Welcome our presenters for today.
I'd like to welcome Kate, I'm sorry, I forgot how to say your name, I don't want to say it wrong.
>> It's Kate Tkacik.
>> Kate Tkacik is here as the director of network engagement at the foundation center.
And also joining us is Ellen Jacks, she's the grants and reference librarian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Welcome to both of you, and I'm going to go ahead and have Kate get us started.
Thank you.
>> Thank you so much, Jennifer.
It's great to see so many folks tuning in today.
We're very excited shortly after we launched this project last year, we were actually able to do an initial webinar with web junction, where we went into real detail in the actual data tools that we're going to show you a bit of today.
So we're excited to kind of follow up on where we're at with the project, and also to set next steps in sharing some information that we think is really important for library professionals that are going out for a grant.
And I'm very excited to be joined by Ellen Jacks today, she is not only a friend and colleague in the library world, but one of the foundation center's partners, she's -- her and her library are part of the funding network, and they provide -- through that program she's providing support to students and faculty working with grants and also with the general nonprofit community in Madison and supporting their information needs as well.
So for those of you who aren't familiar with foundation center, some of you may have heard of foundation center before.
If you have any experience with fund-raising, you probably think of foundation center as being relatively synonymous with foundation directory online, or FDO.
For those of you who aren't as familiar, it's a nonprofit, we've been around for a little over six years, and essentially we collect, analyze, and share funding data in order to support the work of the social sector.
Usually this turns into supporting philanthropy and helping them being more effective and efficient in the work they're doing, and then helping nonprofits have access to data that they need to secure grants and do their good work.
We also have a long-standing affiliation with libraries, like I was saying, the library Ellen works with is a part of that information network, and we have been working in partnership with libraries for nearly as long as we have DNR we also continue happily to hire a number of librarians ourselves on staff, I myself am a librarian, and we have folks that are great champions of libraries and foundations as well.
And that really played in an important role when the Knight Foundation launched a new challenge back in 2016, a new challenge grant process for libraries.
Myself and a colleague submitted our idea to build a custom funding data portal just for libraries.
We really recognized that libraries and library professionals don't get a ton of support through library school around what it takes to secure funding for your libraries, some schools do a great job of that, for some it's not the case.
So many professionals find themselves in a leadership role or in a position of wanting to start a new initiative at their library.
And they're really limited on the resources they have to do for that.
So we were lucky enough to secure a grant from the Knight Foundation to build this data portal, but in addition to the portal we were also in our conversations with Knight we recognized there's that need for training the library professionals as well.
So we may be able to gather the data, but how do you actually secure the grant?
Another part of this project is also just developing the training opportunities to go along with it.
I'm going to talk more about the training opportunities, like the one you're part of today, when we look at the portal and the data tool.
And I also will share a couple much the initial findings that we're looking at.
We are actually in the process of developing an info graphic campaign where we've taken a much deeper dive into the data that is available on the funding map, and that's been a pretty exciting thing to see so far.
And also challenging in some respects.
I know many of the folks that are on our call today may be calling in from smaller and more rural libraries, and what we're seeing in the preliminary analysis of the philanthropic funding data is that rural libraries are getting around 6% or so of the overall philanthropic funding pool.
But it's important for us to start to take a hard look at the reality of some of these trends and insights so we cannot only be aware of that ourselves within the profession, but to take that information to philanthropy as well, and see where we can start to close the gap for some of our libraries that are not in large metropolitan areas, and so on.
So before we get into that, one of the -- some of the feedback we've been hearing both after our webinar with web junction last year and generally as we're sharing this tool, is the need for some general information around grant seeking.
So for the next portion of the presentation today Ellen and myself are going to take you through some of the most important things that you need to know to secure grants for your libraries.
That will include a brief demo of the data tool as well as again a look at some of the key findings that we found there.
But for now I'm going to start -- we're going to pass the ball over to Ellen, and she's going to kick us off with some of those key things that every library needs when thinking about approaching a funder for a grant.
>> Great, thank you, Kate.
So as Kate mentioned, we're going to start by taking a look at several important things you need to know about grant seeking, hopefully while demystifying some of the biggest myths for looking for grants, with a focus of looking for grants for libraries.
The first ones, you can't survive on one funding source alone.
A lot of people think all they need to do is get a few big grants to support the nonprofit organization or library, but it's important to know it's helpful to have a diverse funding  pool.
So to give an example of what that might look like, here is a look at private sources of support for nonprofits in the U.S., you can see that the -- foundations and -- corporationing together account for a modest portion of charitable giving.
This is a common myth that you need those few big grants.
The vast majority of private giving comes from individuals, so it can be people like you and me who give to their libraries and favorite charities.
