These evaluations should help you make an informed opinion about Foundation Directory Online and whether it’s the right choice for your organization. Let’s jump in!
What Are Some of Foundation Directory Online's Key Features?
Back when it first began, in 1956, the Foundation Directory was available as a printed resource only at public libraries, affiliated universities, or college libraries.
With the dawning of the internet, it only made sense to put the directory online.
Things changed again when the Foundation Center and Guidestar began negotiating a potential merger in 2012. The merger finally occurred in 2019 under the new brand “Candid.”
Let’s take a closer look at some of the features Foundation Directory Online offers grant seekers today.
Prospect Research and Finding New RFPs
FDO offers information on:
Private, family, and independent foundations
International foundations
Corporate foundations
U.S. Federal funding entities
Public charities
These funder profiles include key contacts, average amounts of grants made, and links to the funder’s IRS 990 tax forms. Charts and a heat map are also provided, as are links to funder websites (when available).
FDO recently added a list of open RFPs to its website, though they are limited. You can search broadly using its “philanthropy” filter, but it can be time-consuming to sort through the results.
Grant Tracking
The My FDO Dashboard offers some tools to track grants, including access to saved searches, favorites, tags, and alerts. You can also keep track of the tasks associated with prospecting and applying for grants.
Collaboration
FDO isn’t cloud-based, so while it allows multiple users, users cannot collaborate with others on their team. The lack of collaboration features can be time-consuming to work around and could lead to some frustration, especially in a large team environment.
Reporting
While FDO allows users to export search results into a spreadsheet, there is no automatic report generation feature. The closest thing to a reporting feature is in My FDO which allows users to pull information regarding the grantmaker’s name, assessment, location, number of grant proposals submitted, the value of proposals funded, and the user’s last activity.
Other Resources
Candid, a mash-up of Guidestar and Foundation Directory Online, also publishes Philanthropy News Digest, an emailed newsletter. They also have a blog and offer free and fee-based classes. These can be helpful, especially to a less experienced grant writer.
So, is Foundation Directory Online worth it? Let’s take a look at FDO pricing plans for more insight.
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Foundation Directory Online Pricing Plans Examined
To get the most out of the Foundation Directory Online users must have a paid subscription. FDO offers several pricing tiers, each outlined below.
Foundational Directory Online Essential
The most affordable tier is Foundation Directory Online Essential, which provides access to only 111,000 funders’ data. The fee for one user is as follows:
The Essential level includes:
Access to funders’ IRS 990 tax forms
Suggested other funders similar to those you searched for
The ability to search by location, funding focus, assets, name of funder, or name of key personnel
Access to My FDO dashboard allowing tracking of funders, tasks, and contacts
Access to other Candid resources
FDO Essential is best for sole practitioners and small nonprofits.
Foundation Directory Online Professional
The Professional version of Foundation Directory Online comes with all of the above plus many more bells and whistles, including:
More than 242,000 grantmaker profiles
Searchable 990s and 990-PFs
2.2M+ recipient profiles
More than 1.2M contacts
My FDO dashboard
Data on nearly 2.5M grants
Interactive maps and charts
Comprehensive information on federal grants
Corporate foundation grant opportunities
Because of the higher fees, FDO Professional is designed for a multi-user environment of up to 10 people, such as a small college advancement services shop, or small grant writing consultancy.
With both tiers, prices go up depending on the number of users.
Foundation Directory Online Enterprise
If you have more than 10 users (think a large university with a robust prospect research team) Foundation Directory Online offers a customized Enterprise plan.
Their website does not provide details on the pricing, but given the high price of the Professional Level plan for 10 users, one can imagine that the Enterprise version costs more. FDO Enterprise does not have additional features than Professional; it simply offers more seats. FDO may also offer Discount Codes.
But others, such as the reviewer below, believe the site’s redesign has spoiled the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX).
The most frequent objection to FDO is the cost, followed by the user experience, and FDO’s matching algorithms which sometimes don’t work well resulting in conflated search terms. For instance, a search for funders giving to organizations in Virginia Beach will bring up funders with the words “Virginia” or “Beach” in their entity’s title.
