So we'll be sure and remind you of that as we leave the session as well. Welcome our guests for today's webinar, I'm really excited to have from the foundation center Kate Tkacik -- I forgot to ask you how to say your name! >> And Amanda Dillon, who are here to bring you great news of a new tool that will make a huge difference in the work you're doing for your community. So welcome Kate and Amanda, and thank you so much for being here. >> Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. And many thanks to WebJunction for hosting. This is our debut webinar for the visualizing funding for libraries project. So we're very excited to have seen the tremendous response not only to the launch, but to this webinar as well. As Jennifer said, I'm Kate Tkacik, I am manager of the funding information network here at foundation center. I'm calling in from our office here in New York. My colleague Amanda Dillon, who you'll hear from in just a few minutes, is calling in from Salt Lake City. Many of you may be familiar with foundation center, and our resources for the grant seeking and philanthropic community. It's likely some of you have used our flagship database, foundation directory online, and that's synonymous with our brand. But foundation center has a long history of working with libraries. We are even originally chartered as the foundation center library and for decades, our own in-house librarians, myself included, have provided public reference services from our five regional offices. We also partner with hundreds of libraries across the country and even globally through the funding information network program, which is the program that I'm I manage at foundation center. That program helps to get foundation center's grant seeking resources into the hands of nonprofit and social organizations that need them most. Given that history of working with libraries and the fact that I myself am a librarian, is why I'm so thrilled that we've been able to launch this tool. Which will hopefully give library professionals and library supporters the free access they need on grant funding data and grant seeking training so they can be more successful in their grant proposals. Last summer we were fortunate enough to secure funding through a Knight foundation news challenge grant. Some of you may be familiar with that project and process. It's not -- if not, I would encourage you to look it up. It was the second new challenge for libraries the Knight foundation put out. Out of nearly 600 submissions, ours was one of 14 fully funded projects by the Knight Foundation, so we're incredibly grateful to them in making this site possible as well. And just a few weeks ago on February 6th, we actually launched the project, which includes the microsite and our data tool, and it's now live. You can feel free to take a look by going to librariesfoundationcenter.org. I trust your ability toking tole back and forwards between the live site and this presentation. We're not going to be doing a live demo today, we're going to be clicking through some examples and screen shots on slides, so feel free to check out the site during or after the webinar. Just so you can get an experience for what it is like in real time. Once you reach that landing page, you'll see the navigation is straightforward and simple. You can use this page to jump into the data tool and we will walk you through that in a minute. Or you can click on the training link as well. You'll see on the screen shot this says maps here on the live site we've updated that language to say "data tool." So don't be confused, that's going to take you to the same place. If you click on training here or down farther on the microsite page, you'll be able to launch directly into our training page. So the news challenge process was really helpful in helping us determine the scope and needs of this project. So our original plan was just to create a data tool that's really one of the go-to priorities for foundation center. We want to make philanthropic giving data as open and available as possible. But the process in working with the Knight Foundation and talking with library professionals really revealed a need to incorporate trainings as well. And that is another strength of foundation center. We've been providing grant seeking training to nonprofits for years. And as a librarian I know there's a need to professionalize grant seeking for libraries. It's not a skill we tend to learn in library school, and many of our libraries do not have foundation groups established to support our needs. Time and again, librarians find themselves in a leadership role unexpectedly or wanting to secure funding for a new project, so we need to find that grant funding that we need to help us innovate and continue to deliver those services. And we really want to incorporate training to help make that easier. So over the course of this grant project, which runs from now through late summer 2018, we'll be offering a variety of training options, which include live webinars like this one, which will let us really showcase the depth and functionality of the data tool. And then we'll also be hosting a number of in-person training events. And those events are going to be held at professional conferences, professional library conferences like ALA, but also at local libraries around the country. I mentioned our funding information network, and we really want to leverage our own library network to host train the trainer events at the local level, either in libraries or at state and regionalized library association conferences. We'll also be working with keep partners like DPLA, digital public library of America, and leveraging their network as well. So we can make as many localized in-person events available as possible. We also run a -- wanted to recognize attending professional conferences is a privilege. Even being able to take an hour out of your day for a live webinar is a privilege that not ally bring professionals have. So the other piece of this we're working to develop is a freely accessible self-paced E-learning course, which will incorporate lots of foundation center key grant seeking best practices, but tailored for the library audience. So our hope is that this course would launch in June, just ahead of the ALA annual conference, and that was something that library professionals would be able to access on their own time that's really tailored to adult learners, something folks can come back to as they have new professionals joining their teams, or even new friends, groups that