However, we know yours look might -- might look different, they might come from a single source like a municipal or state agencies.
Public libraries have funding from state and local agencies, academic school library budgets are part of their larger institution and if you're at a public University, or a school, this may mean you can be tied into state funding plans.
Special collections and archives may be funded through a large grant or series of grants, which could be guaranteed for a set number of years, but again, the location of that special collection and archives is also important.
For instance, here in Wisconsin, Madison, we have the state historical society library and ar Keanu Reeves, which means it's also very tied to state budgets.
That said, you can always increase your funding pool by continuing to cultivate your individual donations as well as looking into foundation grants.
It leads us to point two, looking into foundations.
It's important to note that not all foundations are alike.
So foundation often say if you know one foundation, you know one foundation.
It just means all foundations are different with varying sizes, interests, and motivations.
Let's take a look at some of the common foundation types.
Let's start by noting that the term foundation and organization name does not necessarily mean it gives money away, some private foundations with significant grant making initiatives don't have the word foundation in the name at all.
In addition, there are several types of grant makers.
Private foundations are the type that most people probably have heard of, and there are three major categories.
Independent, company sponsored, and operating.
Independent foundations are grant making organizations whose funds are generally derived from an individual or group of individuals they include the family name, like the gates foundation, Kellogg, Ford, MacArthur, but the vast majority of them are small foundations, and many of which are referred to as family foundations because of the high degree of family involvement.
Some of these don't even have a staff, which is reason why some may only accept applications by invitation only.
You've probably run into that in some of your seeking before.
But a couple other examples regionally, there's the Nash family foundation in New York, the talker family foundation in Austin, both examples of family private foundations.
Company sponsored foundations also referred to as corporate foundations, they're also private foundations, but their grant funds are derived from the contributions of a for-profit business.
So these types of foundations, you typically retain close ties with the donor company, but it is an independent organization and has an endorsement, board of directors, and is subject to the same rules and regulations as private foundations.
Very common examples of a company sponsored foundation and local -- are local energy companies, and sometimes health care companies, such as HCA foundation in Tennessee.
One type of foundation that works a little differently is the operating foundation.
An operating foundation may award some grants, but the total is generally small relative to the funds used in programs.
In other words, in operating foundation is set up to run its own organization.
And a very common one that we see for libraries are friends groups.
Another one -- so not all libraries may have a nonprofit status, and we'll talk about that in a little bit here.
So a lot of them might refer to their friends group and use them as a fiscal sponsor, fiscal agent, and another one you might have access to if your library has a foundation.
So these are organizations that are set up to help you, but also can be a great source for additional funding.
In addition to private foundations, there are a few other types of grant makers, we've already seen that some corporations set up their company sponsored foundations, while others give directly through what's known as direct corporate giving programs.
These are grant making programs established and administered within a profit making company.
So it's not their own separate organization.
And they're generally directly related to the current company's profits.
It's difficult to research, but it can be a good source for in kind donations.
The last category of grant making -- grant makers are public charities.
Grant making public charities sometimes called public foundations or public charities, are generally supported substantially by contributions from individuals, could be some corporations and foundations, and they're funds from a variety of source instead of a single source.
In a couple of examples of these are community foundations and population or issue oriented foundations.
Community foundations make grants for charitable purposes within a specific community or region, and there are frequently a great source for library funding.
So locally for me the Madison community foundation has set up a permanent campaign to support humanities programming and resources in the south central library system.
So that's one place I encourage you to look, is there a community foundation in your general region, and what do they support.
Another type is the population or issue oriented foundation.
This could be something like the global fund for women, or the Michael J. Fox foundation for Parkinson's research.
They're set up to help a particular issue or population type.
The in terms of libraries, one issue oriented foundation may be the dollar general literacy foundation.
Part of why we like to take a look at private foundations is that they must give money away.
They're related by the IRS to give away 5% of their prior year's assets, it can be averaged out over a couple of years, but they have to report that annually to the IRS who they have given to and how much, so the good news is, no matter what's going on in the economy, the private  foundations have to give money away and they have to itemize them, which is a great source of information and data.
>> I always, if I can jump in quickly, Ellen, I always like to pause on this one and I had forgotten to tell you about this anecdote.
We have heard from a library funder that this is they have had to ask libraries to apply for grants, proactively, because of this very reason.
They had not given -- they were trying to give away what they need to give away in a year, and we'll talk about this later in the presentation.
But understanding that foundations must give money away and not being shy or afraid to ask, it's very important.
>> Thanks, Kate.
We've also heard that a lot of foundations say that libraries don't ask for enough.
So ask for what you need, make sure -- Kate will talk about that a little further down the road  here, but approach foundations, ask them for money.
