Posted on February 1, 2013

Database of Mexican Philanthropies Launches

The Foundation Center has announced the creation of a free searchable database of more than twenty-two thousand Mexican philanthropies.

The first platform developed by the New York City-based center to use non-U.S. data sets, Fondos a la Vista is modeled after the Foundation Directory Online and was created in partnership with Alternativas y Capacidades and the Philanthropy and Civil Society Project at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México to provide the Mexican public with reliable, comprehensive information about domestic funders and their philanthropic activity, including the organizations they support. The project has received support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Microsoft, the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú, Fundación del Empresariado en México, Fundación Rosario Campos de Fernández, and Montepío Luz Savinó.

Funder profiles included in Fondos a la Vista feature information on each organization's purpose, areas of support, target population, and grant recipients. As with Foundation Directory Online, Fondos a la Vista users can perform detailed queries, compile aggregated results lists, and save and export search results.

"In the long term we hope Fondos a la Vista will play an important role in ushering in an era of enhanced accountability between the nonprofit sector and the general public in Mexico," said Alternativas y Capacidades executive director Miguel Ángel de la Vega. "We expect that organizations will seek to strengthen the mechanisms they employ to ensure that financially and programmatically they are using their resources in a manner that fulfills their mission and improves Mexico."

"The development of Fondos a la Vista represents a leap forward in terms of accessibility and user friendliness," said Michael D. Layton, Ph.D., director of the Philanthropy and Civil Society Project. "Never before has such data been available to organizations looking for partners or funders, and to the public seeking to understand the finances of the nonprofit sector."