are wanting to help fund-raise for the library. So we'll keep you updated on the availability of that training, and when you visit our training page you'll see all the options as we are making them available. So that said, if you're following along on the live site or here on the slides, I'm going to click into the data tool. That will take you to the landing page for the actual data visualization tool. You're going to be greeted with a window that pops up and gives you a quick welcome and overview of the tool. One other feature we wanted to point out here is this green button that says learn how to use the map. By clicking that, you'll be able to follow along a series of tool kits that point out the different search features on this tool. So if you find yourself back on the site later this afternoon, or in a couple weeks, or if you wanted to share this with a colleague or maybe even your boss but you don't have the time to walk them through that, you can direct them to the tool tips and it can be a great way to reorient yourself or your colleagues to the functionality of the tool. But you can just also click right out of this window and jump directly into the map view. You've probably noticed I've been saying maps a lot, it says maps up here in the corner and it was on our landing page. And that's because this tool is based on the Foundation maps platform. It's a database similar to foundation directory online and individuals online, but this specifically as a platform means that foundation maps can be customized to display databased on different geographies or funding subjects. In this case, this project and the funding from the Knight foundation allowed us to create a custom map that would display data for libraries in the United States since 2006. That's the scope of this project. So when we say foundation giving data for libraries, what is included in this scope of data is any grant that's been given by a funder to a recipient that's tagged libraries. And in our taxonomy, libraries includes five types. That includes public libraries, academic libraries, school libraries and media centers, special collection and archives, which includes digital libraries, and government libraries. So this is in no way a tool that's exclusive for one sort of library. We've collected as much funding as we had in our databases from 2006 and made it available. Right now the scope is domestic for the United States. So a good way to sort of start thinking about this tool is to think about the sort of questions that it can help you answer as you approach your different fund-raising needs. And we've included some of those questions to help get you going in your webinar learner guide, so feel free to take a look at that as well. Starting most broadly and from this top view here, you might just ask, you know, how much grant funding has been given to libraries in the United States? And that's exactly what this first page here gets at. So you'll see as you want to orient yourself to the initial landing page for the map, you'll see across the top are your selections, so this is where you would include the geography you're searching or the different subject area that you're searching. Along the left rail here, you'll see different icons that represent different ways to visualize the data that you've selected. So right now in your selections all that is showing is united states. So this is just the library funding in the United States. So across the top you'll see all of the aggregate numbers. So you'll see the total number of grants, the total dollar value of grants, the number of funding, of funders, excuse me, and the total number of recipients. One thing I want to note about this, and something we see quite a bit, even as the geography changes for this to different areas of the United States, is again and again we see there are more funders than recipient libraries. And when we look at funding in different interest areas, this is really unusual. There are typically way more recipients than funders for any different given different funding area. So for libraries it represent as huge opportunity there. Are a lot of organizations that have a history of giving grants to libraries. And just as a quick aside, we've been working with two advisory groups on this project, one is a group of library professionals and one is a group of philanthropists that fund libraries. And one of the funders in that group has actually said they don't get enough grant requests from libraries, and they have to go out and ask for proposals. So just keep that in mind, that there are a number of opportunities available, and in your area there might be more funders than you even imagined. Below the aggregate numbers here, you'll see all of these different bubbles. So each of these bubbles represent recipients of library grants in a certain geography. So if you're on the live map you can feel free to click around in these different bubbles and you'll see they reveal the funding data specific to that region that the bubble is hovering over. And as you zoom in, you'll see the bubbles get smaller and smaller and localized over different areas. So I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Amanda, and she's going to zero in to showcase that for you in a specific geography. >> Okay. Wonderful. Hopefully you can all hear me. I believe -- [indiscernible] I just want to address one question that came up in the chat right away. This is where we start to dig in. Someone asked about looking at the United States and that that wasn't the full United States, and you're right, the map zooms to the 48 continental United States just so we can see those big, more clearly, but if you were to zoom out, which you can actually do, these buttons, that's right there, are how you zoom in and out of the map. So if you were to keep zooming out a little bit you'd be able to find Hawaii and Alaska. For this example, we're actually going to focus on Georgia, and as Kate was saying, a great way to approach this tool is by really thinking about what are the big questions I have. So that's how we're going to be presenting the information. Other than thinking about broadly what is philanthropic, what do libraries look like in the United States, a question I imagine most people are asking are, well, who are the main library funders in my region? So the way that you would focus in on your region is you could zoom around and play with the buttons, the plus or mineus buttons, or you could just directly go to location right there and you can type in a city, a