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Overview of Foundations
A quick article that takes you through the basics of foundations and how you should approach them when looking for a grant.

Foundation Grant Directory
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OVERVIEW OF FOUNDATIONS:

Foundations can be a great source of capital especially if you are in the scientific, educational, cultural or religious arena.  Foundations come in two flavors – private foundations that are typically funded by an individual, a family or a corporation and public foundations also known as charities that get their funding from a variety of contributors including individuals, families, government entities and corporations.

It is important to note that foundations have traditionally being giving grants to not-for-profit organizations, but recently we find a trend developing where foundations are increasingly looking at for profit businesses as well – the most important determinant for a foundation when they are looking at your grant proposal is how close your proposal comes in the helping the foundation meeting its own internal goals.  Thus a foundation focused on promoting the invention and proliferation of green technologies will be very interested in seeing if your business or project is able to contribute to its own visions and goals; thus if you are a businesses creating, inventing or marketing green or environmental friendly products, you have a much better chance of being approved by the foundation for a grant.

Most foundations have an annual or quarterly grant request submission deadline and you have to submit your proposal for their review within that time period to be considered.  While each foundation has its own methodology for awarding grants, they generally examine all proposal sent in and narrow the field down to a few and a board of members then makes joint final decisions about the grant awards.

Writing grant proposals is a lot like writing a business plan and we highly recommend that you visit our business plan section and view our sample plans before you begin the process of writing out your request for consideration by a foundation.