The Best (Free) Places to Search for Grant Funding
May 17, 2018
Last updated January 2026
Knowing where to look for new grant opportunities is of central importance if your organization depends on grant money to survive. If your budget is large enough, you can subscribe to services that will send you alerts about new opportunities. If you are a small nonprofit or your budget is tight, a subscription service may not be feasible.
Fortunately, there are many free resources you can use to find open opportunities, some of which will even send you alerts. Below is a selection of resources you can use to learn about funders and open grant opportunities. While Google is often used for grant research, grant research using Google can be hit-or-miss (often many hits, many misses), so it has not been included as a resource.
Not ready to read the list now, but interested in referring to it later? You can find a downloadable PDF of this resource list at the end of this post. Additionally, you can find a variety of resources related to finding funding on our general resources page.
FOUNDATIONS
To find foundation funding, you can do several things. If you have the name of a foundation, and the foundation maintains a website, you can visit the website to learn about the foundation’s programs and application guidelines. If you do not have a specific foundation in mind, one or all of the resources below can help you generate a list of potential leads:
Foundation Center: Through hundreds of public locations in the US and internationally, you can access the Foundation Center’s funder database, Foundation Directory Online (FDO), and other materials for free. To see if there is a Funding Information Network location near you, type your location into the Foundation Center’s lookup form.
Guidestar: Guidestar and the Foundation Center merged to form Candid. Through these resources, you’ll find a database of form 990s. The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) form 990s and PF 990s are filed annually with the IRS by US-based nonprofits and foundations, respectively. An organization’s 990 can provide lots of useful information. If you are looking at the 990 of a nonprofit organization, the form will include a list of its funders during the fiscal year in question. If you are looking at a foundation’s PF 990, you’ll see the names of the organizations that the foundation funded during the filing period, the dollar amount given to each organization, and sometimes a brief description of the purpose of each grant. Information about a foundation’s past giving history can help you find out if they fund organizations like yours, which can speed up the process of creating your target funder list.
GrantStation: GrantStation is a funder database. The company produces two free newsletters, one that lists recent US-based grant opportunities (weekly) and one that lists international grant opportunities (monthly). Although GrantStation is a subscription service, you can access the database for free through other services. For example, if you have a subscription to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, as part of your subscription (premium level only), you also receive free access to the GrantStation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy is just one of the partnerships GrantStation has in place. You can also access GrantStation for free if you are a member of the Grant Professionals Association.
FundsforNGOs: FundsforNGOs offers both free and paid content. On the FundsforNGOs website, you can find information about recently released opportunities, organized by category. FundsforNGOs also distributes a free newsletter of newly released calls for proposals. If you purchase a subscription to FundsforNGOs, in addition to access to their funder database, you will also receive free access to webinars and other training materials.
Grant Gopher: Grant Gopher is a funding opportunity database that offers US-based organizations free basic searches and access to the details of their first five search results. With your free registration, you'll receive a newsletter that includes a selection of open grant opportunities. In addition, you’ll have the option to download up to five sample grant proposals under each funding category. An annual subscription ($147/year) is required to access all opportunity listings.
Grantmakers.io: Grantmakers.io is perhaps the holy grail of free resources and represents a generous gift to nonprofits, particularly smaller organizations that cannot afford a grant database subscription or lack access to one through a community center, such as a public library. Grantmakers.io makes the machine-readable IRS 990 dataset accessible to nonprofit professionals. The person behind the database originally created it for a friend. When he saw how useful it could be, he opened the database up to the public. Grantmakers.io is an example of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Using this database, which allows you to view millions of grants contained in the public IRS 990-PF dataset, you can see the names of the organizations foundations are funding, what they are giving money for (e.g., general support), and grant amounts.
Philanthropy News Digest (PND): PND is a service of Candid. On the PND website, you’ll find request for proposals (RFPs) listed by category. You can sign up for the PND newsletter to have RFP announcements delivered to your inbox. The site also includes philanthropy news and job postings. The website materials, newsletters, and RFP announcements are all accessible free of charge.
Terra Viva Grants Directory: Terra Viva is a resource for grant opportunities for projects in developing countries related to agriculture, energy, environment, and natural resources. On the Terra Viva website, you can access funder profiles and lists of recent grant opportunities for free. For the very affordable price of $15/year, you can receive email alerts about funding opportunities and access a searchable database of funding opportunities.
Community Foundations: Community foundations are a significant source of funding for US-based nonprofits. You can find a list of community foundations on the Council on Foundations website, organized by state.
Corporate Foundations: Many companies, multinational and local, have grant programs or provide in-kind donations. If you have access to a funder database, such as one of the ones mentioned above or listed on the Peak Proposals general resources page, corporate philanthropy programs are usually included as part of the database. If you do not have access to a funder database, one of the best (and free) ways to uncover corporate giving programs is to visit the websites of companies based in, or serving, your local community. Except for some multinational corporations, most corporate giving programs restrict their giving to communities where the company has a physical presence. You can learn about company giving programs (also known as corporate social responsibility or CSR programs) in your area through reading your local paper, reviewing local and regional business journals, and by noting sponsorships of local events. For more information about corporate giving, check out our post “Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Philanthropy.”
GOVERNMENT SITES
US Government (USG)
The single best resource for learning about USG grant opportunities is www.grants.gov, a free service of the USG. On grants.gov you will find opportunities posted by federal agencies, executive branch offices, and commissions.