county, or a state to have the map zoom in to that geography and also that would dynamically change all of these numbers in the four-box summary right here. So as you can see, in Georgia, looking at grants by recipients based in Georgia, we have a record of 359 grants, totalling more than $71 million, given by more than 112 funders to 74 recipients. So those immediately give asnapshot of what the funding landscape looks like for philanthropic supported libraries in Georgia. If you were to click on any of the bubbles, Kate, if you can go to the next slide, if you were to click on any of the bubbles, then this little pop-up window would appear, and again, it would provide you an even more detailed snapshot with the four-box summary of the funding situation in Fulton county in this case. By clicking on those funders, recipients, or grants, you would be taken to a list view. So you can either see the list view from clicking on those funder recipient grants links, or as Kate was explaining before, on the left is where you can navigate to the different views of the data on that. So in this case, we've selected here the list view, and so what we see is a list of funders, a list of recipients, and a list of grants. So part of the training that we're going to be giving as we continue this project is really about how to do better grant seeking. So not just how to find grants and funders that might support you, but also how to do good research on that. And so one of the things that this tool really allows you to do is to dig in to see who some of these funders are, and a little bit more information about them. So if you click on any of the funders' names in the list, you would pull up a profile on them. So in this case we've selected the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. And the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as you can see, is based in New York City, but they're showing up in this list because they've given grants to recipients or organizations for libraries based in Georgia. And so with all of the foundations you'll find mission statements, background information if we have it, and grant making areas if you were to continue scrolling down. And what's great is you also see this basic contact information, including telephone numbers, sometimes there's email address, most of the time there's a website if we have it, just -- only 10% of foundations we found in the United States actually have websites. So we have tried to include profile information on all foundations regardless of whether they have a website. And then you can also see their financial data. And this will have their assets, expenditures, and total giving for the most recent year. We're currently in the process of updating most of these, so we'll have 2015 financial data. This one has 2014. But what's really great about this is that you can start to really think about what is this foundation about, what are they looking for, what do they typically invest in, and we highly encourage you whenever they have a website to go to that website, to look at the application for how to submit a proposal to them, do they want a proposal right off the bat, maybe they want a letter of interest instead. So it's great to use this as a jumping-off point for exploring some of these foundations a little bit more. >> Just as you want to answer those questions that I think Amanda was getting at there about who is funding libraries and who these funders are, you'll also really want to understand what other libraries have been funded and probably even more importantly, what sort of library projects have been funded. So as you continue to browse through the list view, which you can do either through the side navigation or when you popped out one of those bubbles, foundation maps is super clickable so you can find yourself in a different configurative view a variety of different ways. You can browse over from the funders list to the recipients list. And what you'll see here is similar to a list of funders, of course, you're going to be seeing the list of library recipients. So just like with the funders list, you can browse and sort this based on the dollar value of grants, the number of grants that are given, and then you can also dig right into the grant details, or you can switch over to view the grants themselves in list view as well. So if I were on this page and I was looking at this list of grants, and I was curious to say, hmm, what are these grants I see three grants given here to Moorehouse college. I maybe want to learn more about the funding they've received or what those projects were that they've been working on. And as I click through, I can actually pull up the specific grant details of what has been funded, and this is where things start to get pretty juicy, I think, because this is where you're starting to see the sort of projects that have proven themselves attractive to funders. So here we're seeing in the grant details who the funder was, it was the Mellon Foundation, given to Moorehouse college. The grant amount was $1.5 million, awarded in 2007, for a grant duration of four years. Then we can see specifically what the grant was for. So it was supporting the Martin Luther King, Jr., collection at Moorehouse college. So in the more details over here on the right, this is where you're starting to see a bit more information, and these are definitely the sort of terms that will help you further navigate the tool which Amanda is going to talk about in just a second. So you'll see the different subjectses that were assigned to this grant, so you can see at the highest level this was an archival project, but it was also related to black studies and minority rights, you can see the related populations served, that was a part of this, as well as the support strategy which is the sort of funding that this project was given by the foundation. So this is really helpful as you're sort of mulling over a project that you might want to pitch that might seem like a really good fit for grant funding, and you might want to see what other grants have received funding in this area, or if I was needing to search for funders, what would I search for if I'm searching for a special collection? Then you can see a primary subject is indeed archived in special collections, so you can browse on that as well. So this will help you identify not only projects, but again, also libraries or other organizations that are in your area that you might want to collaborate with on a grant proposal, or even pick their brain on