Grant prospecting guide

Grant prospecting: find the funders most likely to say yes

Grant prospecting is the research you do before you apply: finding foundations whose giving history, geography and grant size match your organization, then ranking them by fit. The best evidence is a funder's own IRS Form 990-PF, which lists every grant it paid — recipient, amount and purpose — so you judge each funder on what it did, not what it says.

Updated 29 September 2026. First published 17 September 2026.

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The four-pass method

In order. Each one is cheaper than the one after it, which is the reason for the order — you want the expensive reading to happen on the shortest possible list.

Pass 1 — Build the universe

Assemble every funder that could conceivably fund your work — not the ones you've heard of. Private foundations, corporate giving programs, community foundations, donor-advised sponsors, government programs. The list should be uncomfortably long at this stage, because the whole point of the next three passes is to cut it down on evidence rather than on memory.

The usual failure is starting from a list of famous names. The foundation most likely to fund a $40,000 program in your county has never been written about.
Pass 2 — Qualify on the hard filters

Cut on the things that disqualify you outright, before you read a word of prose: geography, organization type, grant size, and whether the funder accepts unsolicited requests at all. These are cheap to check and they remove most of the list. A perfect mission match in a state the funder has never given in is not a prospect.

A large share of private foundations fund only organizations they already know. Their 990 will tell you — the same names come back year after year, with no new ones.
Pass 3 — Read the giving record

For each survivor, read what they actually did rather than what they say. A private foundation's Form 990-PF lists every grant it paid: recipient, amount, and purpose. That gives you the real award size, the real geography, the real subject mix, and whether the roster is open or closed. This is the pass that decides where your writing time goes.

Averages lie here. One outsized grant to a related organization can triple the average and tell you nothing about what you'd be offered.
Pass 4 — Watch

Prospecting has no finish line. New 990s land continuously, foundations open and close programs, and a funder that was closed to new grantees three years ago may not be now. A list built once is a snapshot of the filings that happened to be public the week you built it.

This is the pass that gets skipped, because it never feels urgent. It is also the only one that compounds.

How to read a 990-PF, line by line

Pass 3 is the one worth showing rather than describing. Here is a real private foundation, read the way a prospect researcher would read it. Every figure comes from its public filings for 2020–2024, which is 371 itemised grant lines.

Siemer Family Foundation

Columbus, Ohio · EIN 31-1550556

Start with the headline, then distrust it. The most recent filing shows $23,097,268 paid out across 81 grants. Divide one by the other and you get an average of $285,151, which would make this look like a major-gift funder. It isn't. A single line of $18,500,000 went to the Siemer Institute, the foundation's own affiliated initiative — $54,250,000 across the five years. Strip that one recipient out and the picture inverts.

Median grant

$20,000

Middle half

$10,000 – $30,000

90th percentile

$100,000

Largest to an unrelated grantee

$2,500,000

Across all 371 lines for 2020–2024, excluding the related grantee.

What you'd actually be asking for: $20,000. Half of all grants fall between $10,000 and $30,000. A request for $100,000 is at the edge of what this foundation does, and anything above the $2,500,000 it has ever given an unrelated organization is out of the question. That single number is worth more than any mission statement.
Where the money goes: 91% of grants went to Ohio organizations and 76% to Columbus alone. This is a Columbus funder. If you are not in central Ohio, nothing else on the filing matters — and it took one column of the grant table to find that out, which is the whole point of reading the record before the prose.
What they fund, in their own words: Education 178
Social services 125
Health 23
Arts and humanities 11
Urban affairs 11

Purpose codes as filed. Education and social services account for four out of five grant lines — a narrower funder than "family and community support" would suggest.
Is the door open?: This is the question most prospect lists never ask. 32 organizations appear in at least four of the five years, so a large part of the budget is committed before the year starts. But 34 of the 81 grants in the most recent year went to organizations that hadn't appeared in the four years before it — across the period, 159 distinct organizations received something. The roster is sticky, not closed. That is a prospect worth a letter of inquiry.

See the full profile for Siemer Family Foundation

Every funder profile on Grantable is built this way, from the filings — free to read, no account needed. Figures on this page were read from the 2020–2024 filings on 17 September 2026; foundations file months after their fiscal year ends, so the profile may show a later year.

Now a bigger one: The Leon Levine Foundation

Charlotte, North Carolina · EIN 58-1427515

A billion-dollar foundation reads the same way. Its FY2025 990-PF itemises 522 grants totalling $57.9 million, an average of about $111,000. As with Siemer, the average overstates the typical award: 7 grants of $1 million or more account for $8.1 million, and the median is $60,000, with the middle half between $40,000 and $100,000. 79% of the dollars went to North Carolina organizations and 14% to South Carolina, so the size of the endowment changes nothing about the first filter: this is a Carolinas funder. 363 of the 522 lines are for general or operating support, so its grants go to operating budgets, not only to projects. The application route is on the profile too. It takes letters of inquiry on a rolling basis, one per organization per fiscal year (July to June). That turns a yes-or-no question into a timing question.

