At the core of much of the Center’s work over the past 50 years lies an effort to build the capacity of the nation’s nonprofits to better navigate the funding environment. While our founding mission was to make information available to all, it quickly became
apparent that the greatest need came from staff of nonprofits looking for funding from foundations to assure the success of their organizations. By combining print and online resources with training and education, the Center has kept nonprofits up-to-date about the rapidly changing and ever more complicated process involved in accessing foundation resources.
Today we serve nonprofits through a network of 450 funding information centers across the globe, five full-service offices of the Center, a database with over 11,000 organizational subscribers, and one of the most popular information-based web sites in the sector, receiving 50,000 visits per day. In essence we provide a unique blend of broad physical presence with even broader virtual reach—a combination of high-tech and high-touch. In keeping with the changing landscape, our efforts will expand to more fully serve the broadening social sector—nonprofits, new forms of organizations, and individuals—that will find in the Center the “go-to” place for their information and training needs. They can walk into one of our physical locations, or find us through institution-wide access to the Foundation Directory Online (FDO) at a major university, or visit us virtually on the web. We expect to further solidify this unique position as we increase efficiency in the sector, lower the barriers of entry for new players, and level the playing field for all those who need our resources to succeed.
GOALS
Live and online exchanges about problem solving in the social sector
- Expand GrantSpace, our web platform that helps grantseekers build community around the Foundation Center’s and their own content
- Support the growing trend of mergers, joint programming, and partnership in the social sector by expanding our Nonprofit Collaboration Resources web portal
- Hold more live and online events on emerging topics and solutions for tomorrow’s issues
More training and better delivery of education programs
- Expand our free and fee-based training for nonprofits and individuals by adding events/courses on topics such as evaluation, collaboration, and more
- Build an online self-assessment tool that allows users to build their own individualized learning program
- Launch versions of training curricula for access on mobile devices
- Produce new editions of our most popular training publications
Constant improvements to Foundation Directory Online
- Continuously upgrade search and data visualization features
- Broaden the possibilities of support for grantseekers by including more, smaller grants from foundations, and more grants from public charities and corporate giving programs
- Provide greater insight into the work of foundations by adding their multimedia content
Access to all of our best tools and information to anyone, anywhere
- Expand our global network of 450+ funding information centers
- Produce more foreign language versions of existing training material and more original material in other languages
- Enable participants from under-resourced groups to attend our fee-based courses offered by providing more scholarships
- Deliver information and tools directly to mobile devices (iPhone, Droid, iPad, and future formats)
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