Especially the private ones that have to give these funds out.
They're here to help.
So with all that in mind, let's look at some of the motivations.
We know there are different types of foundations you'll be researching and approaching, so let's take a quick look at some of the factors that motivate them to give.
With private foundations, they mainly want to fill specific philanthropy goals and interests, and they support a variety of issues and general use and objective process.
And just remember that each foundation will have specific goals and interests just like you do, just like you have different programs for particular population groups, or goals that you want to achieve within your libraries, so this is one of the main purposes of doing thorough research before you approach potential funders, that way you can better identify how you can align your goals and interests with theirs.
In terms of corporate funders, they tend to have, as you can imagine, more of just pure -- just a pure philanthropic interest.
They often give money to nonprofits to advance their business objectives, increase their visibility, enhance their image, like giving back to the community where their employees live and work.
There's a lot of focus on branding, but also corporate social responsibilities, so they want to be seen as a leader in particular issues.
Finally, grant making public charities usually want to make a specific impact in communities or regions, that's why the community foundations come in, or specific foundation groups or issue areas.
As you're thinking about projects you have, you can think about who might benefit from the work that you're doing.
So if you're launching a literacy campaign, who's it for?
Is it for a particular age group or particular demographic?
So you can try to find population groups that while they might not have a huge history supporting libraries, they have a big history of supporting the people you want to serve.
So that's why we like to take a look at these motivations, it can help you align interests.
That really takes us to this point four, that grant writing is never just about the need of your library.
Grant writing is a competitive process, so when approaching funder support you have to prove you're a credible nonprofit organization, and you have the capacity to carry out a well-planned idea, purpose, or project.
And part of that credibility is being a legal nonprofit, I know that not all of you may be, but many friends groups are, they could be your fiscal sponsor, meaning they are the legal nonprofit applicant, could be your library foundation or maybe even partnering with a different local nonprofit, so have someone be your fiscal agent if you need that, and that means that they'll be the legal nonprofit applicant, but the funds will be funneled through them to you to help support your need.
But also just show it's not just about the need of your organization, but how are you helping  people?
How is what you're asking for going to change lives?
For example, if you are asking for money to help renovate your library, to hire new staff, what difference will that make in your community and to your patrons?
How will it help you to advance your library's mission?
And how does your project or need tie into the funder's mission and motivation?
So, in other words, what is in it for them?
Again, not just about the need of your library, but how can you help create this win-win proposition with the funding partner?
And with that, I am going to pass the ball back over to Kate so she can talk about how to put some of these ideas into action.
>> Thanks, Ellen.
I think just kind of having that understanding, going into an approach to a funder is really important to have that background and that, again, it could be introductory for you familiar with the fund-raising process, but for those of you who aren't, just really understanding when you're approaching a foundation, or any funder, it's all about doing your homework first.
So knowing the type of foundation they are play noose that, and what their motivations are.
Homework should come relatively naturally to us, because we're librarians, and we're never going to be approaching a grant maker or a funder unprepared.
What we want to do is know as much as we possibly can before we're making the ask for a grant.
And the reality of this is that it can take some time.
And so that's another part of the process, and we have another training that Ellen and I both have delivered at times around fund-raising planning, and so knowing if you are going to get -- dive into the world of grant making, knowing it's going to take -- it takes money to make money in some ways, and that money could be even just a staff resource time to do some research, write the proposal, and so on.
But the only way to really successfully secure a grant and the lasting relationship with a funder is to do your homework.
Now, the whole purpose of delivering a visualizing funding for libraries tool to librarianship is to help make homework just a little bit easier for everyone.
When we are talking about applying for a grant or approaching a funder, we really need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
There's a saying in philanthropy, if you know one funder, you know one funder.
If any of you have experience especially with independent or family foundations, they're driven by a variety of motivating factors, whether it's different areas that the funding family once lived in, or different members of the family might have their own foundations with their own interests, or a play space foundation A. community foundation may only be in one small area.
So there is no writing one proposal and shipping that out to a variety of funders.
You really have to tailor it, and again, you're making the tailored approach by doing that back end research.
Another part of doing your research is really understanding what you're asking for.
Understanding how much you're asking for and then what funders you can approach for that amount.
You can actually -- and once I get into the demo you'll be able to see, you can view a funder's history of giving and the size of grants and the average size grants they've given for different types of projects.
You can compare a couple years worth of grants lists, when available to see if there's a giving pattern, and again, like Ellen was saying, we have heard that libraries tend to not ask for enough.
To not include the true costs of delivering a program perhaps.
Or to really limiting the ask.
And I would encourage you to always present the full budget to a funder.