Read The Leon Levine Foundation's 990 profile

Where to find funders: free and paid tools

990 filings are public, so most of this research can be done for nothing. Paid tools save you reading time or add data the filings don't have. Here is what each one is good at and where it stops. We haven't listed prices because they change often; check each vendor's site.

Grant prospecting tools: what each one is for, what it does well, where it stops, and how it is paid for.
Tool	What it's for	What it does well	Where it stops	Cost model
IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search	The filings themselves, straight from the source	Every public Form 990, 990-PF and 990-EZ as a PDF or raw XML, plus exemption status	You search by organization, not by who they funded. Grant lines are inside the document, so there is no way to ask "who funds literacy programs in Ohio?"	Free
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer	The filings, made readable and searchable	Parsed financials and filing history for millions of organizations, full-text search across filings, an open API	Built for journalists and researchers rather than grant seekers, so it is organized around the filer, not around finding a funder for your programs	Free
Candid — Foundation Directory	The longest-running grantmaker database	Deep funder profiles and grants data, including grants that funders report to Candid directly rather than only through their 990s. Free access at Candid Funding Information Network partner libraries	Searching by what a funder actually funded, giving history and saved lists sit on the paid tiers; the free tier is limited lookups	Free tier; paid subscription
Instrumentl	Opportunity matching and tracking for grant teams	Matches open opportunities and 990-based funder profiles to projects you describe, with deadline tracking and a grant tracker built in	A subscription product aimed at teams that apply often; less useful if you only need to look up a handful of funders	Paid subscription
GrantStation	A curated grantmaker database and funding calendars	Grantmaker profiles written from funder guidelines, plus deadline calendars and funding newsletters. Some nonprofit associations include membership as a member benefit	Profiles are curated rather than built from every filing, so coverage of small family foundations is thinner than the 990 record	Paid membership
GrantWatch	Listings of open grant opportunities	Open grants organized by category and state, useful for spotting programs with a live deadline	Listing-first rather than funder-first: it tells you what is open, not whether a funder has given to organizations like yours. Full details require a membership	Paid membership for full listings
Grantable	Parsed giving records, plus matching against your organization	Free funder profiles with 990-PF grant lines parsed into tables, a free grants database, and an AI prospecting run that ranks funders against your organization using their grant history	US organizations only, built from public filings alone, and only as current as the latest filing	Free plan; paid plans add capacity and scheduled runs

Where Grantable is weaker. Our funder data comes only from public IRS filings. So it misses grants that funders report straight to Candid, it covers US organizations only, and it trails each foundation's fiscal year by months. Our listings of open opportunities are also newer and less hand-curated than those of services that do only listings. Profiles are parsed automatically, so check the linked filing before you rely on a number.

If you only ever use one tool, pick one that lets you search by what a funder funded rather than by its name. That's how you find funders you didn't already know about. For side-by-side comparisons, see Grantable vs Candid, Grantable vs Instrumentl and the best free grant databases. How we build our funder data.

Prospect by state and cause

Pass 1 starts here. Each page lists the funders that give in a state or to a cause, with their 990 giving. Open the ones that fit and read the grant table.

Foundations by state

Every state has a page — use the search box above for yours.

Foundations by cause

Foundations by type

Open grants by type of support

Grant prospect research template

One row per funder, and the columns follow the four passes. The columns you fill in from the filing come before Fit, so a prospect has to earn its rating.

Columns to track for each grant prospect, and why.
Column	Why it's there
Funder, EIN, funder type	The EIN is the stable key — names change and many foundations share one.
Latest 990 year read	Tells you when a row has gone stale and needs re-reading.
Where they actually give	From the grant table, not the mission statement. The first hard filter.
Median grant and typical range	Your ask should sit inside the middle half, not at the average.
Subject match	Purpose lines from the filing, in the funder’s own words.
Similar organizations funded	The strongest single signal: a decision already made for someone like you.
Accepts unsolicited requests?	From the 990-PF and the funder’s website. A "no" ends the row.
Open to new grantees?	Count first-time recipients in the latest year against earlier years.
Fit	Strong / Fair / Weak, or Blocked when a hard filter fails — decided after the columns above, not before.
Application route, next deadline, ask amount	LOI, invited proposal or open cycle, and when.
Contact and connection	Who you know on the board or staff. The one column no filing can fill in.
Stage, next step, last reviewed	Researching → qualified → LOI sent → invited → submitted → decided.

Download the template (CSV)

Opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. No sign-up. The first row is the Siemer Family Foundation example from above.

Let AI do the first pass

You can do the first three passes yourself, and this page shows you how. What takes the time is the volume of reading, and doing it again every time new filings come out. That's the part Grantable automates.