their experience working with a certain funder. So if you know that you're going to be approaching maybe in the Mellon Foundation, maybe a smaller foundation, you could reach out to the folks that you know at that library and say, what was your experience, what was the proposal process like? And that can be really helpful. And we'll talk more about the relational aspects of grant Sierra Clubbing and how this tool can help with that as well. -- grant seeking. >> Maybe you're at a point in your fund-raising where you're a little bit clearer on what exactly you're looking for funding for. You don't want to just see who is located in your area or who is -- you're like, I want to specifically find a grant that's related to a reading program we have at our library, and so I want to find out where their grants have been given for example reading promotion. So you have two ways of doing this. As you can see, this menu has been expanded here. And the way you actually expand the menu is by clicking the browse all subjects there. Even before you would click "browse all subjects" there is a box that is right there under subject area that you could start typing. You could type in "reading," you could type in "books," you could type in several different key words, and it would automatically match whatever we have in our taxonomy, which you can see here is expanded that matches what you're typing. In this case we've gone ahead and shown you that you can get to reading promotions through this top category of education, and then education services, and then selecting reading promotion. So once you select that, then you're going to get a list of several different grants that have been given to libraries for reading promotion. If you click on the recipients tap tab here, that will pull up a specific list of the recipients, again, we're sticking with looking at grants in Georgia to who has received grants for this kind of work in Georgia, and so you can see there's a couple of different organizations that are based there. And so you could click on any of them, or you could go straight to this detailed icon to actually pull up the specific grant example. And so in this case we selected the Atlanta Fulton public library as our recipient. This is similar to what the example you saw that Kate showed, but here you'll see the primary subject is exactly what we selected, reading promotion. And so you can see the grant description, this was specifically for educational programs for summer reading. So this is a great way to filter exactly on subject of the grant. I'm going to give you another example that shows support strategy. So this one is program development, but there's quite a few other support strategies that you can select. So we've shown how you can use the location bar here. To give you an example of how you can search by subject area, but under more filters, which is indicated by this "more" here, there are quite a few other ways to slice and dice and refine your search results. So as you can see, there's population served that you can select here, there is support strategy, there's grant amount range, if you're looking for grants, you know, only above maybe half a million dollars, because you don't want to do that much fund-raising but you want to secure a couple large gifts from maybe a capital project, you can sort the grant data by that. You can look at grant years and if you're only interested in looking at the more recent grant data, you're only going to select 2014 to present. You can also select by funder type, and this allows you to look at grants given by say maybe just community foundations, or maybe just independent foundations, or corporate foundations. And you can also search all the data by key words, which allows you a little bit more flexibility in case you don't find a subject area related to your topic here, you can search by key word here. But for our example, I'm going to click on this capital infrastructure, because perhaps your foundation is interested in supporting a new expansion to your library, or you're renovating the premises, or maybe you just need some physical resources, maybe some new computers. So again, all this information changes to reflect the search result dynamically, and we're going to continue to click through and pull up a grant description to show, again, how here support strategy, so we have equipments, selections, and acquisitions. So this is a subcategory within capital. And so we can see here the grant description is forbooks and materials, grant made through Muscogee county school district. So great way to refine the data, look at grants that maybe support your fund-raising goals in particular. >> Great. I'm actually going to go back a couple slides here just to show you where we're going next on the view. So we've taken you really through what the map view looks like, what our list view looks like, the advance search is pretty much the same as what you're going to see through the more button. Now we're going to start getting into some of the different ways that we can view this. And in particular, we're going to take a next look at charts. Just moving forward a bit here, so if I click to chart, and I didn't have any specific subjects attached, even if I had a geography, but no specific subject, the default for these charts is going to be for the five different library types that we have included in our data set. So you can see them represented here, it's a little bit zany, because these are trend charts, they're basic line charts, but this can really help you see funding trends over time. So each line that's represented here represents one of the different types of libraries in a certain area. So it can be helpful to see what types of libraries have received funding over time, it lets you identify years that have seen either really a high spike in funding, or a real lack of funding. And then of course you can click into these points to get more details. So if I clicked into sort of the tie point in this last round of funding in 2014, it pulls out the specifics of the funding that's been given to these five types of libraries, so you can compare that. Things are not so desperate right here as they might look with this drop-off, that just means there's been a lag in the data collection. And I saw there was a question about where this data comes from, and we'll get to that in just a few minutes. We can dig into that a little bit. But this is really helpful and just kind of enhancing your local knowledge of what funding looks like from foundations in