Searching for grant opportunities but not sure where to start? Don’t worry, you’re not alone!
There are a lot of grant websites out there that feature databases of available funding for nonprofits in the United States.
However, some are more comprehensive, while others offer more limited, specific types of grants. Some have features that streamline the grants lifecycle, while others are simply a long list of open RFPs.
We’re here to help you find your perfect match!
Before we unpack them in detail, here’s a quick breakdown of the best grant websites for nonprofits.
How to Choose Which Grant Website Is Right for You
We all have the tendency to jump on Google to find the answers to our questions. However, Google isn’t great for grant research.
It’s possible that a Google search might bring up some relevant grant opportunities, but most of the time it will pull you in directions that will waste your time and capacity.
Thankfully, grant websites exist for this very reason. They help you weed through the many funding opportunities available to find the most relevant ones. Many grant websites are also platforms to manage your grants.
But how do you decide which one is for you?
Consider these questions:
Is it a comprehensive database of grants from government agencies, foundations, and corporations? You don’t want to miss out on diversifying the types of funding your organization wins.
Is the database regularly updated? No one wants to waste time applying to a grant, only to realize the opportunity has expired. On the flip side, you don’t want to miss new opportunities that are fresh off the press!
Are there advanced search filters to narrow down the grants based on criteria such as funding amount, deadline, and eligibility requirements?
Can you set up custom alerts to stay informed about new grant opportunities?
Can you track your grant applications and update their status? Finding grants is just the first step! Having the ability to organize and manage them is just as important.
Is the website easy to use?
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We’re biased, but we believe Instrumentl is the best grant website for nonprofits who have an established grant strategy. The great thing about Instrumentl is that it’s designed to streamline the entire grant lifecycle.
Instrumentl’s full grant lifecycle capabilities
If you want to find grants, Instrumentl will instantly match you with hundreds of relevant and available grants. All you have to do is specify what kinds of grants you’re looking for.
If you want to win grants, Instrumentl pulls insights about funders like their grant sizes, past grantees, causes they support, and other relevant information. All of this info is from 990 filings so you don’t have to go through years of tax reports to see if you’d be a competitive applicant. And Instrumentl’s new AI capabilities make the proposal creation process easier than ever.
If you want to manage awarded grants, Instrumentl makes it easy to track payments and integrate with your accounting tools to manage grant budgets.
If you want to share grants with your team, Instrumentl lets you generate reports and share links to opportunities.
Instrumentl provides insights into funders like their grant sizes, who they’ve supported, and how to stand out.
Pricing: Instrumentl isn’t the cheapest option on the market. It’s a premium grant management tool for nonprofits who already have an established grant search strategy. If you want to centralize your grant work and not fight with spreadsheets, Instrumentl has become the go-to tool for medium to large nonprofits who want to grow their grant funding.
“I have so many people ask me, ‘Holly, where is the best place to find grants and how do I manage them?’ and I will say, without a doubt, Instrumentl.” - Holly Rustick, Author, Grant Expert and Trainer
Popularity Among Nonprofits: Instrumentl started in 2014, so it’s newer than some other platforms. But it’s now used by over 4,000 nonprofits and grant writing consultants. They love the accurate and up-to-date database, deadline reminders, and the ability to save grants to a tracker.
Features Offered: Instrumentl brings grant prospecting, tracking, and management to one platform. Features include:
Intelligent matching to good-fit grants
Expert-curated RFP database with 22k+ active RFPs and 250+ new opportunities added weekly
Comprehensive funder database with 400k active grant makers
Advanced funder insights based on 990 reports
Funder and recipient profiles so you can track peer successes and understand funder priorities at a glance
Central document library to store grant documents in one secure place and train your AI tool with your winning proposals
Automated grant tracker with deadline tracking, tasks, and progress monitoring
Spend-down tracking so you can stay on top of grant budgets with automated forecasting
Post-award collaboration to assign tasks, collect requirements, and set automated reminders to keep everyone on track
Types of Grants Listed: Instrumentl indexes opportunities from:
Foundations
Corporations
State and federal government agencies
Hidden invite-only funders
After you tell us about your nonprofit, Instrumentl will instantly match you with relevant grants. You can then filter them down to find exactly what you’re looking for!
