders including corporations, governments, and foundations.

GrantForward

GrantForward is a built-for-researchers grants database that provides information about funding opportunities.

However, the tool does not provide robust grants management tools.

Key features:

1. Extensive Database of Research-focused Grants: GrantForward includes over 84,000 funding opportunities and 21,000 sponsors from around the world. If you’re an academic or institution searching for research dollars, GrantForward would be a great fit for you.
2. ‍Track and Monitor Searches and Opportunities: On GrantForward you can save searches, favorite grants, and keep a list of possible funding opportunities. The system will notify you when new grants appear or something with a favorited grant has been updated.
3. ‍Unique Features for Academics: As a tool focused on grants for research, GrantForward has the ability for users to customize groups based on research interests, share results and lists within a team, and create customizable newsletters.

Now that we’ve reviewed FDO’s most popular alternatives, we hope we’re all on the same page. Instrumentl is the strongest tool that makes life easier for busy nonprofit teams.

As a quick reminder, Instrumentl features include:

• Active RFPs and RFP profiles: reduces time wasted searching through old and expired opportunities
• Intelligent grant matching: increases your chances of finding the right-fit funding opportunities
• Advanced funder insights and 990 breakdowns: saves time exploring funders that don’t align with your mission, vision, and needs

We understand that making the right choice on grants management systems is essential to your team's success. Try Instrumentl’s 14-day free trial and get started today. Your team deserves the best!