Today’s blog post comes from Stephen A. Price, a grant writing expert and co-owner of Educational Resource Consultants, central CA’s premiere grant writing firm.

Often, one of the most frustrating parts of applying for a grant is locating a grant suitable for your organization. It is common to hear that “There are grants about there waiting to be taken! Millions of unclaimed dollars go to waste every year!” If someone saying this to you gives off even a whiff of that used-car-salesman-tone, turn around and run. They are not helping you or your organization.

Successful grant writing depends on finding the right funding opportunity. You need to locate an agency interested in funding your project, but where do you start? There are probably a zillion places to search for information about grant funding opportunities and you could spend countless hours doing so. Let’s try to speed up your search.

A large percentage of grant opportunities in the United States are available to the public through one of two websites: grants.gov and foundationcenter.org. Grants.gov is a clearinghouse for information on grant opportunities for all grants offered by the United States government. Foundationcenter.org is a similar resource, but offers information about grants from private foundations, public foundations, and corporations throughout the United States.

Depending on your organization or project’s focus, one of these sites may be more suitable. Although there are many ways to search for funding sources, the Foundation Center and Grants.gov will give you access to a majority of the grant opportunities in the United States that could potentially fund your project.

But what good are resources without knowing how they work? To search for government grant opportunities, follow these 5 steps.

Step 1: Go to: http://www.grants.gov

This website contains free information about all grant opportunities put forth by United States government agencies.

Step 2: Click on “Find Grant Opportunities.” This will take you to a page where you may search for grant opportunities by keyword, category, or agency.

Step 3: If you are just learning to search for grant opportunities, I suggest that you click on “browse by category.” This is the option I like to use. It will take you to a page with a link for each type of grant the government awards.

Step 4: Click on the category of the grant opportunity you are searching for. This will take you to a page that lists all of the most recent grant opportunities in the order of the date they were announced.

Step 5: Click on the title of the specific grant opportunity you want more information about. You will be taken to a page where you may read a brief synopsis about the grant opportunity, download the full grant announcement, or download the actual grant application.

To search for foundation and private grant opportunities, follow these 3 steps.

Step 1: Go to: http://www.foundationcenter.org

This is the website of the Foundation Center, a nonprofit organization that has become the leading authority on organized philanthropy in the United States. It maintains the most comprehensive database on grant making foundations and corporations in the U.S. and the specific grant programs they offer.

Step 2: Under “Find Funders” click on “The Foundation Directory Online.” The Foundation Directory Online is a subscription database of over 98,000 U.S. foundations and corporate donors.

Step 3:  Click on “Subscribe Now” and complete the subscription process. You will be given the option to choose from five different plans, but I would recommend starting with the basic plan for $19.95 per month. For this price you will be able to search for grant opportunities by keyword from among the top 10,000 grant-making foundations in the U.S.

The Foundation Directory Online features a profile of each foundation that includes: its purpose or mission statement, program areas of interest, geographic focus, information to apply for a grant or submit a letter of inquiry, and descriptions of grants awarded by the foundation in the previous year.

Between these two sites, the time you spend searching for fitting grant opportunities should go down considerably.

Stephen A. Price is the lead consultant for Educational Resource Consultants (ERC).  He  discovered his talent in grant writing ten years ago, when he learned his father’s trade and Educational Resource Consultants was born. Over the past ten years, Stephen has written successfully funded grant proposals in a variety of areas including professional development, school improvement, service-learning, after school, mentoring, school technology, family literacy, youth fitness, violence prevention, and college access programs.  Visit Stephen at www.smartgrantwriting.com.