There are a few different ways to start your search for funders and grants:

1. Select ‘Funders’ or ‘Grants’ in the top bar to search more specifically within these profiles while filtering the list by geographic area, grant type, application deadline, program focus, and more. On the left side toolbar you can search by a funder, a word, or multiple terms. Less words are better in the search.
2. From your ‘Dashboard’ search for funders and grants by keywords, names, geographic locations, and more. Please note that the search function only appears in your ‘Dashboard’ if you do not have any funders or grants saved.
3. Click ‘Search’ in the top bar and type in a funder or word to narrow the funder and grant lists. Results will show up alphabetically and include all results that reference any of the words searched. If you would like to find a specific funder or term, use quotations around the segment – for example “The Denver Foundation”.

Being able to save a grant to the dashboard is a feature included in the Nonprofit, Business/Individual, and Municipal/Government subscriptions.

You can add a funder or grant to your Dashboard by clicking the star in the right panel of the profile. After you click this, the star will be filled in. To view your full list, click on ‘Dashboard’ at the top.

To remove a funder from your Dashboard, click on the star to the left of the funder or grant name.

Being able to save a grant is a feature included in the Nonprofit, Business/Individual, and Municipal/Government subscriptions.

You can save a funder or grant to your Dashboard by clicking the star next to “Save Grant” or “Save Funder” in “Grant Favorites” or “Funder Favorites” panel of the profile. After you click this, the star will be filled in and the grant or funder will be saved to your Dashboard. To view your saved profiles, click on “Dashboard” in the top menu.

To remove a funder or grant from your Dashboard, click on the star in the “Save” column to the left of the funder or grant name to unsave grant or funder.

The Alert feature is included in the Nonprofit, Business/Individual, and Municipal/Government subscriptions. This sends an automated email to you on the date specified. You can use this to remind yourself of an upcoming deadline, to check back for updates, etc.

On every Funder and Grant profile page, you will see this capability in the righthand panel. Click the plus sign to set a new alert or click the edit icon to edit an existing one. You can specify a date and a title for the Alert.

The automated email will include the Alert Title, Grant or Funder name, and a link to the profile.

If you prefer to turn off these emails for any reason, you can do so in your Account Settings. Go to Notifications and toggle the Alerts to OFF.

The “Notes” feature is included in the Nonprofit, Business/Individual, and Municipal/Government subscriptions. The “Notes” function allows you to add notes to a profile which only you can see. You can use this feature to track when you apply to a funder, additional things that you found in your research, and to track your communications and relationship with the funder.

To utilize the “Notes”, select ‘edit note’ on the right panel and enter your notes, click “Save.” A notification will show up at the bottom of your screen that says “Note Updated”. This note will now appear in the profile and on your dashboard.

Video Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the colorado grants guide user tutorial. This guide is one of the many resources community resource center offers and contains funder and grant profiles that are updated on a continual basis. This is a brief overview of this valuable resource which will give you a solid start to finding funding on the web. If you have any questions afterwards please contact a staff member of community resource center. You can find the contact information at the bottom of this page; additionally everything in this tutorial can be found on our website in both the user’s guide and the frequently asked questions. I recommend spending some time with this tool after this tutorial because, just like anything, it takes practice to get great results. If you have not yet created an account, you will see this page when you visit guide.crcamerica.org. This is the login page from this site, you can learn more about the history, read through the frequently asked questions, see what volunteer opportunities there are, and learn about the different sponsors of this new platform. You can also see a sneak peek of both a funder profile and grant profile, or this watch this video again or request a demo. If you do not have an account, you can purchase access based on your organization type and budget size. If you do have an account, you can log in here if you have forgotten your password, select lost your password, and you will receive an email to create a new one. Once you are logged in, you will see a dashboard. If you have any saved funder or grant profiles they will be found here. If you are new to the guide, this is one of the spaces that you can search and find different grant and funder opportunities. This is also the space where you will see alerts and any saved notes. We will review those in a minute.

There are a number of ways to search for funders and grant opportunities in the colorado grants guide. The first one is through the dashboard. If you’re looking for grants, you click here and if you’re looking for funders, you click here, type in what you are looking for, then to fund you click search in the top bar. It will search the entire website both funder and grant profiles. Here you can type in a funder or a word or multiple terms. When you hit enter, it will pull up a list of all of the results on the website. They will show up alphabetically and include any results that reference any of the words searched. If you are looking for a specific funder or term, make sure to use quotation marks when you are searching this. In this search bar you can see that grants are listed first and they are listed alphabetically and then below you will see the funders listed. These include any of the funders and grants that include words that i had previously searched – gates family arts and capital projects. If I search with the quotation marks, it will only search that phrase – the denver foundation – so we have much fewer options that come up. If we want to search within a specific set of funders, we can click funders on this top bar. And on the left hand side, you can see that we will have a search option as well as filters. The search option will function similarly to the top bar where you can type in a funder to your graphic area, a keyword, and it will search through the geographic areas listed the program focus and the purpose of the funder. You can also search through with quotation marks again, so if I search the Denver Foundation, your results will arise. Additionally we have the option to filter your searches. So you can filter by funder activity, funder type, geographic focus, and areas of interest. A recently updated funder within the last six months will show only funders that have been that have had had any changes in the last six months. You can also show funders that have been added in the last 12 months or the current year and then you can only show active funders. If you see a funder, for example the alchemy charitable foundation, that has blue lines for it, it indicates that is inactive. We continue to include these because things may change or users may be interested in knowing what previous organizations funded them and when. You can also narrow down by funder type, geographic focus, and then areas of interest. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in these sections, searching by the keyword is a great option. For geographic focus, if you select colorado counties, a list of all of the counties will show up. If you want to search for a specific county, you can search for a specific county and then unselect colorado counties. That way it will only show foundations that fund in that county. These will show a list of organizations that fund in the county specifically or sometimes they will find organizations that serve those counties so be sure to read the criteria specifically. You can also search by grants, so similar to the funders, you can search by keywords or you can search by different filters. You can search by grant activity, by common grant. The common grant is if you select this it will be all of the grants that accept the common grant application. We will have information on this on our website. You can also search by application dates, so if you select between February 1st and March 31^st, this will show up the different applications that are due during that time. If a grant does not have a deadline, it typically means that they accept proposals year-round you can select that option. In order to save a funder to your dashboard or a grant, you hit this little star next to it. You can also open up a grant profile, and on the top right, you can save a grant here. This is also the place that you can set an alert. To edit any notes, you just click on this little pencil or this plus bar to do that. If you want to save this application to your calendar, you select this little calendar button next to the application and select which calendar you use. Before I conclude this tutorial, remember to visit the user guide page and this can take you to the frequently asked questions. Please feel free to contact a staff member, whose info is located at the bottom of the of all of the pages, and please visit our website for more information on upcoming trainings and current programs. Now this concludes our brief how-to of the colorado grants guide thank you and happy grant seeking.

