Belay Device Health

And what to do if your budget allows for neither …

Awhile back the “Grants” listserv of CharityChannel, the Internet’s premier resource for nonprofit information, featured a lively debate about the merits of Metasoft’s BIG Online subscription database versus The Foundation Center’s Foundation Directory Online database. The merits of Guidestar’s Grant Explorer were even touched upon.

Both programs offer their users a variety of methods to seek out foundation funders. Both obtain their information through foundations’ 990 tax forms. And, based on feedback, both BIG Online and Foundation Directory Online share an equal number of loyal fans.

However, the fact is there are many nonprofit organizations whose budgets (or executive director’s mindsets) do not allow for choosing ANY foundation prospecting tool, let alone BIG Online, which will run you thousands for a six-month (their shortest) run.

What’s a smaller nonprofit organization with limited resources to do? Is it possible to still seek out those little known national and regional foundations whose missions align with yours? Without expensive tools and connections, how will my little $250,000 annual budget children’s arts organization find foundation support to grow and create new programming?

With an internet connection, preferably high speed, some time and practice, and a number of detecting tools, even those on very limited budgets can regularly seek out foundations that will support your mission – year after year.

Your best start is a foundation directory. Almost every state, with exceptions such as Alaska and Hawaii, publish one and sometimes several. More and more these directories are moving to Internet subscription-based services – but they’re still a deal.

Now take some time to really explore these websites if you’re not already familiar with them:

guidestar.com: Note that you must register to use Guidestar but registration is free. Guidestar does offer paid subscriptions, however, there is no charge for viewing a foundation’s three most recent 990′s.

taxexemptworld.com: This clunky little site can be a boon to the grantseeker on a budget.

fdncenter.org/: The Foundation Center; one of the oldest and best resources on the web. The Foundation Center offers a number of paid subscription programs – but they also offer free services.

.cof.org: The Council on Foundations

.smallfoundations.org: A relatively new organization devoted to 60,000 smaller United States Foundations

.nozasearch.com/: In October of 2007, Noza began offering free foundation searches.

Between your state foundation directory and these sites, you should have enough resources to get you started on the path to funding.

William Henry Gates the Third is also known as Bill Gates and he is the co-founder of the huge Microsoft corporation. This billionaire was born in Seattle on the 28th of October 1955, being the son of a well-known lawyer, William Henry Gates Senior and a professor and businesswoman, Mary Maxwell Gates.

It is well-known that Bill gates is the richest man in the entire world, the situation being the same for a few years now. This is even more significant since the difference between him and his followers being significant. However, he made some comments during a conference he held in Lisbon, stirring at least one round of acid commentaries. According to Bill Gates, the American IRS needs a special computer to store exclusively the data related to his family’s fortune. It appears that the numbers his fortune has reached are too big for an ordinary computer like the ones the IRS uses. Also, this lack of technological possibilities has brought him in front of the court a few times, being accused of not paying his taxes, although he was never in the red. The whole mess was passed on to the computers used, this magnate’s fortune approaching the sum of fifty-one billion dollars.

He may be the world’s richest man, but he never forgets where he started from. Thus, the founder of Microsoft donated forty million dollars to Lakeside School in Seattle. This is a private administration school, one which uses the magnate’s money to create scholarships for the ones who want to study in this institution. This school in Seattle was founded in 1914, being renowned as one of the best educational institutes in the United States of America.

In fact, Paul Allen also donated twenty million dollars to Lakeside School. In his speech, Gates emphasized the fact that this school had never existed without the help it got from Microsoft, the money being donated from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. There is nothing new about the fact that the magnate is fond of Seattle as he agreed to organize an exhibit which presented Codex Leicester in 2003. This was a collection of manuscripts belonging to Leonardo da Vinci, a collection Bill Gates bought in 1994.

