Beyond the 990: Grant Advisor
Sadly, I have yet to find a complete replacement for looking through 990s when doing prospect research. Even the fanciest databases don’t get every detail right, so I always check a 990 when evaluating a funding prospect. That said, 990s alone don’t always tell the whole story either, so this series will point out a few additional tools that can help give a more complete picture of a funder. First up, Grant Advisor!
Grant Advisor (yes their logo is a penguin!) is a truly fantastic tool from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and partners that, in their words, provides “a safe way to anonymously give and receive feedback on grantmakers.” Think of it as Yelp for foundations. Or in the words of National Advisory committee member Vu Le of Nonprofit AF, it’s a place where foundations can get honest feedback from nonprofits when their grant application process is “so horrible that the agony and frustration created by it threatens to unleash the demon-god Cthulu upon the world.” So, Grant Advisor is a place to advance transparency and help balance the power dynamics between foundations and their grantees. And while venting about the truly terrible foundations out there is a nice perk, it’s really meant to be a constructive tool that builds dialogue between funders and nonprofits, based on the lovely idea that we are all trying to get to the same goal of doing good in the world.
Grant Advisor can specifically help you evaluate a prospect in a few ways: first, you can read honest reviews about their process, and what grantees have called out to keep in mind when applying. Like with Yelp, you can use overall positive/negative reviews as a simple baseline for deciding whether applying is worth it. You can also look more specifically at the details to see what things are highlighted, either for good or bad. For instance, the 3M Gives Foundation has several reviews noting the importance of connecting with volunteers at 3M as part of the donor cultivation process.
Second, you can get a sense of what funders are engaging with and open to the Grant Advisor process. Foundations get to see the feedback on Grant Advisor, and a heartwarming number of them are engaging and trying to learn from what they are seeing. If a foundation has some red flag reviews, you can look to see if they’ve acknowledged this, and are working to make any changes.
Finally, you can use the advanced review filters to check for specific pieces of information, like the average number of hours reviewers spent completing an application, a reviwer’s perception of how accessible a funder is, or how successful reviewers think the foundation is in achieving their philanthropic goals. Sure, your prospect might be well rated overall, but if their initial gift is typically $2,000, and reviwers noted that they spent an average of 20 hours doing their grant application because their online portal is a nightmare from the days of dial up internet, it might be worth taking a pass on that funder for now. Or seeing if they’d be willing to accept an email application.
It's become routine for me to run a quick search on Grant Advisor when doing donor research. Their search function and site interface is super simple, and it’s a fast way to get a lot of information that won’t be captured anywhere else. While not every foundation is reviewed yet, there’s over 120,000 funders in the database so far, and that’s only since launching two years ago. And best of all, it’s free!
Check out Grant Advisor here. And if you’re not subscribed to Nonprofit AF, you’re missing out, which you can easily remedy here.