Even if they cannot fund the entire budget, it's really important to be realistic about the amount of dollars that you need to accomplish whatever program it is you're trying to get off the ground.
The worst that could happen, if a funder is truly interested in supporting your project, the worst that can happen is they will say we can't meet the full amount but here's where we can buy into this.
And then being able to take one interested funder into your next ask to say we already have one  funder that is participating in $10,000, this $25,000 grant, would you meet us for the remaining 15 or so on.
So really it is important to have that sense of what you're looking for, but also what the funder's history of giving is so that you're asking for that right amount.
And all of this is about making the right match.
Match making is a big part of grant seeking.
It can seem goofy to compare it to the dating world, but there are many things that are true about it.
It's about matching what the funder's interests are with what the library is trying to accomplish in the community.
One of my major goals of this project is to really elevate libraries as a go-to funding resource in the community that any funder or foundation is interested in.
Because I think that natural alignment exists, but you still have to convey that to the funder, and in order to effectively convey that you are able to help advance their own mission, and advance work in the areas they care about, you have to truly understand what their mission is, what they've cared about, what they've funded and supported in the past.
And the ultimate goal of the match is not only to establish funding, but to create a partnership to solve problems, and address issues that both of your organizations care about.
And that's really quite key to the whole grant making process.
And that truly can apply both with an institutional funder like a foundation, or a corn ration, but also with an individual funder.
I know that's not what we're addressing in this webinar, and there are resources out there on individual giving and hopefully you have some folks that are able to help work on that.
It's your -- at your libraries.
Because we know individual giving plays a large part in the private funding makeup which Ellen point out earlier in the slide.
For now we're actually going to go ahead and go over to the data tool I've been alluding to.
This is a free live resource, it launched back in February of 2017.
So like Jennifer was saying, if you wanted to go to libraries foundation --  libraries.foundationcenter.org you can, but I'm going to share my screen, and then go ahead and walk you through a demo of this tool.
You should be seeing the visualizing funding for libraries landing page.
On your screen here, and you'll see it says track and find funding for libraries, and there are two different navigation options.
At the top you can go right to the data tool or to the training.
Our landing page is fairly straightforward.
This is just a microsite with a brief description of the project that we've been working on.
It does pull in some aggregate data that we've been tracking since 2015, so these numbers have  inched up as we've continued to gather data from grants that have been given since 2015.
So you can see it's showing funding by different library types, and I'll show you how you can break that out in the actual tool.
So we can see at a high level public libraries and collections archives are special collections are pulling in the largest dollar amount of grants, followed by academic libraries and school libraries and media centers.
Of course something to note that many of the projects archives and special collections are often housed in academic libraries, but given the way the data is quoted, we're seeing this  represented separately, and it may be separate archives, government archives, and so on.
But there's a bit of overlap between these two funding areas.
For those of you that are working in school libraries, this is something that definitely stands up to -- stands out to me as the limited support that we have for school libraries coming from philanthropy.
So hopefully we can see that number increase as we continue to get some visibility through this tool and others.
Just briefly to show you here on this microsite, we do have a training tab, and this is where we will be updating this area soon with also including an E-learning, self-paced E-learning module that anyone, it will be free and accessible just in the way this tool is.
And it will follow along similarly to the outline that we've actually laid out here today, but much more in depth around the lie -- the 10 most important things the library needs to know about grant writing.
That will probably be closer to the fall we'll be releasing that module.
Originally we thought we'd have it out early in the project, but like so many projects we work on, things get delayed, but it is still coming, if you had heard in our previous webinar that we would be rolling that out.
It's still in the works, so we're very excited about that.
Now I'm going to jump in straight into the actual data tool.
When you get to this page, you'll see this is a little pop-up screen that has a little instruction, so if you come back and you can't remember how to use the map, this will actually take you through step by step the different search fields.
For now I'll close it out because I know what I'm looking at here.
You'll see we have a map of the continental United States, the map does include Hawaii and Alaska, they're just off screen a bit.
Given the width and size of this viewing pane.
So we see the aggregate data, and this is funding that has been given to libraries, and libraries in this includes public libraries, academic libraries, special collections and archives, school libraries, and media centers, and government libraries.
That's the library types we're talking about.
We'll see the total number of grants this data is going back to 2006.
You see the dollar value of grants that have been given to libraries, the total number of funders, and then the total number of recipients.
So you can view this in a variety of ways, and I'm going to dive in in a minute.
You can click into the different bubbles, over each state, and that takes you to a different region.
I'm going to get into all of this.
You can change the state by the location field, you can apply different subjects, or sort by library type.
And then across the left rail here, just to orient you to how the tool works, this is where you change the way that you view the data.
