Links                               

WEB SITES TO MARK
AS ‘NONPROFIT UNIVERSE’ FAVORITES

“There’s a pony in here somewhere.”

- Anonymous

Here are terrific Web sites for you to explore.  I've itemized them by the following categories: Research, Education,  Arts, Voluntarism, Amazing New Services, and Conclusion.  Embark on a methodical exploration and familiarization to increase your research 'discoveries' and general personal development in the nonprofit funding development field.

                  RESEARCH 

Ways-And-Means Opportunities Workshops www.wamoWorkshops.com

If the charity you are looking at does not provide the form 990 on its site, you may want to use www.GuideStar.org to obtain that information.

U.S. Nonprofit Organization’s Public Disclosure Regulations Site www.muridae.com/publicaccess  provides useful information about the regulations governing public disclosure of IRS forms concerning nonprofit organizations. It explains the different rules governing various types of nonprofits, so this is an excellent site to review as you consider how you intend to structure your organization (some areas of this site require that you subscribe).

In recent years, the Foundation Center www.fdnCenter.org has identified more than 1,000 public charities, over and above approximately 600 community foundations, that have some sort of grantmaking program. At this time there is no simple way to systematically identify those non-private foundation charities that operate clearly defined giving programs. The IRS’s Form 990, the only tool available for identifying their giving programs, was not intended for this purpose and is not very helpful in this regard.  So, at best, it is a clunky process.

Alliance of Artists’ Communities (http://www.teleport.com/~aac/main.html) is a national service organization that supports the field of artists’ communities and residency programs. By clicking Links on the menu, a list of organizations will pop up.

Community Foundation Locator   http://www.communityfoundationlocator.org/search/index.cfm sponsored and maintained by the Council on Foundations, is an excellent tool for finding community foundations. Begin by clicking on a state or selecting from search options provided on the locator page. In addition to this page, as noted in the previous chapter, the Council’s Web site (http://www.cof.org) provides a wealth of information about all types of grantmakers.  Here are three excellent examples of community foundations you’ll find at CommunityFoundationLocator.org :

The Virginia Beach Foundation (http://fdncenter.org/grantmaker/vbf/index.html)

The Web site of this community foundation was developed at the Foundation Center as part of its ‘Foundation Folders’ initiative. On the left side of the page is a table of contents that makes it possible to see at a glance the topics covered. These include information about the foundation, its history, a grants list, guides for donors, a list of supporters, and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

The Cleveland Foundation (http://www.clevelandfoundation.org), based in Cleveland, Ohio, the Cleveland Foundation, America’s first community foundation, has a very prominent section on its Web site concerning its grantmaking activities. The site provides access to numerous forms, including the foundation’s grants guidelines in PDF format, a grant request cover sheet, and a grant reporting form available as MS Word documents, so that you can enter your information directly into the forms and then save them to your computer. A project budget request form, available as an MS Excel file that can then be printed out or downloaded, similarly lets you enter your project budget information directly into the appropriate area.

The Robin Hood Foundation (http://www.robinhood.org), the Robin Hood Foundation’s goal is to eliminate poverty in New York City. Its Web site provides a great deal of information about its giving. In the Who We Support section, you can view a list of grant recipients in alphabetical order or by program area. The program areas are divided into the following categories: youth and after-school programs, early childhood, education, job training, and survival. There are also listings of board members, descriptions of successful ongoing programs, and a description of its funding priorities.

Foundations On-Line (http://www.foundations.org), a service of the Northern California Community Foundation, Inc., provides lists of community foundations, public charities, and additional sites to browse. It also provides a shortcut that can save time searching for appropriate charities.

GrantsNet (http://www.grantsnet.com), sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a free service and an excellent source to find funding for training in the biomedical sciences and undergraduate science education.  While we’re on the subject of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, here is their Web site:

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)   http://www.hhmi.org, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, HHMI’s mission is to support science education from the earliest grades through advanced training. This site contains a wealth of information, so it is necessary to click through several screens to access it. If you are looking for an application form or guidelines, these are not immediately accessible. To find the application information, select Education and Grants from the top of the home page. This will lead you to Grants and Special Programs. If you explore some of the program information, eventually you will come to find application guidelines and forms in PDF format. There are many more pages with relevant search information.

