The foundations that already funded organizations like yours
Every grant a US private foundation reported paying, taken from its own tax filing. Who got it, how much, and what for.
One report, $20. No subscription. Why averages mislead small nonprofits.
Rebuilt from IRS public grant data filings as new ones are published.
Why the expensive tools were never going to help you
They index foundations that write million-dollar checks, because the people paying $209 a month want million-dollar checks. If you run on $800K a year, those foundations were never going to fund you, and every hour spent reading about them is an hour wasted.
Funder Trail indexes the other end. A family trust in Missouri gives $900 to churches, thirty-four times a year. No directory carries it, because one $900 grant is worth nothing to a company selling enterprise seats. To you it is a realistic ask from someone who gives constantly.
Median, not average
Lilly Endowment wrote one check for $400 million. Look at what that does to the number most tools would show you.
The number that tells a small organization not to bother applying.
A quarter of what Lilly actually gives is this size or smaller. That is a grant you can win.
This is not one odd foundation. Across every grant in the index the average is $59,878 and the median is $3,500, and 72% of all foundation grants are $10,000 or less. We wrote up the full distribution and the method.
Foundations that give small, and give often
| Foundation | State | Grants per year | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seneca Foods Foundation | NY | 583 | $400 |
| The Ganger Foundation Inc | NY | 584 | $1,000 |
| Mountain America Foundation | UT | 583 | $2,000 |
| Slemp Foundation | DE | 543 | $2,500 |
| Bluescope Foundation North America | MO | 584 | $3,000 |
| Leo Adler Trust | OR | 561 | $3,000 |
| Gpd Group Employees Foundation Inc | OH | 568 | $3,500 |
| The Huisking Foundation Inc | NC | 597 | $5,000 |
Every name links to its full grant history, free.
Whether a funder supports religious organizations
Plenty of foundations fund churches and ministries without saying so anywhere, and some publish a policy they have never acted on. We do not read the policy. We read the grants they paid, and mark the ones that went to religious organizations.
Which foundations would fund your organization?
Pick your cause and your state. You get every foundation that has already funded organizations like yours, sorted so the ones you can realistically win come first, with what each one gives and who it has funded before.
Where this comes from
Every private foundation in the United States files a Form 990-PF listing each grant it paid: recipient, address, purpose, amount. The IRS publishes all of it for free as raw XML that almost nobody reads. We read it, clean it, and keep the history, because foundations change their minds and old filings drop off the web.
Guidelines change. Confirm with the funder before you apply.