So across the top, this is how you change your inputs for the actual search, you can also switch to view by the location of the funder.
I'm going to keep things on recipients so that -- and across the left rail, that changes the way you view the data.
So if I switch into the list view, I can see right off the bat that my data is organized by the total dollar value of grants.
I'm actually going to work with my programmer to see if we can get this switched around so it automatically you can see the -- that this is a result of the number of grants that have been given.
So you actually see where we had the other search, you saw some of the big funders right at the top there, but what you really want to know is who are the most active foundations, and this is one of the other key insights that we've seen from the funding -- from this data tool so far.
The most active funders, the funders that are giving the most number of grants to libraries, tend to be community foundations.
So at the top we do have fidelity charitable gift fund, which if you've heard of that you're seeing that come up in a number of different charitable lists, they're the largest charity in the world right now, and it is a fund of individual donors, so it's not as accessible as  foundations.
It's followed by the to beer foundation, but after that you're seeing a lot of these place states and community foundations  that are giving a large number of grants to the libraries communities.
So that's one of the insights we're going to dig into, and it's the way community foundations are supporting their local libraries, because you can see they're really active funders.
You can also switch this around to view in the list view by the recipients, and then the actual grants.
And we're going to look at them specifically.
I'm going to go actually back to my map view and apply a location.
We'll just drill down into Texas.
It is a type -- you can drill down to the county level, to the city level, and we have congressional districts, if you put in a ZIP code it will work, but it will default to the alarmer area, so, for example, I live in Brooklyn, if I put in my specific -- go to my neighborhood in Brooklyn, it will default to larger Brooklyn.
So if I apply Texas here, I can see I've got all sorts of also funding bubbles for all the libraries that are in Texas.
I'm going to apply a specific subject, and I'm going to search for public libraries here.
You see it comes up in my drop-down.
I can also browse for different subjects that I'm looking for.
In the drop-down libraries falls under information and communications, so that's where you see all of the library types, we have our academic libraries, special collection, and archives, government libraries, I've selected public libraries so you see that come up there.
We also have digital collections and institutional archives listed under special collections if you want to drill down super specific.
But I'm applying public libraries for now.
So I can zoom in on to the different areas of my map.
It's all very clickable, it's just quite fun.
I think.
So if I were to, for example, if I'm looking at Lubbock county I can click into that bubble and I get the information available, there were four grants given there to libraries, I can pull up the funder list here, so I can see what foundations have given to libraries in Lubbock county.
If I want to see the actual details of the grant, so if I want to see a little over $6,000 grant that the TOCKER foundation gave, I can go to the grants tab and click on the foundation.
They gave to school county libraries this grant, which was specifically for the grant title with technology and book drop and the grant discussion was computers and equipment.
So I can actually see the amount of dollars that were given and for what project they were given.
I can close out of that, go back to my list, play around, if I'm done viewing this in the map level, which I can continue to zoom in on a specific area, there's all sorts of ways to play and slice and dice the data.
When you have one area that is served by one library, you'll see less -- you'll see less data as you get down to the ground level.
But you'll still be able to zoom in.
Then I can also switch to my list here.
And again, when I'm in my list view, I can then sort on a variety of factors, but I always recommend sorting by the number of grants given, so we're seeing who the most active funders are.
To know who is most likely to be giving grants to libraries in the area that I'm at.
This is where you start to build a list and start to research the funders and what grants they've give dwroan libraries.
Who they've supported, what the size of the grants are, what the types of projects are.
This area where you explore the list.
And this is really classic prospecting.
Again, you can slice and dice this data in a variety of ways, once you hit philanthropic funding more tab, you can sort by different population groups that are served, you can sort for a specific grant range amount if you know you're looking for a certain size.
Support strategy I think is an important one, especially for those libraries that are going out for building and renovation campaigns.
You can actually apply this search and be able to see who are the funders that have supported  building if you have a larger project underway like that.
And again, the reverse strategy is also true, if you're not specifically looking for a specific  funder, but maybe you're just curious, how did this library -- this library built?
You can actually search for their name and see if any of their grants came up, if they received grants from foundation, and be able to I.D. those funders as possible prospects.
We also have as I'm going to skip the advanced search because it's the same, it's just a form version of the search that we have across the top, if you want to build out that full search in one page, you can do that.
Then we have our chart.
So again, we have changed the data, we're still looking at public libraries in Texas.
But now we're looking at charts, and this is a great way to see doing the research to be able to see the trends over time.
One important thing to note is that foundation funders, especially those that might be used funding a library, or to whatever cause that you care about, that you feel is related to the work they're doing, but maybe they haven't funded in a certain area, maybe it's a major -- maker space or something like that.
