GrantAdvisor is a website that allows grant applicants, grantees, and others to share their first-hand experiences working with funders and for funders to respond on the record. Feedback is collected anonymously. Foundations are encouraged to respond to comments, with the goal of improving grantmaker-grantee relationships and strengthening the fields in which funders work.

If you’re going on a trip, you check TripAdvisor; if you’re going to apply for a grant, you check GrantAdvisor. If you’re a hotel, you check TripAdvisor to see what your customers like best and least about you… and foundations can see how grantees and colleagues are experiencing working with them

Our two penguins (Grant-y and Grant-r) are very open, friendly, and supportive of one another, always eager to share widely what they learn on land and water. They love to share ideas, honest feedback, and questions and suggestions about how to strengthen philanthropy, nonprofits, and communities. Like their relatives from the neutral continent of Antarctica, Grant-y and Grant-r are all about cooperation, family support, taking turns, persevering despite difficult conditions, and being graceful in their own specialized way.

Our reviews are written by thoughtful people who know that a few moments of their time, and a few words of wisdom based on their own experience, can be lifesavers for someone else. Our reviewers may have applied for a grant, received a grant, or worked with the funder in another way, but they all have direct experience with the funder. (Note: if you look at the top of their review, you will see their relationship to the funder.)

All reviews are absolutely, 100% anonymous. Upon registering, you will be assigned a randomized, anonymous username, which will be displayed next to any comments you post. We hope this will encourage real and honest feedback. However, foundations will have the opportunity to post responses and comments using the real name of their foundation.

GrantAdvisor is committed to ensuring a respectful and productive platform for public discussion about grantmaking and philanthropy. Survey responses are therefore screened both automatically and manually to ensure that our Community Guidelines are met. We ask that reviewers not mention staff members by name and refrain from using language that is threatening, slanderous, discriminatory, or that contains spam. We have outlined our full Community Guidelines in the Terms and Conditions.

Wait, are you telling me that not everything I read on the Internet is true? Uh-oh.

In general, we think the nonprofit sector has a lot of integrity, so we don’t expect a lot of people trying to game this site. Spam and bad words will be filtered out, but, like the majority of sites on the Internet, there’s no way for us to verify every posted review. As with all things on the Internet, you have to use your judgment. Read the reviews, and judge for yourself which ones sound credible.

The survey questions were developed based on input from our partners and advisors with the idea that answers would help provide useful information and round-out the picture of each grantmaker. If there are questions you found more or less useful or if you have suggestions for different questions? Please contact us here and let us know.

We’ve built the site to be easily found by search engines. Funders who have been reviewed on GrantAdvisor will see their GrantAdvisor review come up near the top of a search results page. Knowing that search engines only rule part of the world, we hope that folks like you will spread the word as well.

Woo-hooo! Fantastic! You can help GrantAdvisor by spreading the word and by writing reviews based on your own experiences.

There is no need to ask for permission to quote from our site. Simply use attribution “GrantAdvisor.org User Review”.

While registration is not required in order to post a review, you are encouraged to register so that you can view responses from funders, access your past comments, and post responses of your own. Registering on GrantAdvisor is free and easy to do. After answering a few quick questions, you will be assigned a randomized, anonymous username, which will be displayed next to each of your reviews and comments.

Glad you asked! It’s easy.

There are two ways to post your review: (1) start on the home page and choose “Write a Review” or (2) visit a funder profile and click “Write a Review.” Both of these options will guide you to a review form. Please note that contents of your review may not show up immediately.

Sometimes a funder might be listed under a different name, or they might not be in our database. That’s ok! Contact us with the name of the grantmaker and we’ll help you find them or add them to the site.

Who will read my review?

Anybody visiting the site can read your review on the funder’s profile page. Your review can help prospective applicants learn more about the funder.

No slander, abuse, advertising, etc. We have outlined our full Community Guidelines in the Terms and Conditions. We ask that reviewers not mention staff members by name and refrain from using language that is threatening, slanderous, discriminatory, or that contains spam.

Yes. If you have registered on GrantAdvisor, then you can go back and edit the review you have already posted, or even post a new one on the same funder, if for example, you receive another grant from the same funder.

Congratulations, people are interested in your philanthropy! All reviews are screened to ensure they meet our community guidelines before being made public. We encourage you to appoint a Key Contact who can register on GrantAdvisor and respond to reviews on behalf of the funder.

Great! We are glad you are interested in being listed on our site. Contact us with your DBA name, address, and EIN number we’ll create a profile specific to your foundation!

Most of the reviews on GrantAdvisor are positive. During our testing phase, we found that over two-thirds of survey responses were favorable, emphasizing how the funder has made a positive impact on the community and fostered good relationships with grantees, grant applicants, or other partners.

We believe that this trend will continue, with funders receiving mostly positive feedback. These compliments and praises can be used as testimonials for your foundation both internally and externally.

We understand the importance of your reputation to you and to your organization. GrantAdvisor provides an open forum for discussion about nonprofits and philanthropy. As such, we do not, as a policy, remove user-written reviews.

However, we allow you to provide an official response to any comments that are posted about your organization. (Use of the 😛 emoticon is entirely up to you.) You can also contact us with any specific questions here and our Community Advisory Board will address your question or complaint on a case-by-case basis.

Yes, this is the most effective way for a foundation profile to be published. You can (and should!) encourage nonprofits you have interacted with — your applicants, former or current grantees, and any other community partners — to share their stories. You can even use our Foundation Tool Kit!

There are several ways to solicit reviews:

Send an email to applicants and grantees

• Post to your Facebook status
• Tweet out a link asking people to post reviews
• Post a link in a prominent place on your website
• Put a link in your email newsletter asking people to post reviews

The odds are good that you’ve read a review or two before making a major purchase. For nonprofits, each grant application can be a major time commitment. The better educated they are about your organization, the better the experience will be for both sides.

User reviews have emerged as a regular source of information about products and services of all types. Numerous studies show that people value the opinions of fellow travelers, shoppers, and fundraisers over institutionally-produced sources of information.

Would you stay at a hotel with no TripAdvisor ratings? In this age of social media, there is also a risk that if you don’t have any reviews, it will look like no one is willing to speak up about you.

We will also be collecting more general feedback, asking, for example, how a funder that addresses domestic violence is affecting that field. Therefore, funders will receive several different perspectives about how they are seen.

Having a GrantAdvisor account is free, having your foundation listed is free, reviewing is free, and reading is free. GrantAdvisor is a 501(c)(3) organization and receives no money for reviews.