The Foundation Center has long been a leader in providing resources to the philanthropic community. Their site includes links to more than 70,000 grant makers. They offer a number of other fee-based services for foundation researchers.

They provide basic information on 850,000 charities and nonprofits. For many foundations and nonprofits they have summarized information found on the 990. 990s are available for most foundations.

Grantsmart is similar to Guidestar with overlapping coverage. The site features excellent educational information about foundations and how to research them.

Metasoft Systems Inc. has developed an easily searchable database of over 3,000,000 grants made by over 85,000 foundations since 2000 and allows users to view results using interactive international, state and county level maps. Includes 5 years of searchable 990PF/990s, detailed text and graphical foundation profiles, maps showing locations of all new and established foundations in the USA as well as a powerful FoundationNews service. They offer a number of other fee-based services for foundation researchers.

This site evaluates charitable organizations on how effectively they fulfll their mission. There are only 3,400 of the largest charities in their database right now. They list the top adminstrative officer of each foundation, giving title and salary. The keword search allows you to search for these people by name. Generally, the best search format is "First Last".

Publication 78 from the IRS lists organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. Please note that not all eligible organizations are listed here. Only the name, city and deductibility status is provided.

The Guide to Grants is an electronic data base of all foundation and corporate grants listed in The Chronicle of Philanthropy since 1995. Subscription rates vary, depending on whether you are a subscriber to the Chronicle and how long you want to access the data. You can search by grant maker, recipient or key word. This is an excellent way to develop a list of prospective funders for a specific project.

The Foundation Center has put together this very good orientation to government grants and links to useful resources