Is there a Better FDO Alternative? Instrumentl Examined
If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking FDO doesn’t fit your budget or lacks some of the tools you need, you might be wondering about other Foundation Directory Online alternatives.
Founded in 2014, Instrumentl provides nonprofits with a seamless solution for grant discovery and research, collaborative grant management and reporting, and grant tracking—all in one place.
Instrumentl offers all of the services that FDO does, plus more—all with a user-friendly interface.
Here’s a breakdown of a few of Instrumentl’s top tools.
Prospect Research and Finding New RFPs
Instrumentl automatically searches RFPs based on information in your profile or for your specific projects thanks to its smart matching tool. Users also get email alerts of new matching opportunities.
Instrumentl’s comprehensive database lists more than 18,000 active grant opportunities and over 400,000 funders, including:
Private, family, and independent foundations
International foundations
Corporate foundations
U.S. Federal funding entities
Public charities
Thanks to Instrumentl’s Smart Matching features, finding good-fit funding opportunities has never been easier. Simply enter in your nonprofit’s mission, location, and funding needs, and Instrumentl will match you with a list of curated grants that align with what you’re looking for.
From each of your grant matches, you’ll also be able to click into the Funder’s 990 Report to learn more about their:
Average grant size
Past grantees
Geographic giving preferences
Openness to new grantees
Funding by NTEE code
Key People
And more
Instrumentl’s 990 snapshots show you where a foundation has awarded grants in the past and for how much.
With Instrumentl, you can also see how open a funder is to new grantees, helping you evaluate your chances of securing funding.
These Advanced Funder Insights streamline prospect research and make it easy to quickly identify grants that are worth pursuing.
Grant tracking
Instrumentl isn’t just a prospecting tool—its features cover the entire grant lifecycle.
Once you save a grant within the platform, it will be automatically saved to your Grant Tracker. Within this tracker, you’ll be able to:
Manage deadlines
Assign a status to each of your grants (e.g. “Researching” vs. “Planned”)
Assign tasks to your team
Store notes and documents
Everything is organized and easily accessible in one place, allowing you to navigate the grant application process seamlessly with your team.
Grant management
Instrumentl also makes it easy to manage all of your grants once they’ve been awarded. You never have to worry about missing a reporting deadline or progress report again.
Within the Awards tab, you’ll be able to see:
The names of each of your awarded grants
How much they are for
The grant period for each
Their status
When the next report is due
Who is responsible for that report
How much funding you’ve been awarded in total vs. how much you’ve received
There’s a lot that goes into grant management and maintaining compliance with your funding. Instrumentl makes it easy to keep on top of your different awards and their requirements by consolidating everything in one intuitive dashboard.
Collaboration
Finding, winning, and managing grants doesn’t happen in a silo—which is why Instrumentl was designed with collaboration in mind.
Your team can collaborate seamlessly within the platform so that everyone is on the same page and nothing gets missed. You can assign tasks to specific members of your team, allowing you to create a better system of accountability and keep your team performing at their best.
Reporting
Instrumentl also makes it easy to create a variety of reports for your organization’s stakeholders—whether it be your Director of Development, Board, or Executive Director.
With the click of a button, you can report on funders you are researching, awards won, tasks, and more, making your team’s KPIs transparent.
Bottom line: Instrumentl offers more features than FDO and provides solutions to cover the entire grant lifecycle. With Instrumentl, you don’t have to use other tools or switch between fragmented spreadsheets—everything from active RFPs, funder profiles, tracking tools, awards breakdowns, reports, and more—is available in one place for your whole team to access.
So, is Foundation Directory Online worth it? It’s a decent tool, but there are better alternatives available.
Many nonprofits and grant writing consultants subscribe to multiple foundation research platforms—but with Instrumentl, there’s no need to. Sign up today for a free, no-obligation 14-day trial and compare the difference for yourself.
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