You want to be able to be the expert, to be able to answer their questions on what's going on with trends and whatever it is that you care about in your state, and elsewhere.
And a good way to do that is to be able to say, what the funding trends are for certain areas over time, and how it compares.
So there's a trend chart which shows the up and down of funding, by different issue area, and you can click into this and see what the grants were that really may be increased funder one year, or who the funder was when funding was down.
And you can also create bar charts and you can layer in different types of subjects here.
So I could add academic libraries, it's going to be a small comparison.
So we can comparatively from 2006 to present, public libraries have dramatically outpaced academic libraries in Texas in the number of grants received.
So if that's -- that's just an example.
You could layer in different areas of education, the arts, health, things like that to demonstrate, okay, there's been a large number of arts grants given versus science grants to libraries.
Those are just the different ways you can go through this.
I'm going to take academic libraries out of my selection at the top, and show you a couple more things.
The second -- I would say critical part of this project, of the grant seeking process and what I want to convey when I'm talking to folks about this project is that fund-raising is incredibly relational.
There's no way around it for those of you that have fund-raised before, it is really -- you may be frustrated sometimes when you hear things like, you have to know someone, and while that -- you may not need to know someone at every foundation, it doesn't hurt to find some way to network their way in, and if it's not networking your way into receiving a grant, at least networking your way into making the foundation aware of the work that you're doing in some way or another.
And there are a few ways you can do that to start to understand relationships in this tool.
The first one is pathways.
And pathways in this case you actually want to pick an organization to start with, so in this I was looking up another library in Texas here, so the alpine Public Library.
So if I would select an organization to begin with, now I see alpine Public Library here on the  left, and these in purple, everything is color coded so your funders will always appear in purple, are the alpine Public Library top three funders.
Now, after that we see an orange again, these are other recipients, other libraries, so these are related organizations to alpine Public Library.
And this list are the foundations that are funding these related organizations, but may not be  funding the alpine Public Library.
So this list becomes a prospect list.
And not only does this become a prospect list, this becomes -- this is a real relationship environment.
This is an opportunity where you can work your network, say do I know someone at the Austin Public Library?
Do I know someone at Coleman Public Library?
Maybe I can talk to them about their experience and working with some of these other foundations.
Maybe I can -- we feel that it can often feel competitive if we're all going out for the same small pot of dollars, especially if we're in the rural areas, where we're sharing a much smaller pot of the overall dollars.
But again, relationships are key, and to be able to demonstrate relationship or collaboration, or something else to a funder and some connection they can draw, that's important.
So being able to have a sense of the funding relationships and possibly have an opportunity to find out more about that funder through relationshipping you already have is really important.
And then finally, one of the last features that I'll show you before we jump back out and move along is constellations.
This is a little tip on how to read constellations since it can be a bit dizzying, but this is  really showing the relationships between in this case public libraries in Texas and their  funders.
So we can see no surprise, Tocker foundation is hugely -- they're dedicated to serving rural libraries and we can see that demonstrated here over and over again.
And we can see these connections between the libraries as we trace out.
Not everyone has a networked mind, so this may not be meaningful to everyone and that's totally okay as well, but to some folks this will resonate when you're looking at specific areas of  interest.
I look at things, you know, like we can see the Tocker foundation is supporting this library, or you can see maybe some are more isolated in these funding libraries.
So I can see the El Paso Public Library isn't connected to another funder in this group, but there might be an opportunity to network in or some of these -- this Public Library is being funded by an organization that is supporting another library supported by Tocker, so they're just a couple paths away, again, from Tocker.
Being able to look at these, and when you see one of these constellations in context where you're located, this will make much more sense.
Understanding the landscape and understanding how important relationships to fund-raiser are, really can't be overstated.
So I know many of you may have more questions on the actual tool.
I would refer you back to our earlier webinar that Jennifer has shared from Webjunction, which is a solid 45 minutes, solely dedicated to demoing this tool, so there's a lot of resources there as well.
For now I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing and jump back into my presentation.
So again, as I was saying going back to kind of these things that we need to know about grant  seeking, you don't need to know someone necessarily, but you want to take advantage of every opportunity to help get your foot in the door and to help raise your proposal to the top of the stack.
Most libraries -- excuse me, most funders and foundations especially small family foundations are dramatically understaffed.
One of the reasons why this visualizing funding for libraries tool is so important and other grant seeking tools are important is because many funders don't even have a website, only about 10% of the foundations in the United States are online with a website that you can go to.
And the reason for this is really not as dark or jaded as you might think, that funders don't want to make themselves available.
Much of it is that foundations simply don't have the capacity or the expertise to create a website.
One of the other things that foundation center does is build websites for foundations for that very purpose.
They may be all volunteer run.