Bill Gates and Microsoft Corporation released the first version of the Windows operating system in 1985. He released the Microsoft Office in 1989, this being the most popular series of office applications. Microsoft became a public company in 1986, being launched on the stock market. 2000 was the year when Bill and his wife founded their foundation, which was called Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The year 2005 brought Bill Gates the title of Knight of the British Empire, a title which he was given by the Queen of England. He announced his retirement from Microsoft on the 15th of June 2006, his retirement month being July 2008.

Bill Gates is still one of the most influential people in the world, his success inspiring millions of other people working in his domain and not only.

Cambridge University is one of the world’s oldest universities and leading academic centers, comprising of 31 colleges. Its mission is “to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence”. Cambridge’s Emmanuel College is one of the larger colleges, with a community comprising of a master at its head, some 80 fellows, 450 undergraduates, 150 graduate students and a large permanent staff. Established in 1584 the college has a long and distinguished history and boasts its fair share of famous graduates. Among the best known Emmanuel College graduates is John Harvard, who studied for his Bachelors’ degree at the College in 1632 and later went on to study for an MA in 1635. Like a number of other Emmanuel graduates in the 1630s, Harvard went to seek his destiny in the new colony of New England. Upon his early death in 1638 John Harvard left his impressive library and half of his estate to the newly founded college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as a sign of their gratitude the community named the college after him – today the Ivy league Harvard University.

The prestigious Harvard Scholar award to Emmanuel College is given to one student in each Harvard graduating class. In 1977 Scott Mead was the recipient of this award and studied at Emmanuel College, where he received his MPhil degree. Mead has maintained lasting ties to this alma mater, as well as to the United Kingdom, where he has been resident for over 20 years. As well as serving as a Member of the Advisory Board of the Judge Business School of Cambridge University and a member of the University’s 800th Anniversary Campaign Board, Scott Mead has endowed the Mead Fellowship in Economics.

This prestigious fellowship has been held in the past by people from various branches of the Economics sector. Dr. Rufus Pollock, currently a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow, was a Mead Fellow at Emmanuel College from 2007 to 2010. Dr. Pollock’s work as an economist focuses on innovation — both its theory and its empirics — and the implications of these for intellectual property policy. Dr. Pollock is still an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge.

The current holder of the Mead Fellowship is Oliver de Groot who took up his three year fellowship at the beginning of the 2010 academic year, and will hold this position until 2013. Oliver comes to Emmanuel College with a BA in Economics from Gonville and Caius College and an M. Phil, also in Economics, from the same college. During 2007 and 2008 De Groot was at Girton College as a bye-fellow and Director of Studies. Thereafter he spent a year working in the private sector as an economist prior to returning to Cambridge to complete his PhD and take up his fellowship. Oliver plans to submit his PhD dissertation on macroeconomics early in 2011. His research focuses on monetary policy and business cycles. In addition to supervising the undergraduate macroeconomics papers, de Groot teaches the macroeconomics component of the MPhil course.

Since his days as a Harvard scholar at Emmanuel College, Scott Mead has had a long and active career as a banker, photographer and philanthropist. From his early days at Goldman Sachs in New York to his current activities with Richmond Park Partners, a London based firm specializing in financial advisory and asset management, Scott Mead has been involved in many major financial transactions, including leading the team responsible for Vodafone’s $200 billion acquisition of the German Mannesmann.

Scott Mead has recently taken up photography again, which he set aside in order to develop his banking career. In September 2010 he held a one-man exhibition of his early works at Hamiltons Gallery in London, all proceeds of which went to the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. Scott is already working on another exhibition of more early works and some recent ones, scheduled for 2011/2012.

Scott Mead’s philanthropic activities are many and varied, spanning education, health care, the arts, and more. Many of these are channelled through the Mead Family Foundation, of which he is founder and Chairman. The foundation supports causes worldwide focusing on health care, education and the arts. In addition to his philanthropic activities via the Foundation, Scott Mead is also personally committed to various organizations.

Sports are also an important part of Scott Mead’s activities. He is a committed marathon runner who has set himself a personal goal of running a marathon for charity on every continent.