Each funder is assigned to one of seven categories to help you distinguish the funding source type. These categories are:

• Colorado Foundations and Trusts
• National Foundations
• Government Agencies
• Corporations
• Pre-Select
• Loans
• Other

For more information on what types of specific organizations can be found in each category, visit the Glossary Page.

The Employer Identification Number (EIN) can be useful for researching the funder on Guidestar, Foundation Center, and other websites. Using this number ensures you are viewing the correct organization.

The “time stamp,” located on the left-hand section of the profile, indicates when the profile was last updated by the CRC Research Team and approved by the Funder.

This section lists the geographic areas the organization funds. Geographic designations include: International, National, Multi-State, Colorado Statewide, Metro Denver, and individual Colorado counties.

In some cases, funders only support organizations located in their geographic area of interest. Other times, funders support organizations that provide services to those communities, regardless of where they are located. This information is generally specified elsewhere in the profile (usually the RESTRICTIONS section).

These represent the funder’s funding areas. Selected focus areas will result in a list of funders or grants that include any profile that references any of the terms selected.

This section summarizes the funder’s mission and/or the purpose of its grant making program.

Within the Funder profiles you can find a list of the grants that they have available. Select on a grant to learn more.

This describes the type of support the funder provides. The available options are:

• Project/Program Support
• General Operating Support
• Capital Improvement/Purchase
• Challenge/Matching
• Technical Assistance
• Emergency Loans

For more information about what each grant type includes, please visit the Glossary Page.

Each grant profile lists the application deadline(s) for full proposals. The deadline will be displayed as a month and date (i.e. September 1) or the profile might not include a date. If this is the case visit the funder profile to learn more.

Here you will find a summary of the application process. This section is designed to give you an idea of what is required but is not always comprehensive. It will indicate whether applications should be submitted via mail, fax, email, or an online system, if deadlines are postmark  or “receive by” deadlines, and the basic information that must be provided in the application.

This section provides other useful details related to the funder’s granting process and indicates where you should look for additional information. If a box is checked, the statement at right applies.

“Accepted Year-Round,” “Does Not Accept Unsolicited Proposals,” or “Contact Funder/Visit Website for Deadline.”

“Does Not Accept Unsolicited Proposals” usually means that the funder requires applicants to complete a preliminary step (complete an eligibility quiz, submit a LOI, respond to a Request for Proposal, or make contact with its staff) before submitting a full proposal. Funders that do not have competitive grantmaking processes will be categorized as “Pre-Select.”

“Contact Funder/Visit Website for Deadline” usually means one of three things:

• The funder has a variety of programs and it is too difficult for us to accurately distinguish between their distinct deadlines.
• The deadline had not been released at the time the profile was updated.
• The funder does not publicly release its deadlines and requires interested applicants to inquire about submission timelines.

LOI Deadlines

This section will only appear if the funder requires a Letter of Intent, and lists the deadline(s) for their submission. The deadline will be displayed as a month and date (i.e. September 1) or the profile will state “Accepted Year-Round.” If there are multiple deadlines, please read the rest of the profile to determine if these indicate multiple cycles or are submission deadlines for different programs.

Many funders have strict eligibility guidelines, which will be listed here. This section will generally include information about eligible entities and/or activities as well as what the funder will not support. For government programs: if the recipient organization is required to match funds awarded, that information eligible match information is also generally noted here.

These grantees were chosen as a sample from the most recently available list of grants awarded by the funder. Our Research Team tries to choose grantees to be featured in the profile that span various areas of interest, geographic areas, and grant amounts.

This section is a snapshot summary of the funder’s financials. It provides some context for the grants awarded in Colorado by listing the organization’s fair market value of assets and the number of grants given in Colorado in relation to all grants awarded.

The link at the bottom will direct you to the funder’s most recent IRS Form 990, financial statement, list of grantees, or annual report.

The contact information included in this section is for the person, team, or department which receives grant applications. If the funder receives applications via mail, the address listed here is the mailing address for applications.