FUNDER MATCHING TOOL

Describe your work.
Find the funders who share your priorities.

A free tool for small nonprofits. Tell us what you do, and we will match you against grant-makers whose stated priorities align with yours — with a clear reason for every match. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Free for anyone. No account needed to see how it works.

FoundationMatch grant matching interface showing a ranked shortlist of funders with match scores and written reasons explaining the priority overlap for a nonprofit describing community health work
How FoundationMatch works: describe your work, engine finds matching funders, you receive a shortlist Describe your work Who you serve Where you work Your focus areas One description, not a form Matching engine Keyword overlap scoring against 30+ funder profiles Score normalised 0-100 Community Foundation Match: 87% Rural Health Fund Match: 72% Education Access Match: 54% Each with a written reason

01 / WHAT IT DOES

A shortlist of funders whose stated priorities match your nonprofit's work.

FoundationMatch is for the person who is grant-seeking for a small nonprofit and doing it by hand — in a spreadsheet, from memory, losing the thread when things get busy.

You describe your work: who you serve, where you operate, what you focus on. We compare that against a growing directory of grant-makers, looking at what they say they fund — not their brand, not their reputation, but the words they use to describe their priorities.

The result is a saved shortlist with each funder ranked by how well their stated priorities overlap with your work, and a sentence explaining why the match exists. You read the reasons, you decide where to apply, you move on.

No team features. No application tracking. No email. No integrations. Just a match and the reason for it — because that is the part a person does by hand and loses the thread on when they are busy.

02 / HOW IT WORKS

A person describes their work. An engine does the rest.

  1. 01

    Describe what your nonprofit does

    Write a few sentences about your work: the community you serve, the problem you address, the region you operate in, and your focus areas. The more specific you are, the better the matches. A single text field — no forms to fill out.

  2. 02

    We match you by priority overlap

    Our engine tokenises your description into keywords and compares them against each funder's stated priority areas, geographic focus, and description. It scores every funder by how much their language overlaps with yours, then ranks them — no black box, no hidden weighting.

  3. 03

    Read the reasons, decide where to apply

    Each match comes with a written reason naming the shared terms that triggered it. You are not guessing why a funder appeared — you can read the exact overlap and decide whether it is worth pursuing. The shortlist is saved to your account so you can come back to it.

03 / WHAT IT COSTS

Free. No payment, no tiers, no trial.

FoundationMatch is free for anyone who needs it. There is no paid plan, no subscription, and no credit card required. We do not sell access to funder matches — the matching is the product, not a upsell.

If you find value in the tool, the only thing we ask is that you tell another small nonprofit staffer about it. That is how a tool like this grows.

04 / WHAT IT WILL NOT DO

Honest about what this tool is — and is not.

FoundationMatch is deliberately limited. It does one thing and does not pretend to do more. Here is what it will not do, stated plainly:

05 / WHAT A RESULT LOOKS LIKE

A saved shortlist, ranked by priority match, with written reasons.

Here is an example, using a nonprofit that serves rural communities in Zambia with community health outreach and education programs for mothers and children. The output is a vertical list of funder cards — clean, readable, ready to evaluate.

MATCH 87%
Global Fund for Community Health
Health · Women and children · Rural health access · Sub-Saharan Africa
Strong match on 8 overlapping terms including: community health, rural, mothers, children, Zambia, outreach, education, health access. Global Fund for Community Health prioritises community-based health programs serving women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Typical grants: $50,000–$250,000.
MATCH 72%
Rural Development Trust
Economic development · Rural communities · Southern Africa
Match found on shared priorities: rural, Zambia, community, children. Rural Development Trust focuses on economic development in rural Southern African communities. Women’s economic empowerment through community health is within their stated scope.
MATCH 54%
Education Access Initiative
Education · Children · Girls’ education
Partial overlap on children, education, girls. Education Access Initiative funds education programs for children in underserved regions globally. Your focus on community health that includes education components aligns with their stated priorities.

These are illustrative matches based on a sample description. Your results will differ based on your specific work.

06 / A BETTER WAY THAN A SPREADSHEET

“Why not just do this in a spreadsheet?”

“I already have a list of funders I track manually. What does this add?”
A manual list captures what you already know. It misses funders whose priorities match your work but whose name you have not seen in your feed. FoundationMatch checks every funder in the directory against your actual description — not against your memory of who funds what. It also surfaces why the match exists, which a spreadsheet row does not.
“Does this replace Candid or Instrumentl?”
No. Those are comprehensive platforms with funder profiles, application tracking, and team workflows — they cost hundreds of dollars per year for a subscription. FoundationMatch is free and focused: a single person describing their work and getting a ranked shortlist. It is a starting point before you invest in a paid platform.
“How are funders selected for the directory?”
The seed directory contains 30 well-known grant-makers across common categories — health, education, economic development, environment, human rights, arts and culture. Funders are added based on publicly available priority statements from their websites and 990 filings. The directory grows over time; if you know a funder whose priorities we should include, that is useful feedback the operator can act on.
“Is my data private?”
Your description and shortlists are stored in your account and visible only to you. We do not share data, sell it, or use it for training. See the privacy page for details. The legal entity that operates this tool has not been registered yet — your data is held by the tool operator, who is the person who will complete that registration.
“What if no funders match my work?”
If your work falls outside the categories covered by the current directory, the engine will return zero or very few matches. That is honest information — it tells you to look beyond this tool for funders that serve your specific niche. We would rather tell you plainly than inflate a match score.