Ease of Use: Instrumentl is one of the easiest grant platforms to use due to its straightforward and user-friendly interface.
“I started using Instrumentl and thought - oh my gosh, this is a miracle! This is going to save me weeks! It just does everything for me. I insert the keywords, set up a project, and it magically shows me the most relevant funding matches.” —Dr. Bev Browning, Author, Grant Consultant & Coach at Bev Browning LLC
Foundation Directory Online can be a helpful resource if you are looking specifically for foundation funding.
Pricing: There are many public locations such as libraries that can provide you with free access. You can use FDO’s lookup feature to find a free access location near you. If you prefer to have access whenever and wherever you need it, you can get your FDO membership at approximately $219.99/month.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: This grant research website is popular among nonprofits because it’s been around for a long time and provides information on many foundations that may not even have their own websites. The database offers insight into as many as 225,000 different funders depending on your subscription level.
Features Offered: Foundation Directory Online provides helpful features such as keyword searching, linking to 990s, and information on work that has previously been funded by the foundation.
Foundation Directory Online’s grant results page
Types of Grants Listed: When analyzing the types of grants listed, this database ranks a little lower because it only includes foundations. This limits your search to one type of funding stream.
Ease of Use: The database allows you to set up a recipient profile and then search for matches. You can then view the funder profile which provides many details on the foundations including contacts.
GrantStation ranks pretty well based on pricing and popularity, and is primarily used for simple searches.
GrantStation’s searchable grant database
Pricing: The annual cost for a GrantStation membership is $699/year, but there are many ways to receive discounted pricing. Many nonprofit associations partner with GrantStation to provide discounts and you can receive a free membership to GrantStation if you subscribe to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: We found that GrantStation is popular among nonprofits because nonprofit associations choose to partner with GrantStation and provide a discounted membership.
Features Offered: In addition to relatively straightforward keyword search options, GrantStation provides high-level funder profiles that include current funding priorities, grant guidelines, application deadlines, and even specific notes about certain funders.
GrantStation also provides additional training opportunities, blog posts, a newsletter, and more.
Types of Grants Listed: GrantStation lists all types of grants from foundations to corporations to government grants.
Ease of Use: GrantStation is fairly simple to use and offers keyword search options. Their funder profiles give a starting place for your searches but you’ll likely need to do more digging to truly understand whether a funder is a good fit or not. They also provide a snapshot of the funding opportunity as well as links to funder websites and resources.
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4. GrantWatch
GrantWatch offers a decent combination of features at an affordable price point. Similar to GrantStation, it’s a decent place to start a grant prospecting process, but does not have very robust features beyond that.
Pricing: GrantWatch requires a paid subscription to complete searches which costs $199/year, if paid annually.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: This grant website is moderately popular among nonprofits.
Features Offered: GrantWatch’s features include information about pre-application workshops, funding amounts of previous grants, and the number of awards within its database.
Types of Grants Listed: Their database includes a variety of foundation, corporation, and government grants.
Ease of Use: This database ranks okay for ease of use because you can search for opportunities that match your needs through keyword searching and they link to funder websites. That said, the user interface may feel a bit dated and clunky to navigate as you work through it.
Here is a screenshot from their site listing out their key features.
Grants.gov is a great resource for government grants. The website includes a database of all federal and some state-level grant opportunities for a variety of entities.
Grants.gov home page
Pricing: Grants.gov is free to access. Since it’s free, you may find you’ll need to sift through the site to identify the best opportunities for you.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: This database is popular among nonprofits specifically for government grants.
Features Offered: The grant database includes keyword search options to help you find funding aligned with your work. You can access RFPs for all federal funding opportunities and they link to the application documents as well.
Types of Grants Listed: Grants.gov only lists government grants, but it will provide the most information about these types of funding opportunities.
Ease of Use: This website can be a bit cumbersome and is easier to use if you go in knowing what you are looking for.
6. Corporate Giving Websites
A corporate giving website is a great place to start if you’re looking for, you guessed it, corporate grants.
