As fundraisers, we all think about the stack of application on a funder’s desk -- well, more accurately in their grant management software. We ask ourselves: how can we make our application stand out? One way is by collaborating with other organizations. Not only does partnering with another charity or nonprofit demonstrate to a potential funder that you understand your communities needs, it lets them know they are not funding redundant projects. It provides them with the added assurance that two organizations will use their expertise to overcome problems, create innovative strategies, and share what is learned more broadly.
In the spirit of collaboration, we invite you to take a look at Landscape. It is an innovative online tool we developed with Powered by Data, the nonprofit initiative we started in 2014. Landscape was launched at the Community Knowledge Exchange to demonstrate how open data could be harnessed to map who is working on what. Still very incomplete and in its beta stage, the data is collected from among those major funders who publish their grants online with descriptions such as Environment Canada, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the McConnell Foundation, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Take a look around! The database can be filtered by issue, region, funder, organization and keyword. Although limited in scope now, we’re excited to work with Powered by Data and the inaugural community philanthropy fellow, Alex Draper, from Edmonton Community Foundation, to take Landscape from a pilot project to indispensable tool used by nonprofit executives daily to facilitate collaboration.
We’d love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments!