Learning Lab - Advanced FC Search: Strategies and Techniques

Searching the Grantmaker File

FC Search: The Foundation Center's Database on CD-ROM contains information on nearly 77,000 foundations, corporate givers and grantmaking public charities. The Advanced Searching mode for the Grantmaker file offers the choice of 14 different search criteria. The 5 default fields displayed when you first enter the search screen are:

Grantmaker Name
Grantmaker State
Fields of Interest
Trustees, Officers and Donors
Text Search

Other available search criteria are:

Corporate Location
Corporate Name
Establishment Date
Geographic Focus
Grantmaker City
Grantmaker Type
Total Assets
Total Giving
Types of Support

You can choose the fields you want to search by using one or more of the 5 defaults displayed, or choose among the additional criteria by clicking on one of the currently displayed field names to open the drop-down list. Field names are displayed in alphabetical order.

In the Advanced Searching mode, the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT can be used both within and between fields. You can connect terms in different fields by choosing a Boolean operator in a drop-down list on the left side of the search screen.
Learn more about Boolean searching..