A useful tool for grant writers
Upstate Giving began as a personal effort – a small spreadsheet compiled while researching grant opportunities for a nonprofit organization in Rochester.
The spreadsheet kept growing, and it quickly became clear that the data could help nonprofits and grant writers across New York. So after months of poring over pdf files, we launched this free, public site in late November 2020.
Now, there are other sites online that say you can search by location of funder and/or grant recipient. We suggest that you compare their results with ours.
If you search the Foundation Center web site for Old Forge, for example, this is your (non)result page:
If you search Upstate Giving for Old Forge, this is what you’ll see:
Our emphasis is on local. (Which is not to say we limit our search to Upstate foundations. We look for local grants by foundations across the country.) Our objective is to help nonprofits find funders who care about their issues and their community.
If you don’t find likely funders in your immediate area, try searching the closest city. We separate grants by area of interest in the following urban communities:Every grant listed on an Upstate Giving page links to the source document, usually a federal tax return or a state Charities Bureau filing.
Community profiles also include other convenient connections to information useful in preparing proposals. For example, we link to current unemployment rates for each county and to federal data on school district finances and demographics. As the new Census rolls out, we’ll add links to those numbers as well.
For tips on how to use this site, see our help page.