1. The SOC.ORG.NONPROFIT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS File deals with starting and running a nonprofit organization. It includes a wonderful document on grantswriting. And there is information on how to start a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Among the best documents on the Internet, these deserve careful study and frequent visits. 
2. To obtain a form 1023 (to apply for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, visit this site. 
3. Management and legal issues for NPOs.
4. How to create a nonprofit organization and other legal stuff for nonprofits.
5. Nonprofit Genie

1. See the Foundation Center's sensational on-line course on proposal writing, plus several examples of grant application forms.

We have an even more powerful method of finding exemplary proposals, which we reveal in our FAU grants overviews.

1. A highly technical proposal from University of Florida on telecommunications. Marked as "under construction."
2. A source of sample grant proposals. May be temporarily offline. (Don't hold your breath!)
3. Here is a specimen proposal from Michigan State University.
4. A superior example of a proposal budget. To view this, you must first download and install an Adobe Acrobat .pdf viewer. .
5. A proposal from the UK.
6. The year 2000 request for proposals  (RFP) from United Way of Broward County and the House of Hope proposal in response to the RFP. Go here and download the RFP, then download the House of Hope proposal. (To download the file, place your cursor over "RFP" or "House of Hope Proposal," then click your right mouse button. When a menu pops up, select "Save link as . . ." Save the files to your Windows desktop or any other folder you can find easily. After you have saved the files, double-click on them to view them, then print them from inside their viewer. Be persistent. Don't give up, since printing and reading these files is required. This proposal was not funded, probably because UWB decided not to add any new agencies in 2000-01.
7. Here is a make-believe request for proposal.
8. Arts proposal: Chinese-American culture.
9. Linda Fisher of Pinellas county, FL, provides the following site: http://www.co.pinellas.fl.us/ppc/archivelist.htm#GP
10. Funding for schools.
11. A million here and a million there, and before you know it, you are talking about Big Money. Here are two winning proposals from the YMCA of Broward (Fort Lauderdale): Children's Services Board  ($1.3 million) (and its attachments) and an arts grant from the county Cultural Affairs Board (and its attachments) . You will will need a free Adobe Acrobat .PDF reader and the knowledge of how to download a file. But these are worth the trouble.
12. J Deiorio found this collection of grants, moslty for firefighters.
13. The Foundation Center provides examples of all sorts of NPO documents, including proposal cover letters. Go here, for specimen proposals specifically.
14. Use the WiseNut search engine to find "grants examples". Click here to launch a pre-configured search.

1. Consult Florida Administrative Weekly for Tallahassee's listing of grants and procurements.
   Download the 6-OCT-2000 issue, by right-clicking on this link. Or click here to read it on screen.

2. For federal grants: Visit Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance at http://www.cfda.gov. Enter the search term "transportation," or whatever you are interested in. This will give you an overview of what is available in your field. Contact the federal agency of interest or visit their Web page.

3. For federal grants: Visit Federal Register at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aces140.html. Enter the search term "grant*" (yes, the asterisk belong there!), select the time range that covers the last week, set the number of hits at 200, and see what grant programs have been announced in the last week. Do this every week to avoid missing the deadline for an important grant. Or read the Federal Funding Reports every week.

4. Super-quick access to several dozen federal, Florida, and county sites on grants.
   a.  For pending federal grants: Go to http://GollyGrantsOnline.com/environmental-scanning.htm   and explore the grants pages of the various federal agencies under "Grants/Funding." This is good for current grants programs with pending deadlines. Leap into action.
   b. For recently awarded federal grants programs: Go to http://GollyGrantsOnline.com/environmental-scanning.htm and explore the press releases of the federal agencies  in the "Other" column. Resolve not to miss the next cycle of awards and deadlines.

5. Do your own keyword searches for grants through the Foundation Center's online search engine. (But expect to spend some time learning the keyword list.)

6. Foundations Online, dmoz on Grant-Making Foundations and NBCi on Foundations (follow the links to charitable, corporate, and private foundations). And here are Foundation Search Tools and Philanthropy Search.. These have probably been obsoleted by the item directly above.

7. It will be a gigantic pain in the neck, but you can monitor developments in foundation and corporate giving by regularly visiting these sites:
   Philanthropy News Digest
   Nonprofit Online News
   News Updates From Around the World (A slow link)
   Philanthropy News Network Online (This page may pose a security risk.)
   Welfare Information Network (item 7, below. is an alternate interface)

8. A very nice, though not exhaustive list, from the Welfare Information Network, of grants for social services.

9. Here is a secret method I developed myself for locating state, county, and city grants: Go to http://www.northernlight.com/power.html   and under "Words in URL" search in the domain .fl.us (Florida), .ga.us (Georgia), and so forth. (Notice that there is a period before FL, GA, etc..) This trick will turn up not only state agencies, but   counties and cities, as well as odd governmental entities, such as taxing districts. This trick is for highly motivated patient users, only.

10. Try this. Go to Google, and enter "foundations grants yourkeyword"

11. Top U. S. grantgivers in various categories. Top South Florida grantgivers.

12. Special funding for community organizing and social justice.

13. Use the form 990 PF to locate private foundations in your geographic area.

1. The Internet NonProfit Center is the world's leading provider of government information on US nonprofits. "The Center has information on every nonprofit organization in the US (that's every nonprofit, not just every 501(c)(3) organization--over 1.4 million groups). The Center's holdings include information gathered from federal and state government offices, as well as from a few nonprofits outside the US. We have information on more nonprofits than any other single source anywhere on earth (including the US federal government)." Come here to obtain a list of all the nonprofits in your zip code, then Floridians may check for the latest info by visiting the Web site of the Florida Secretary of State.
2. The National Center for Charitable Statistics is the national repository of data on the nonprofit sector in the United States. Its mission is to develop and disseminate high quality data on nonprofit organizations and their activities for use in research on the relationships between the nonprofit sector, government, the commercial sector, and the broader civil society Learn about how to study foundations' annual tax forms to discover their funding history.
3. GuideStar, a new World Wide Web site at www.guidestar.org is a free, searchable database offering comprehensive reports on public charities, links to individual nonprofits, reports on volunteer opportunities, and an interactive electronic forum. Each GuideStar report provides a description of the organization along with its programs and financial information; plus, users can track the progress of an organization over time or compare its results to others in the same field. You can search for a charity by name, field, or geographic location. GuideStar's goal is to prepare reports on the more than 150,000 charities that now file with the IRS. (Source of information: Your Money magazine, Feb/Mar '97 issue).  Best place to look for form 990.
4. Examine the form 990PF of a foundation (report to IRS).