your state, in your region, and then you can also layer on different subjects here as well. So if I actually switched my view and I selected bar chart, I can get a different view. So now we're seeing that we've applied some selection. So we're back in Georgia, and we're comparing what sort of projects have really received the most funding in libraries in Georgia. So all of these are reflected down here in the bar chart. So we're seeing that there have been funding that's been given to libraries, but also tagged in arts and culture, education, and science. And of course this is another helpful way to assess what sort of projects have been priority areas for funders, or of course for assessing where they're having gaps in support. So if steam or stem education is becoming a priority for your community, you can use these charts to I.D. what funders have or haven't supported those initiatives, and to see where the emphasis has been instead. These are also really helpful snapshots you could build directly into a grant proposal. And just touching on grant proposals, one thing we've learned from philanthropists again and again in our work with them here at foundation center is they really expect their grantees to be thought partners if not thought leaders, and tackling these different community issues. And so that means we as grantees, as library grantees need to understand the funding landscape and how it relates to our work that we're trying to accomplish in the community. So knowing these trends not only help you prep for proposals, but for meetings with funders as well. As we start talking about relationships that we're developing with funders, there is actually a way to help get at some of that by visualizing this data. So we're switching gears a bit from the straight view, the really straight -- more straightforward view of the data we've seen, and I clicked down here into the pathways example. So another key question that you should be asking and thinking about it when it comes to grant seeking, is what does our funding ecosystem look like? Who are our top funders? Who else are they funding? Who is funding organizations that are closely related to ours? So this feature is pathways, and really is a way to help get at some of that information. So again, you'll see the pathways icon on the left navigation, but when you click into this tool, this area at first will be blank. So the first thing that you need to do is to search for a primary organization or starting organization in the search field. And I recommend that you would start with your library. Your library might not come up. If you haven't received a foundation grant since 2006, you may not be in our database. If you do all of your fund-raising through a foundation or friends group, you might need to search under their name because that might be where it's organized in our data set as well. So in this example, we're back in Georgia and we search for the Atlanta-Fulton public library foundation. The way you orient yourself, you start from the left, and you start with the starting organization. And so when you're looking at this on the live site, and I'll show you a quick screen shot, you'll see animated arrows here that shows the direction of how the funding flows. So from the Atlanta Public Library foundation, we see their top three foundation funders represented in the next level. So as you move across you'll see other related organizations that the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library foundation supporters are supporting that are represented here in orange as well. And then finally, as you move across all the way to the right, this is where things get really interesting. These are prospects for your libraries. These are the list of funders supporting organizations like yours, but might not yet be supporting you. So this is really this aerial view of the funding ecosystem. And a way to start identifying new opportunities that you're related to. So knowledge of these funding relationships is another way to strengthen your appeal to the funder. There's typically as we know a big power imbalance between funders and grantees. But like so many other situations in life, knowledge is power, so having a sense of these established relationships and funded projects can really help you in making that case for support with funders. This is just a quick snapshot of what the animation looks like when you're actually in the tool, so you can get a sense, and these arrows move so you can see the flow of funding between the funders. And the recipient organizations. So Amanda is going to show us another way we have to visualize these sort of relationships in the funding ecosystem around your library and libraries like yours. >> So the bottom feature here, I don't know if you can see my red arrow, called constellations, really allows you to, as Kate said, kind of see and understand where your library fits into the broader ecosystem of funding and funding relationships. So once you click this on the map, it will actually start moving, it's a fun little animation, and you can pull apart these bubbles and move them and zoom in to see a little bit better. The magenta bubbles are representative of funders in the community and the yellowish gold bubbles are representative of the recipients. In which case most are libraries or library foundations or friends of groups. So as you kind of look through these different constellations, what you can see is who are the organizations that are very central in a network. Who are the ones who are connected to several other organizations, and as you actually hover on these different bubbles in the live tool, the connections will actually light up. It's very interactive once you're in the live environments. We highly recommend you check it out after this webinar. But you can also get a sense of who are these folks, maybe out on the periphery who are a little siloed from maybe some of the other central players, and perhaps if you find your organization out here on the periphery, you might start to think, maybe I can be more connected by getting in touch with some of these folks who are more toward the center, or perhaps what you might see is that maybe you're on the tail end of one of these linkages, and you're actually connected to several other organizations and foundations through a particular partner. So this is a good way to trace who you're connected to. We joke about this tool internally here at foundation center and call it the six degrees of separation. It's a Kevin bacon