It starts from your organization. Grantable reads your website and writes an organization profile, so matching starts from what you actually do rather than a keyword.
It reads the giving records. A prospecting run searches funders' 990 grant histories for organizations like yours and shows the evidence for each match: which similar organizations the funder has given to, how much, and when. Ask it to assess a funder and it rates the fit Strong, Fair, Weak or Blocked, with the reasons.
You decide. Matches land in a prospect table that shows fit, funder, location and annual giving, and you accept or dismiss each one. On the Pro plan you can schedule the run to repeat. New results arrive in the app, in your workspace inbox and by email.

What it won't do for you: know who's on the board, or confirm that a funder is taking unsolicited requests this year. Check the filing and the funder's website before you write.

Create your grants department Browse the free funder directory

There's a free plan. The directory covers 190k+ funders and 800,000+ organizations, built from public IRS 990 filings. For more on the product, see AI funder research.

Frequently asked questions

What is grant prospecting?

Grant prospecting is the research step before you write: identifying the funders whose giving record shows they would plausibly fund work like yours, and ruling out the ones who wouldn't. It runs in four passes — build a wide universe of possible funders, qualify on hard filters like geography and organization type, read each survivor's actual giving record (for private foundations, the IRS Form 990-PF), and keep watching as new filings land. The output is a short, evidence-backed list of funders worth writing to, not a long list of names.

How do I read a 990-PF to find grant funders?

Open the foundation's Form 990-PF and go to the Supplementary Information part (Part XIV on current forms, Part XV on older ones), where grants paid during the year are itemized: recipient name, city and state, amount, and purpose. Read four things. First, the median grant, not the total or the average — one large grant to a related organization can distort both. Second, the geography: if every recipient is in one metro area, that is the real eligibility rule. Third, the purposes, which show the subject mix in the foundation's own words. Fourth, the recipient names across several years — if the same names repeat with no new ones, the roster is effectively closed. The same part also says whether the foundation accepts unsolicited applications, and how to apply.

How do I find foundations that fund organizations like mine?

Work backwards from grantees rather than forwards from funders. Identify five to ten organizations doing work close to yours, in a similar place and at a similar size, then find the foundations that funded them — visible in those foundations' 990 filings. Co-funding is one of the strongest signals available, because it is evidence of a decision already made rather than a stated preference. Grantable's prospecting run does this against the 990 filings of 800,000+ organizations and explains each match with the grant history behind it: which similar organizations the funder has given to, how much, and when.

How do I find foundations that accept unsolicited proposals?

Check two places. On the 990-PF, the Supplementary Information part has a checkbox a foundation ticks if it only gives to preselected organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests; if it is ticked, move on. Then check the funder's website, which is more current than a filing and usually says whether it takes letters of inquiry, runs an open cycle, or works by invitation. The grant table is a useful third check: a foundation that ticks nothing but gives to exactly the same organizations every year is closed in practice. No directory, including ours, can promise this field is current — confirm it before you write.

Is Foundation Directory Online worth paying for?

It depends on how often you prospect. Candid's Foundation Directory has the longest history and includes grants that funders report to Candid directly, which a filing-only tool will not see. If you prospect every week across many funders, a subscription can pay for itself in time. If you prospect a few times a year, start free: many public libraries offer Foundation Directory access through Candid's Funding Information Network, and the 990 record itself is free through the IRS, ProPublica, and Grantable's funder profiles.

What is a letter of inquiry (LOI)?

A letter of inquiry is a short request — often two pages or fewer — that describes your organization, the project, and the amount you plan to ask for, so the funder can decide whether to invite a full proposal. Many foundations use one as the first step; The Leon Levine Foundation, for example, accepts LOIs on a rolling basis and limits each organization to one per fiscal year. Prospecting tells you which funders are worth an LOI; the LOI is where the relationship starts.

Can I do grant prospecting for free?

Yes. Form 990 filings are public. The IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search hosts the raw filings, ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer makes them searchable by organization, and Grantable's free funder directory has the grant lines parsed into structured profiles you can read without opening a PDF. The difference between the free tools and the paid ones is mostly how much of the reading you do yourself.

Can AI do grant prospect research automatically?

AI can do the mechanical parts well: reading filings at volume, extracting grant lines, and comparing a funder's giving record against a description of your organization. It cannot judge a relationship, and it should not be trusted without the evidence attached — any suggestion worth acting on should come with the grant history that produced it, so you can check it. Treat it as a way to get to a short list you can verify, not as a decision.

How many prospects does a nonprofit actually need?

Fewer than most lists suggest. A short pipeline of genuinely aligned funders — where the giving record shows they fund your kind of work, at your size, in your place — is worth more than a long list assembled on keyword matches. The useful habit is adding a small number of qualified prospects steadily rather than assembling a large list once a year, because the underlying filings keep changing.