So using this tool is important, because you might find a funder you had no idea about being in your community.
And so again, taking that opportunity to meet someone and you might have to -- you night not be able to Google your way into a great proposal, and delivering that to the funder, but the way to bring that proposal to the top of the stack, especially for a really underresourced funder that is very overwhelmed at the prospect of reading 200 proposals when they don't even have the capacity to get up a website or otherwise, the way that you really make your proposal stand out in those instances or with a bigger funder is by having some sort of personal connection that they can track back to you, a conversation, a networking opportunity, or a referral from someone else that they've worked with is always helpful.
And then finally, the notion that the -- a proposal is typically not the first thing a foundation wants.
So we hear time and time again a request for more training around proposal writing.
And I can promise you this, you're probably all on this call excellent if not very competent  writers.
The proposal -- the actual writing of the proposal is important, but I can say it is not critical to securing the grant.
It is much more important to have done the research and taken advantage of the networking opportunities that you can find and making sure there's a solid sound match between your library and the funding organization.
Before we're worrying about the actual writing of the proposal.
So if you are -- you definitely want to have a proposal written, but you need to understand what the foundation wants first, that may be a letter of inquiry, there may be a specific application, you should always be following the instructions.
And again, once you've done your research, that's when you can do some outreach to try to establish some sort of contact.
If a foundation says we do not take phone calls, obviously you don't call them.
But if there is an opportunity to establish that initial contact or if you have a question that you need clarification on, you can always make that sort of outreach.
Always keep the conversation brief and to the point, respect the funder's time, and always, always be prepared in your research.
So those are the key things.
I know that we did want to share some kind of library-specific resources.
Ellen has spent a good amount of time working with libraries in Wisconsin that are doing this sort of research.
I'm going to let her share some of the resources and helpful tips that she has found to be useful with her local libraries.
>> Thanks, Kate.
As we mentioned throughout this presentation, really get to know your community foundations.
Many of them are regional, so even if there's not one in your city, look in the county or nearby county, so, for example, in Madison, Wisconsin, while our community foundation ostensibly serves our county, if you look at their actual pattern of giving, they go way beyond those borders.
So get to know community foundations in your region.
They can be a great source of help, because they're really about bettering the community.
And wonderful way to do that is to support libraries.
And also think about how you can get some in kind assistance from students.
Starting with future librarians.
So many of online programs, because I know we're not all in a location where there might be an information school or a library school, but many of them have online programs with students needing opportunities, and I provided a link here to the American library association's directory of accredited programs so that's a great place to look to see who might be available.
And I can also, if you feel like you just want to contact me, I can help you to navigate that.
I know here in Madison we've gotten an entire online masters program, and the students across the country needing opportunities to go into help.
So while this isn't just necessarily a particular way to get funding, it also is a way to get assistance.
And maybe you can get some of that in kind assistance from a future librarian.
Or from students in your local schools who might want to be able to work on a project that could help benefit their community, and they might get course credit for it as well.
I also mentioned earlier, think about fiscal agency orifice call sponsors.
I know not all of you have that 501c3 status, it may defend if you're a governmental type library, we all have different designations.
Look to your friends group, but if you don't have a friends group or library foundation that can help support you and be your legal nonprofit applicant orifice call sponsor, any other local nonprofits or nonprofit organizations in your region.
This is another place where you can use the funding for libraries tools to see what other organizations are active within libraries in your area.
And the link I shared here is an information tool from Grantspace on what is fiscal sponsorship, how do I find one, what do I do with it.
That's another great source is to find a fiscal sponsor.
Especially if you're not all 501(c)(3) organization.
Those are general tools and resources that can be helpful for librarians and libraries who are  looking for funding.
With that I'll turn it back to Kate to talk about some more general assistance.
>> Thanks, Ellen.
So I did want to point you all to some other resources that we have available through foundation center.
Some that get quite specific about the proposal writing specifically.
Also we have a number of resources on Grantspace.
We have one -- if you have one take away, it's general resources, Grantspace.org is a great place to start.
We're in the process of revamping Grantspace, so you can look for a fresh new look coming in  hopefully around the end of April beginning of may.
I'm excited about that.
But on that site you can find a variety of training, much of which is prerecorded or self-paced, though we do have many live opportunities as well, but we have an introduction to a writing course webinar that is always available.
We also have a self-paced E-learning module about cultivating relationships with fund E., which is a much deeper dive into the latter half where we spend time dwelling on that, because it's an important piece.
And we have another webinar recording on measuring organizational impact, it's always something that is key for funders and communicating the impact that you'll have in your community and measuring that as a part of the work of your grant.
So with that, that's a number of resources that we wanted to share along with a quick look at the actual data tool.