Pricing: These websites will be free of charge. Since they’re free, you’ll likely need to spend more time sifting through irrelevant information.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: Corporate giving websites are relatively popular sources of funding among nonprofits.
Features Offered: These websites will provide specifics on funding priorities, contact information, and typically link directly to the application if they accept online applications. The site may also include information on the past work the corporation has funded.
Types of Grants Listed: A corporate giving site will only provide information on corporate funding opportunities.
Ease of Use: These websites are typically easy to use with direct information about funding and links to applicable information.
To give you an idea of what you might find on a corporate giving website, here is a screenshot from the Wells Fargo Foundation.
Websites for community foundations in your region or state can be a great resource for more localized funding opportunities.
Pricing: These websites are free to access to search for grants.
Popularity Among Nonprofits: Community foundation websites are very popular among nonprofits looking for local or regional funding opportunities.
Features Offered: These types of websites will provide information on specific funding opportunities, details on past giving, funding timelines, funder contacts, and may provide links to online application portals.
Types of Grants Listed: A community foundation website will only provide information on their own local or regional funding opportunities.
Ease of Use: These types of grant websites will be relatively easy to use because they only have information specific to a few funding opportunities.
One example of a community foundation is the North Carolina Community Foundation. They offer funding at the state and regional level, as well as operating affiliate foundations in many North Carolina Counties.
One example of a county affiliate is the Wayne County Community Foundation. If you are not aware of a community foundation in your area, you may be able to find them through a simple internet search. You could also reach out through your nonprofit association to learn if there is a community foundation nearby that funds your locale.
Here is a screenshot of previously funded work from the Wayne County Community Foundation.
Wayne County Community Foundation’s past grantees
Grant Website FAQs
1. What is the best free grant website?
If you’re looking for the best grant website at no cost to you, look no further than starting with Instrumentl’s 14-day free trial.
Instrumentl is a truly comprehensive grant database for nonprofits. You can search, track, and collaborate all in one place. The combination of these features makes Instrumentl the best website for grants.
Instrumentl’s search features include smart matching which will help you identify grant opportunities for a specific project quickly. Learn how Instrumentl compares to other grant search engines.
2. Are there websites that also report on funders with bad reputations?
If you are looking for information about the reputation of a specific funder, GrantAdvisor is a great resource. The website compiles reviews about foundations that are submitted by organizations that have worked with the funder or have some other knowledge of the funder.
You can use these reviews to learn tips and tricks and the database also compiles a score for the funder based on the reviews.
Here is a screenshot to show a couple of examples of the reviews provided on this site.
GrantAdvisor’s latest reviews of funders
These types of reviews are a great way to gain insight into details about the funder that you may not find in your general search efforts.
3. How long should a short-list of potential funders be?
The length of your “short-list” of potential funders will depend on your organization and the work that you are seeking to fund. You will want to make sure that you have identified prospects with true potential while keeping the list short enough that you can do further research.
Your deeper research into potential funders will likely weed out a few more from this list, so depending on the amount of funding that you need and your potential prospects, we recommend a short-list of five to ten potential funders.
You need to keep in mind the capacity of your fundraising team as you will be doing further research on these funders to determine which applications you will complete. Creating a grant writing calendar and building out a full-year grant strategy can be great ways to ensure you’re staying organized.
4. Is there a limit to how many grants a nonprofit can apply for?
There is no limit on the number of grants that a nonprofit can apply for, but you’ll need to keep in mind your organizational capacity. Each application takes time to find and complete, especially if you are creating a truly competitive and well-written application.
You’ll also want to make sure that you comply with all grant requirements for each award. Many funders will require specific reports, expense tracking, and of course the completion of the proposed work you applied for.
It is also important that you do not receive more funds than you can use, because most funders will require you to show expenditures and you will be required to return unused funds.
We know that was a lot of information to take in, but we believe that these insights regarding the best grant websites will help you in your grant search.
It is important to utilize grant research websites so that you can maximize your efforts, and at the end of the day, win more funding for your organization!
Before you decide what search tool to use, check out Instrumentl to prospect, track, and manage your grants using the 14-day free trial. Good luck and happy grant prospecting!
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