Grantmakers in Health (http://www.gih.org) is a very good source of charity listings for grantseekers focused on health-related giving. In the last two decades 138 new health foundations have been created. These new entities were established from the sale or merger of a nonprofit hospital, health plan, or health system with another entity to become a public charity, a private foundation, or a social welfare organization. More than 45 percent of the new health foundations are public charities. The majority of these charities focus their giving on the health-related or social welfare needs of specific populations in their respective communities. For grantseekers interested in funding within the health care sector of philanthropy, this Web site provides a shortcut to potential funders in ‘alpha’ order.

National Endowment for the Humanities (http://www.neh.fed.us/whoweare/statecouncils.html) provides listings of the humanities councils maintained by all 50 states and U.S. territories. The listings are extremely useful because they describe what projects are being funded within each state or territory, and most of these sites have links that lead to other charities.

Donor-advised funds managed by financial institutions are relatively new and of increasing importance in the field. For example, in fiscal year 2000, the Fidelity Investment Charitable Gift Fund (http://www300.charitablegift.org/index.shtml) was the largest grantmaking public charity. Similar charitable gift funds have been established by other investment groups.

www.FastWeb.com : a student’s background is matched with scholarship eligibility requirements nationwide, plus they have information on jobs, career planning, money, and financial aid.Michigan State University Grants and Related Resources http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/grants.htm
Jon Harrison of the University of Michigan Libraries has created a site that has a substantial section of information on grants to individuals, including financial aid. Harrison also has assembled an impressive bibliography, with links, on grantsmanship techniques, including lots of information on fundraising research and proposal writing.
(http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/3subject.htm)
The MSU site also includes a separate section for individuals that covers print resources as well as many federal, state, and university-based funding sources online. It is a very good place to browse for new Web-based resources for the individual grant seeker.

David Lamb’s Prospect Research Page http://www.lambresearch.com
     Lamb, a former development officer at the University of Washington, describes truly useful Internet sites for researching corporations, foundations, and individual donors. The site includes links to unique directories for professionals such as doctors, dentists, lawyers, and airplane owners, as well as to online news sources and public records databases.  These professionals often help fund individuals intent on entering these professions.

EDUCATION

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education
http://www.case.org
The CASE Web site contains job postings, discussion groups, information about CASE’s awards and fellowships, training courses, member services, related merchandise, the online magazine CURRENTS, and news about issues related to institutional advancement at colleges, universities, and independent schools around the world. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is an international association of education advancement officers, including alumni, administrators, fundraisers, public relations managers, publications editors, and government relations officers at more than 3,000 colleges, universities, and independent elementary and secondary schools.

FinAid: The Financial Aid Information Page
http://www.finaid.org
Sponsored by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and created by Mark Kantrowitz, FinAid is an impressive, comprehensive Internet resource available on funding for individuals education in the United States. The site features a spectrum from general information about public and private sources of scholarships and loans to scam alerts.

FastWeb is the nation’s largest source of local, national, and college specific scholarships.

http://www.fastweb.com/fastweb/register/start?ref=freeze-9f--

                            ARTS
Art Deadlines List http://custwww.xensei.com/adl
Richard Gardner’s Art Deadlines List is a monthly compilation of information about juried competitions, contests, jobs, internships, scholarships, residencies, fellowships, casting calls, auditions, tryouts, festivals, and grants for artists in the visual, literary, and performing arts. Posted to the site is a free version of the list, which is also available via e-mail as a paid subscription service.

http://www.artswire.org
ArtsWire, funded and operated by the New York Foundation for the Arts, is a comprehensive “self-service” database of cultural resources on the Web, and is useful if you’re pursuing individual funding for the arts. Offerings for artists and arts organizations include late-breaking details on fellowships, residencies, exhibition spaces, arts events, job listings, workshops, programs, telecommunications consultations, and a forum for online art. Membership privileges include Web space and an e-mail account.  The site also includes an archive of Current postings going back to 1995.

National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
http://www.nasaa-arts.org
The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) is the membership organization of America’s state and jurisdictional arts agencies. The Web site’s Arts Over America section provides a directory of links to state arts agencies and regional arts organizations, an annotated list of arts-related Web sites, and links to major funders in the arts. The Artworks section has information on trends, issues, and activities influencing decision-makers in the arts and government. Their Strategic Planning Toolkit is very useful for career management in the Arts.  