tool, because you can trace how many linkages you are from another organization in the ecosystem. And just one other note, the size of the bubble corresponds with the amount of funding that -- the organization is giving or receiving, so the larger the more money. If you click on tabular here, you can actually pull up a list of all of the organizations in this visualization. Different minds work differently, and it's easy for lots of people who actually see things in a list versus scattered about in the kind of hub and spokes view constellations gives, so you can look at all of the organizations in this list, and you'll be able to see by clicking on any of them or looking here how central they are to a network. So we use a lot of data science here at foundation center, and one of the things that that can tell you is by the number of organizations that you're connected to, just exactly how central you are to a network. So this is a great tool, again, to really explore and get a better understanding of who you're connected to, and how you fit in. >> Thanks, Amanda. So we've really explored a lot of features and functionality on the map here. So we've really run down all of these icons and different ways to browse and slice and dice the data, but we actually do have one more layer to add to this. And that is demographic data. So when you're on the map view, and we're back in Georgia, and Atlanta specifically, and you look in your lower right-hand part of the screen, you'll actually see a demographics button that won't be hidden behind this are you on the map button, so you'll be able to see that. And if you click on that, it will reveal a whole series of U.S. demographic data that you can lay over any certain area. So if your library, public libraries in particular, you may have a very varied sort of footprint that you're covering either for a city, or for a county or multidistrict, or something like that, so you can really zoom in on your area, and overlay these demographics. And we have a whole variety, and I think we have a few more than are even listed here. So this example we've selected to show the high school graduation rate. And we're still in this Atlanta region. So that overlay thing on the map, by clicking on the legend, you'll see here in the lower left-hand side, you'll get the chief reading the different colors that are represented on the map to show the diffidence TIFF of the data. So in this case, we're seeing what our neighborhoods look like in terms of high school graduation rates, and this instance we're seeing a few libraries that have been funded in the area that looks like have a pretty low high school graduation rate. If you're looking to do specifically an after-school program or teacher in the library program, you can be building this into your proposal. So it's just more fodder for your own -- for making the appeal and putting these projects together without having to track down other resources. So that can be helpful as well. And again, you can of course layer in different subject specific data. If you wanted to add in what grants have been funded in areas with a certain demographic that are also education project grants, you can do that as well. And once again, we have the button -- the bubbles popping up on the map, and you can explore by clicking into those bubbles once again, if you see something on maps, click on it, it will probably give you information. One of the reasons we love it. So if you drill down into the bubbles you'll see the grants that were given in that area as well. So a few people were asking how do we get to the map. This is basically just backing out from the different views we've been in. Once again, whenever you're on -- whenever you click into the funding map, you're sort of the default view will be for the map, and no matter what data you lay into your selection, you can view that data in different ways. By clicking back on the map button, it will take you back out to this sort of geographic view. And from there then you can click to lay over your demographics. But then if I click back into my list view, the map image would go away and I would see the list of funders, recipients, and grants in education in Atlanta, Georgia. That clean list view we looked at earlier. That takes a little bit getting used to. It does have a lot of bells and whistles and a lot of things to look at. So it's definitely -- take your time witness, remember that there are those tool tips there as well at the beginning that kind of walk you through that functionality again as you're sometime getting used to it. Amanda, do you want to point out the about and the facts? >> Sure. Just -- there's lots of good information, some of the questions that have been posted in the chat, which we'll verbally answer, but some of the answers and some of the questions can be found in the about and the FAQ. We've tried to make those sections as verbose as possible, and for those that jumped on late, that -- we have a tool tip guide for how to get through the tool, and that link can be also accessed through the about. And the contacts view too were lie -- our email address, libraries@foundationcenter.org. I'm happy to answer the first question that came up a little while ago about how specific grant information is gathered and reported to foundation center. So we have been collecting and organizing grant information for decades at this point for those that are less familiar with foundation center, and traditionally we collect this data from 990 and 990PF documents that are filed through the IRS. So all foundations to be considered foundation legally must report to the IRS on an annual basis what their spending, their grants on, where they're giving their grants. So foundation center combs through those 990 files, and we'll import that grant making data on to our platforms and into our database. In the more recent decade, wove actually started maybe actually past 15 years we've started asking foundations to collect -- to send us their data electronically and directly to us, so we don't have to go through the IRS. And what's great about that is that they are sending us data in more real time. So typically when we get data from the IRS, because it takes quite some time to actually process that data, we will get that maybe two years after the grant has -- has been made. Buts Kate showed on screen right here, grants that are submitted by the foundations to us electronically will have this E-grant symbol, and what's nice is they're able to really be specific with their grant description, a