So we're available for questions.
I saw at least one came in.
And also I wanted to leave you with all the contacts so that you can communicate what you've learned today, and share any other questions as well.
I saw there was a question about -- if there's a way to filter the search in the data tool for  funders to focus on small or rural libraries.
Right now that is not an available way to filter.
And what I would say is it's more likely to be the case that you're going to want to zero in on your geography and see what funders are active in the area.
Right now I'm not aware of any national funders that have an emphasis on supporting small or rural libraries.
But even if there were they would show up, they would show up in the search if they've given a grant to a library that's based in your area.
Again, one of the things I recommend while at rural libraries is to perhaps do some research out of state, if you know of another state that has a number of smaller rural libraries, look around to see what some of the projects are that have been funded, and other areas, even if it's not in your state, to get a sense of the projects that have been deemed fundable.
And then the type of funders that are supporting it is, are they corporate funders that have a plant located in your area, are they community foundations, and is there a community foundation that you don't have a relationship with in your area and so on.
So that's kind of the work-around and some of that higher level research that you have to do as a part of that to -- it's a kind of snooping, honestly, to see what the other funding relationships are that are out there.
>> If I may jump in, another little work-around is under -- within the tool as Kate showed you there's the stuff across the top on the right-hand corner there's a more button, that's where you can get support strategy.
But what's in there, there's also a key word, so you can type in whatever word you want in there.
I just typed in "rural," and I got no geographic location, but I did get 34 funders.
So it's not necessarily the best strategy, but it is one that you can also explore.
I really agree with Kate about the will relationship building and seeing where other funders have given before other regions, but there is that key word search that can help you dive in in a different way.
>> That's great, Ellen, thank you.
And, yes, this tool is free.
That's -- one of the purposes of these webinars is to continue to communicate this project as free, thanks to the support, the grant support of the Knight Foundation.
So their support through that news challenge grant is what gave us the ability to make this tool freely available.
We do have others that are subscription based, because it's a part of our nonprofit business model.
And those do go, I will say they do go in greater depth, however, this is a great jumping-off point, especially if you're new to the game.
And just getting into the grant seeking world.
>> Fantastic.
Thank you so much, both of you.
I have a quick question, based on just the -- within the last couple years, your work on this and your connections to foundations, have you perked the ears of funders, are there more -- I'm curious if you've sort of gotten a sense in the field of funders really seeing libraries as a good way for them to invest their funding.
>> I think what we've -- that's a good question.
I think one thing we definitely have seen is funders in a conversation with funders acknowledging that there's a gap between the large national funders that are supporting big projects at big libraries, and the community foundations that are doing a tremendous -- a lot of work at the ground level from our rural areas.
And they need to find out how we close that gap a bit.
I don't have the solutions right now, but I would say even having that awareness at all is  important, because I don't think it truly existed before this project.
We've had a couple of conversations with those funders around a possible convening of library  funders to talk about how we will figure this out, and riddle this out, because some things are so community-based about library work.
But, again, being able to start conveying that truth, that libraries really could be this go-to place, library -- you're not funding a library to be a library, you're funding a library because of the things they're able to deliver to your community based on whatever it is that you're doing.
If you care about health initiatives, the library has a role to play in that.
If you care about education, your library has a role to play in that.
And so on.
On the flip side we need libraries to be telling that story as well.
I won't go down the path of telling libraries they aren't good storytellers, because I think we hear that enough and I think libraries have done a great job in boosting that game, Frankly in conveying the work that they're doing.
But getting really subject specific to different funders is also really helpful.
So the conversation continues.
We don't have all the answers, but there's at least more awareness than there was.
>> That's fantastic.
>> I've come across a lot of that myself, especially really telling the library story by focusing on the specific patrons they're working with, initiatives with adult literacy, for example, so -- or with low-income patrons, nonnative speaking patrons, immigrants, migrants, we've had a lot of great luck with focusing on those sorts of stories, so who are you helping?
It's again, going beyond just the library itself, but community development and helping match libraries who are working on particular programs with funders who have helped those populations before, but maybe not specifically libraries.
So again, it's 10 that bigger story.
>> Definitely.
I have a vision of a library convening a community conversation and making sure that community foundation was invited.
Excellent.
Thank you both so much, and thank you to the foundation center for this excellent tool, and we look forward to hearing that there's even more activity there, and thank you so much for bringing your expertise to the session, for the learner guide, and thank you all for attending today.
A reminder that I will be sending you an email once the recording is available.
I'll also be asking you to complete a short survey once you leave the room that provides us with feedback both for the presenters and for our ongoing programming.
And I will send you a certificate within the week for attending today's session.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you to our captioner as well.