Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for nonprofits. There are many reasons nonprofits should be using Twitter and finding grants is one that is often overlooked. While it can be easy to find the larger grants online, many of the smaller grants are harder to find on databases or by searching Google. Foundations do tend to announce the grant, or at least the grant-winners, online though. Twitter is usually one of the social media platforms they make announcements on.
Keep in mind that there are many different ways to search for grants. Twitter should not be a place you start, but it is usually worth investing some time in it. Check out this article if you are just starting to look for grants for your nonprofit. Once you’ve exhausted the more typical grant research avenues, follow these steps to search on Twitter for grants.
1. Use Twitter Advanced Search
There are many 3rd party tools that your nonprofit can use to make the most out of Twitter. One native twitter tool, Twitter Advanced Search, can greatly help your researching efforts. Many social media platforms are becoming powerful search engines – Twitter included. Their Advanced Search tool helps you narrow your searches – you can learn more about Advanced Search from Twitter. It’s a fairly straightforward and easy to use tool that can be quite powerful.
With Twitter Advanced Search, you can search by date, in your local area, by hashtags, by accounts, with different variations of keywords and more. As it relates to grants, you can start by searching for “apply for grant” in the “All of these words” section, in the past two months and in your local area. Maybe you’ll see companies talking about how to apply for grants or grants for students, but you’ll likely find some grant announcements or announcements of grant winners. You might want to broaden your search outside of your area if you’re not seeing much immediately, try different keywords, hashtags and look further back in time.
2. Take a closer look at the grants and record the applicable ones
Generally, there will be a link on tweets about grants. As long as the account appears reputable, click on it and see if your nonprofit could qualify. Even if the deadline already passed, the application process looks too long or it’s not quite a grant that applies to you, you still might want to make a note of it. They could be offering other grants in the future. Also, while this is unlikely to help too much, you might also be able to get some insight into who might be applying by looking at who favorited it.
A sheet on Google Drive is a good place for storing info about relevant grants.
3. Follow relevant foundations and grant-makers
Beyond keeping track of grants and relevant grant-makers on Google Sheets or excel, you can track them directly on Twitter as well. Once you see a grant that might be applicable for your nonprofit, consider following whoever is offering it. This applies to grants that with deadlines that have already passed. They may offer grants in the future or this exact same grant next year. If you follow them, you will continue to get updates plus it’s a start to developing a connection with them.
4. Make a Twitter list of relevant foundations and grant-makers
Perhaps, for whatever reason, you do not want to publically follow these foundations, but you do want to get updates from them. Or maybe you are following a thousand other Twitter accounts and you do not want to miss the updates from these foundations. Creating a Twitter List is a great solution. You can very easily add any relevant accounts to this list. You can make it public or a private list. Every week or two, you can take a quick look at what all of them have been tweeting. If you’ve found grants off of Twitter, we recommend adding their Twitter accounts to your list as well if they’re using Twitter.
5. Share grants that could be relevant to other nonprofits
You might come across grants that are not relevant for you, but might be noteworthy for a partner or another nonprofit on your radar. Do the grant-maker and the nonprofit a favor by introducing them to each other. This can be on Twitter in a private or public way or via email. This builds your connections in the nonprofit world, foundation arena plus could do some real good if it’s a good match. Hopefully, they reciprocate the favor when they see a grant that could apply to your nonprofit.
Conclusion
It’s not incredibly likely that you hit on massive grants on Twitter that you won’t relatively easily find elsewhere. However, there are contests and smaller grants that foundations and grant-makers might not take the time to list on databases. Their website announcement likely won’t be near the top of Google either. In an hour or two of research every month, you can easily scour Twitter. Over time, if you follow the right accounts and/or create a good Twitter List, your research should be easier and more effective. You might help some other nonprofits along the way too.