lot of foundations report their grant making to the IRS just for compliance, and it's not really to tell a story about their grant making. So this data that we get from foundations directly is a lot more robust, and there's about 1300 foundations who hand us their data electronically. But it's pretty much a combination of IRS data, data from foundations themselves, and sometimes we'll also get data from news stories about where foundations are making their grants. >> Thanks, Amanda. I think we're ready to start tackling some more questions, Jennifer, if you want to pass them along. >> Excellent. Yeah, just a little bit more on that -- where that data comes from. There were folks asking if their library isn't on the map, how do they get on there. Other than being -- given grants. Do you do any other manual process, or anything that you obtain from the grantees? >> At this stage, the grant making -- the data on the map is specifically transactional. So it's plotted on the map because we have a transaction, a grant. We've talked about possibly in a much later phase adding kind of like library locations to the map or something like that, but at this point it's just if there's been a transaction made to a library or a library foundation. >> Excellent. There was another question about when you were looking especially at the connections mode, and you talked a little bit about looking sort of down the line and where those connections are, but do you have any other recommendations for looking for other grant possibilities through that connections piece? >> Yeah. This is Kate speaking. One thing I would never overstate, and this is a really best practice we share with nonprofits as well, is if your library does not have a long and robust history of grant seeking and foundation fund-raising, look at a comparative library, and dig into the data and find out how they've been connected, who is funded them, what their grant giving looks like year over year, just really chase down comparable information if you don't have it yourself. And then reach out to folks. We are -- we're really blessed I think in librarianship to have such a great sense of shared professionalism. So reach out to folks, if you're just starting a foundation, or you're just considering going after that first foundation grant, reach out to a library in your state or in your region that has a similarsides size or maybe is doing similar projects, and see how they've been successful and definitely learn from them, because that local -- this data is amazing, and very powerful, but there's nothing like local context, either. Or the value of experience. So definitely reach out to folks and network with them as well. If you're not seeing yourself or your library on this map, but you know you've gotten some grants, get in touch with us, because there could be some lapse in data reporting as well. But also just don't lose states that you're not seeing yourself here, think about what you can learn from this and what other library and how they've been successful in their projects. >> And it seems like it would be valuable to even search knowing that you have such great demographic data, even looking outside of your state and finding maybe comparative communities, and even I know that a lot of foundations might be local, but looking at the kinds of funding that those local foundations do, then going back to your region and finding comparable foundations. So there's a lot of -- definitely a lot of different ways to go at it for sure. There's a great question, does the information you gather include grants from state libraries, or does that funding come -- does that reporting happen in a different way? >> That's a good question. Go ahead and field that one, Amanda. >> We can both chime in. We actually were -- we were about to launch this map with one year of federal data. So not data from state libraries, but data from -- >> it may have been -- it was IMLS data, it could have included state grants. >> We pulled back on that just because we only had one year of data, and we wanted to launch the federal grant making data with a little bit more years. So I think we're going to come back to that and so we don't have a lot of that on the map yet. But the plan is to add it. >> Excellent. That's really exciting. Yeah. I'm just completely blown away. I'm so excited, and I know I'm a bit of a data geek, but I think this is going to be so valuable to libraries. If folks have other questions, feel free to chime in. As Kate says, this is related to work that the foundation center has been doing for a very long time, so if there are other questions that come up related to other resources that you all provide, definitely chime in. >> I will chime in, I saw there were a couple technical glitchy questions. I would say definitely if you get kind of stuck at any point when you're browsing the map, it seems like being glitchy, just refresh. Definitely avoid using this in internet explorer if you can, we would recommend chrome or firefox for this. There is -- this is a newer technology for foundation center, so bear with us as there may be occasional glitches. It's still a fairly new platform, and there's a lot of animation, there's a lot of depth to this. So always just hit refresh if you get stuck. Another note on searching is always keep your search as broad as possible, and then zero in on the results just like any other database or best practices. In the subject areas that Amanda had featured earlier, and I'll try to navigate back to the slide here, we've included our full taxonomy in this. But that does not necessarily mean that for every term in our taxonomy there's a library grant that's also tagged with that term. So as you're browsing, if you're looking for really specific grants, you're looking to support a yoga in the library project, or something like that, you might not find a yoga in the library grant that's been given in your state or in your city, it just -- that doesn't mean it's not possible, it just means it hasn't happened yet. So you, always back out of that and look at other programming grants and things like that. We wanted to include the full scope of our subjects here, because we know libraries should not be out there pursuing grants for the sake of being libraries. We know that, because libraries are providing all these other services. So we do want you thinking about the different subjects and services and foundations are looking for that too, because you have shared interest in serving your communities. And that's one of