Environmental Defense
http://www.edf.org
If you want to make a difference as an individual solving environmental problems, The Environmental Defense Web site has information about its extensive programs, reports, brochures, fact sheets, and newsletter.  Environmental Defense represents more than 300,000 members interested in a broad range of regional, national, and international environmental issues.

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI
The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) promotes a high degree of usability for people with disabilities and, in coordination with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development. The site provides resources to aid in making a Web site accessible, including Web site evaluation, curriculum for Web content accessibility guidelines, and training and technical references.

Idealist—Nonprofit Jobs
http://www.idealist.org/ip/jobSearch?MODULE=JOB
This is a searchable database of nonprofit jobs around the world. Visitors can search the database and subscribe to a free e-mail job list, and nonprofits can register and post job openings at no charge.

CharityChannel—Career Search Online
http://charitychannel.com/careersearch
Looking for a job in nonprofit arena? At CharityChannel’s Job search feature, you can search for positions by title, location, organization, or classification. Updated daily. 

                            VOLUNTARISM
Cybervpm.com
http://www.cybervpm.com
The Web site offers a newsletter on volunteer management, advice for volunteers, and links to other resources for volunteer programs. The Web site also includes an online discussion group for volunteer program managers, as well as an online library that is categorized by the types of resources available.

Energize
http://www.energizeinc.com
Energize, Inc. is an international training, consulting, and publishing firm that specializes in all types of volunteer efforts. The Web site has a free Job/Internship Bank, which includes members, interns, and community service participants; a volunteer management library of articles and books; and volunteerism information sources and links, with listings of conferences, classes, resource centers and Web sites, magazines, and products and services.

Volunteer Match
http://www.volunteermatch.org
A service of ImpactOnline, Volunteer Match helps individuals nationwide find on-site volunteer opportunities posted by local nonprofit and public sector organizations. Volunteers can search the online database of thousands of one-time and ongoing opportunities—including walk-a-thons, beach day cleanups, tutoring, home building, and meal deliveries—by zip code, category, and date, then sign up automatically by e-mail for those that fit their interest and schedule. The Web site also has a listing of “virtual volunteering” opportunities for individuals, including those with disabilities who wish to contribute time via the Internet.

Murphys Volunteer Project: www.keyfarmers.org

Siebert’s Volunteer Project: spear.org.bz

Elder Wisdom Circle: www.elderwisdomcircle.org

U.N. Program: www.onlinevolunteering.org

Myths: www.coyotecommunications.com/volunteer/ovmyths.html

             AMAZING NEW SERVICES 
     Here are five Web sites that offer amazing services.  Trust me: take ten minutes to surf them and discover ways to save time and better market your nonprofit:

www.bookwise.com

www.copytalknow.com

www.audiogenerator.com

www.tellafriendgenerator.com

www.marketingmakeovergenerator.com

                        Conclusion
     It’s time well spent simply surfing the Web. I set aside a formal block of time on Wednesdays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. every week like an appointment, to scout new happenings and find prospective donors for WAMO grads (I forward the hyperlinks and stash the Web site addresses by category in ‘My Favorites’).  I also surf to take breaks, since it’s like Treasure Hunting for me (“There’s a pony in here somewhere.”).  The ‘Links to Nonprofit Resources’ section of the Foundation Center’s Web site is a great starting point for further exploration. My www.wamoworkshops.com site will continue to inform you about new sites of interest as well as changes to some of my old favorite links.
     Remember that proactive foundation staffers are likewise searching the Web looking for foundation staffers and managers who can take their respective foundations to the next level of truly relevant philanthropic results.  Have you considered a career with a foundation whose purposes and activities resonate with you?  Now you’d be empowering many programs with your buzz words.  If so, look at:

The Foundation Center’s Job Corner http://www.fdncenter.org/pnd/jobs/index.html
The Center’s Job Corner features more than
500 current full-time job openings
at U.S. foundations (also available as a free weekly e-mail bulletin).

And, to help you get a good career analysis (free), here is the site for a scientifically validated test for career and educational decision-making. Full report shows your interests, work personality, matching jobs, educational options, plus much more... http://www.livecareer.com/?cobrand=JOB

 Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. 
- H. Jackson Browne


The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. 
- Arnold Toynbee


If a man love the labour of any trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. 
- Robert Louis Stevenson


Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. 
- Confucius


An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence. 
- Honoré de Balzac, "Scnes de la vie Parisienne," La Maison Nucingen, 1838