March 1997
Internet Prospector

FOUNDATIONS/GRANTS

CONTENTS

FOUNDATIONS AND SEARCH ENGINES
Back in 1991, during what we could call "Gopher's Golden Age," I used the "Veronica" search engine to find listings for foundations. With what results? I discovered that development and research administration offices at more universities and colleges than I cared to count had references to this or that foundation. Often the references did not lead to any foundation home pages or news but to flat lists naming foundations or specific grant opportunities. And so it went, ad infinitum. Well, six years later during the Web Age, the situation's gotten worse. Fast, sophisticated Web robots index millions of Web pages daily and feed their finds to search engines with an infinite capacity for data and only a limited capacity for extracting and filtering the information that's important to you. What to do? How can you use the Net's search engines to help rather than hinder your foundation research? Tip: Simplify by targeting your sources. Right now the best sources for late breaking news about foundations or new philanthropic Web sites distill down to the following urls:

- The Foundation Center http://fdncenter.org
- The Council on Foundations http://www.cof.org
- The Philanthropy Journal **
- The Internet Prospector http://plains.uwyo.edu/~prospect

[Note: the Philanthropy Journal domain name was purchased -- though the URL is still active
 it now goes to an unrelated, commercial site. We have removed the link. -IP, 4/02]

Tip: Choose a search engine that performs site-specific searches and learn its search language.

     - Hotbot at http://www.hotbot.com/
     has a "Cyberplace" option that allows you to search just one
     Web site. Just drop the the http:// prefix when plugging in the addresses
     above.

     - Altavista at http://www.altavista.digital.com
     will let you search by a specific site if you use the following command
     in the search box:

     host:www.cof.org anyfoundation


     - Infoseek at http://www.infoseek.com/

     +site:fdncenter.org +anyfoundation

Of the three I tested, Hotbot provided the most consistent results for full websites. All disliked searching under specific subdirectories, e.g., plains.uwyo.edu/~prospect. (Solution: read IP regularly and /or visit the IP Web site.)

Tip:  Substitute people's names or other key words rather than foundation
      names to retrieve bio's or topical information.

Tip:  Focus even more by using these techniques to search a foundation's Web site.

Using these techniques, you can collect the latest information "available" about foundations without drowning in the information ocean. Of course, these methods can also be used for other prospect research tasks.

[Note: If you know about other search engines with "site-specific" search capabilities, let me know, and I'll credit you when I write a foundation search engine update.]
(From Charles Lowe)

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