the reasons why I'm really hoping this tool will position libraries in the conversation for philanthropy as the go-to resource to fund in their community for different initiatives. I think it's an easy win on both sides. So just keep that in mind when you're browsing the subject area. Don't lose heart that there is no data for it. Just try to keep things broad and be patient and play around with the different ways you can layer this on. >> Excellent. Yeah, and I did suggest definitely checking a different browser if you do run into those issues. A couple things that came up in chat, Susan mentioned that you all show grants made to IMLS from private funds, so IMLS funds might be divided to states and individual libraries for accurate reflection. I wonder too if you -- I know you have been working directly with libraries and have gotten some great feedback and input from libraries on the tool, what are your plans for collecting their stories, or case studies of how libraries are using the data? >> I think that's going to be an ongoing effort. We have the grant from the Knight foundation for this project until September 2018, and I saw another question about when you start -- when do you plan on starting the presentations nationwide. So now that we've lawrchged the tool, pretty much the next year and a half is going to be dedicated to training and getting the word out there. So we have this as Kate mentioned is our first public webinar, we're launching this. But we do have a couple other webinars planned that are -- that you can actually find on the website under training. And then we do have some in-person events lined up, so for folks who are attending DPLA fest in April in Chicago, Kate and I will be there. I will also be at the Texas library association annual meeting also in April. And Kate also has a couple of other events lined up as well that she can probably share about. >> Yep. We'll also be at -- myself and one of my colleagues from our funding information network will be at computers and libraries, we'll also be -- we'll be at a variety of places, we're really still working on developing the training component of this to make sure we're getting in as many places as we can, and we're not overprioritizing the large national conferences, because we know that's not accessible for everyone. One thing I saw a couple questions about the fees or pricing for this tool. Thanks to the Knight foundation this, is free and open to use. It's libraries.foundation center.org. Send us feedback. We'll continue to update that training page on the landing site with the opportunities as they arise. And hopefully as we're able to kind of leverage our existing library networks we'll get one in a neighborhood or a state near you as soon as possible. >> Excellent. I think there were a few more questions. We've got a little bit more time. There was a great question about grants specifically targeted to friends of the library, and I know as you were giving the tour we saw some library foundations, I know sometimes the friends function is a fiscal agent as well for that funding. So I don't know if you can -- if there's a way to filter for friends of the library. >> It would be about -- it would be about searching for funding for your library. If the friends if 501(c)(3) organization that does the fund-raising for your library and has a history of grants that have been given to it, you could search for that. But you wouldn't want to filter necessarily for supporters funding friends of the library group, because that might -- that is not probably going to take you in the direction you're looking for. You're looking for funders interested in supporting the work of your library and a friends is a support group of that. So you may see a number of friends groups and foundations pop up through here, because they are what is actually what was reported in that IRS 990 data by the foundation. So just to be clear, you want to think about what you're prioritizing is searching for the service or the program that your library will be providing to the community, and the friends group is a part of supporting that. If that makes sense. >> Excellent. Well, there's a recommendation that you should join the rural library conference in Utah. >> That's coming. >> It's not too far of a commute. >> Exactly. It's one of the best conferences out there. >> Those of us -- and you said that firefox and chrome seem to work best with the tool? >> It specifically works best for our products. >> Okay. >> Someone has a note that they're getting a very jumbled site. As Kate said, if you're seeing anything glitchy, I would recommend either refreshing your browser, closing out your browser, and then trying it again. >> Maybe even clearing your cache, just the typical run-through of stuff. >> Excellent. And I love you have the contact information, so definitely reach out if you have other specific questions. And I know that they will be eager to hear what you're experiencing and they can help figure it out too. >> Excellent. Well, I again am so blown away by this tool, and so excited, and I know that it's going to be a huge resource to the library community and to their funders. So we're really glad and grateful, very grateful to the Knight foundation and to the foundation center for all your great work on this. And I wanted to just before we leave remind you that Kate and Amanda worked on this learner guide that pulls together some next steps for you. I know sometimes it's overwhelming to remember everything that was covered, but this is another tool for you to take some more deliberate steps in looking at the kind of funding you're looking for and the process to get through the tools. So thank you Kate and Amanda for creating this as well. And I thank all of you for being here today. And I will send you an email once all the recording is available and also I'll ask as you leave to take a moment to provide feedback in the short survey that you'll be sent to. It's excellent -- an excellent way for us to share with our presenters about their presentation and it helps us guide our ongoing programming. So thank you for that as well. And within a week I will send you all a certificate for attending today, and again, the recording will be available for any of your colleagues and they can also obtain a certificate for viewing the recording as well. So thank you again, Kate and Amanda, and thanks to Juline our captioner for today. Everyone have an excellent day. >> Thank you. Thanks so; everyone. >> Thank you, Jennifer. Thanks WebJunction.