Using Peer Research to Cut Through the Noise and Find Your Strongest Funding Prospects

Many people start the grant search with keywords, but we've found that this can lead to long, unfocused prospect lists where the most promising funders get lost in the shuffle. The best indicator of what a funder truly cares about is often what they have given to in the past, which is why we begin by looking at who is funding programs and missions similar to those of our clients to identify a shortlist of top prospects before diving into the databases.

Instead of diving straight into a database like Instrumentl, Grantstation, or Foundation Directory, which often return a list of hundreds of grant opportunities and funders that meet your search criteria, we recommend a different approach.

Don’t get me wrong - these tools are fantastic for uncovering new potential funders, and are definitely a valuable part of the process!

However, at Canopy, we believe in clarity first.

We start by identifying 5-7 organizations that could be considered “peers” - the nonprofits with similar missions or services, working in a similar geography, serving similar beneficiaries, and within a similar annual revenue range to yours. A simple Google search will typically turn up at least a few if you’re not aware of who your peers might be.

Next, we visit each peer’s website and find their list of donors or partners. We copy this list into a spreadsheet, along with some insights about how your organization compares to each peer.

Then we zoom out and look for patterns. There are a ton of insights about the funding landscape in a specific geography or mission area that can be gleaned from this exercise. But the most tactical question we ask is: are there any funder names that appear repeatedly across peers?

Any funders that show up at least 2-3 times are clearly invested in the ecosystem of impact your organization is part of and should be the first you investigate when building your prospect list.

Once you have gone through the peer research process, you will have a deeper understanding of how your organization fits within the ecosystem of impact you contribute to, who the major funders of this ecosystem are, and maybe even some ideas for new programmatic partnerships you could forge in your community! At this point, you’re ready to dive into the crowded forest of a funder database to review matches from a much more strategic place, and those top prospects identified through peer research aren’t at risk of getting lost in the sea of hundreds of other matches.

I walked through Canopy’s peer research process in an interview with Instrumentl recently - you can check that out HERE for more details.
If you’d like to give this approach a try yourself, you can download the template we use to track our peer research work below.