To discover new opportunities, you have several options. You can visit grants.gov and search by agency, you can subscribe to the grants.gov RSS feed, or you can download the mobile app by grants.gov for IOS or Android.
If your organization is based outside the U.S., grants.gov is still relevant. Many federal agencies post grant opportunities open to organizations based outside the United States. To find out whether an opportunity is open to you, check the eligibility section of the opportunity listing.
A Note about USG Contracts
This blog post is focused on resources for identifying grant opportunities. If your organization is interested and able to pursue federal contracts, https://sam.gov/contracting is the place to go. After you create an account on sam.gov, you can set up alerts to learn about new postings related to specific opportunities.
State Governments (U.S.)
State government opportunities can be a little harder to track down. Some state-sponsored opportunities will appear in funder databases, just as federally sponsored opportunities do. Additionally, many state-based opportunities are actually federally funded, so you will find them listed on grants.gov. One of the most reliable routes to find state-level opportunities is to visit the website of the state-level department that oversees your program area. For example, if you work in domestic violence, you would visit the website of your state’s health and human services department to look for listings of funding opportunity announcements.
Government Resources Outside of the U.S.
For government resources for projects based in countries other than the US, you can find grant opportunity listings through government-sponsored websites and the websites of regional and multinational organizations.
Few national governments maintain a resource like grants.gov, which posts all government agency grants in a single location. If your organization is based outside of the U.S. and you seek a grant for a project based within your country, you should first visit the website of the government agency (local, regional, or national) that oversees or regulates the program area most closely related to your organization’s mission. Second, you should check the websites of the embassies or foreign aid offices located in your country, particularly if your organization is located in a developing country. Embassies and foreign aid offices will sometimes post funding opportunity announcements for local, community-based organizations. To find a list of the embassies located in your country, you can do a search on websites such as world embassy page.
INTERNATIONAL AID
Federal aid agencies fund the majority of international development work conducted around the world. In the U.S., the lead agency for international aid used to be the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID's grant opportunities were posted on grants.gov. For forecasted opportunities (contracts and grants), there was a very helpful database called the USAID Business Forecast. Unfortunately, on July 1, 2025, the Trump administration essentially dissolved USAID, with its remnants folded into the U.S. Department of State (DOS). In addition, the U.S. appears to be changing its policy on foreign aid, allocating less money to NGOs and more through bilateral agreements. Given the current state of affairs, it may not be worthwhile for organizations to devote much energy to tracking USAID or DOS postings on grants.gov.
However, the U.S. has always been one of many players in the foreign aid space. Other governments also have foreign aid agencies and departments that offer grants and contracts. Some agencies only fund nongovernmental organizations based in their home country, while others fund both domestic and foreign organizations to carry out international development and humanitarian projects. All major national aid agencies have websites that provide programmatic updates and list open opportunities.
You can find a partial list of foreign aid agencies on the Governmental Donors and Intergovernmental Agencies resource page of our website. A comprehensive list of foreign aid agencies can also be found on Wikipedia.
Another site you may want to bookmark is Bond, the UK network for organizations working in international development. While many opportunities are limited to UK-based organizations, others are open to organizations located in other countries.
Lastly, you can find information about international development opportunities on the site Devex. While you won’t be able to see the full opportunity posting for free, you can often see just enough information to be able to track down the full listing on the relevant funder’s public-facing website.
Regional & Global Bodies
Regional bodies and multilateral organizations such as development banks and UN agencies can also be a source of funding and contract work, particularly for larger or more well-established organizations. The sites listed below all have searchable databases of new opportunities on their websites (note: some require registration before accessing the database, but registration is free).
Examples include:
Regional Organizations
Global Organizations
The United Nations includes affiliated programs, funds, and specialized agencies, all of which have their own operating budgets, and many of which support grant and contract opportunities. To learn about new opportunities, visit the website of the UN agency that works in the area most closely related to your organization’s mission. Examples of UN agencies include the United Nations Development Fund, World Health Organization, and the World Bank. You can find a list of UN agencies on the UN website.
OTHER RESOURCES
In addition to the resources above, you can also track down potential funders and funding opportunities by subscribing to newsletters distributed by individual foundations and philanthropy news outlets. While some philanthropy news outlets require a paid subscription, like the Chronicle of Philanthropy, others, such as the Nonprofit Quarterly, allow access to the full text of at least some of their content without a subscription. Finally, to get the latest updates about specific funding opportunities, foundations, and government agencies of interest to you, you can set up a Google alert to receive an email when new content related to your topic shows up in a Google search.
Another free resource, especially relevant to organizations based in the UK, is Charity Excellence Framework (CEF). CEF offers a variety of resources, including a free funder database. Although primarily directed toward UK-based charities, some resources are applicable to nonprofits globally.
If you have a go-to resource for finding information about funders and funding opportunities, please let us know in the comments!
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Most grant writers have been asked at some point to “massage” unfavorable facts into preferred ones, or have seen their fact-based prose reworked by others into something that has the essence of truth but is not strictly true, or at least less transparent. To some, this may sound like business as usual and what you need to do to win a grant. However, these little acts of truth-stretching, which can take the form of exaggerations, omissions, and misrepresentations, can exact a cost.