Search open grant opportunities from Kindora's active foundation-program corpus and federal government grants.
Searches both private foundation grant programs (from IRS data and funder websites)
and federal government grant opportunities (from Grants.gov). Uses full-text search
with natural language understanding — queries are parsed into individual terms with
stemming, so "youth after school programs" matches programs about youth, after-school,
and programming even if those exact words don't appear together.
Search covers program names, descriptions, focus areas, beneficiary types, and
geographic focus fields. Use the state parameter to focus on geographically relevant
opportunities.
Query syntax:
- Natural language: "affordable housing for seniors" (matches any of these terms)
- Quoted phrases: '"after school"' (matches exact phrase)
- Exclusion: "education -higher" (matches education, excludes higher education)
- Combine: '"mental health" youth -adult' (phrase + term + exclusion)
- No query: returns broadly open programs sorted by upcoming deadlines (browsing mode)
Args:
query: Natural language search query. Searches across program names, descriptions,
focus areas, beneficiary types, and geographic focus. Supports quoted phrases
for exact matching and -term for exclusion.
Example: "youth outdoor education", "affordable housing", "STEM education for girls",
"food bank hunger", "climate change environment", "domestic violence women"
focus_area: Filter foundation programs by focus area (matches values in focus_areas array).
Example: "Education", "Health", "Environment"
agency: Filter government grants by agency name (case-insensitive).
Example: "Department of Education", "NSF", "NIH"
state: Two-letter US state code to filter by geographic relevance.
Returns programs focused on that state plus nationally available programs.
Example: "CA", "NY", "TX"
country: Country name for non-US geographic filtering. Returns programs
whose geographic_focus is tagged for that country plus any tagged
Global / International / Worldwide. Use this instead of state for
international queries — passing "India" via state would error
because state requires a US code. Mixing state with a non-US
country is rejected.
Example: "India", "Kenya", "Mexico", "Global"
deadline_days: How far ahead to search for deadlines, in days.
Default: 90 (3 months). Maximum: 365 (1 year).
Rolling/always-open programs are always included regardless.
min_award: Minimum grant size filter in dollars.
Example: 50000 (grants of $50K+)
max_award: Maximum grant size filter in dollars.
Example: 500000 (grants up to $500K)
nonprofit_only: Only show nonprofit-eligible government grants.
Default: True
source: Filter by grant source type.
Options: "foundation" (private foundation programs only),
"government" (federal grants only),
or omit for both sources combined.
PREFER omitting this — the foundation corpus is much larger, and
filtering to government-only often returns few or zero results.
limit: Maximum number of results to return.
Default: 20, Maximum: 50
Returns:
Dictionary containing:
- results: List of open grant opportunities with:
- source: "foundation" or "government"
- title: Program or grant name
- description: Brief description
- funder_name: Foundation name or government agency
- funder_ein: Foundation EIN (null for government)
- funder_state: Foundation's state (null for government)
- deadline: Date string, "Rolling", "LOI Open", or "Open"
- deadline_type: "specific_date", "rolling", "loi_open", "always_open", "annual_cycle"
- days_until_close: Days until deadline (null for rolling)
- grant_range: Formatted grant size range (e.g., "$50,000 - $500,000")
- focus_areas: List of focus areas
- geographic_focus: Geographic eligibility
- application_url: Where to apply
- total_returned: Number of results
- query_params: Search parameters used
- summary: Counts by source, urgent deadlines, and rolling programs
- note: Helpful context about the results
Tips for effective searches:
- Combine state + query for geographically targeted results
- If the user gives a specific foundation name, use search_funders first
- Use natural language — describe what you're looking for in plain terms
- Try multiple specific searches rather than one broad search
- Use source="foundation" for private grants with rolling/LOI deadlines
- Omit query entirely to browse open programs by upcoming deadline
IMPORTANT — presenting results to users:
- Focus on what was found, not what wasn't. Present results positively.
- Do NOT comment on corpus size, data limitations, or coverage gaps.
- If few results are returned, suggest trying related keywords or using
search_funders to find aligned foundations — many accept unsolicited
inquiries or run annual grant cycles that may not have an open window
right now. Frame this as "here are additional prospects to explore"
not "the search didn't find enough."
- Many excellent funders don't post public open calls — they fund through
relationships, LOIs, and nominations. Use search_funders and
get_funder_profile to identify these funders as proactive prospects.
Examples:
search_open_grants(query="youth outdoor education", state="CA")
search_open_grants(query="affordable housing", state="NY", source="foundation")
search_open_grants(query="STEM education for girls", state="TX")
search_open_grants(query="food bank hunger", min_award=10000)
search_open_grants(query="mental health services", state="CA")
search_open_grants(query="climate change environment", source="foundation")
search_open_grants(source="government", nonprofit_only=True, state="NY")
search_open_grants(focus_area="Environment", source="foundation")
search_open_grants(query="community health workers", country="India")
search_open_grants(query="climate resilience", country="Global")
search_open_grants() # Browse open programs by upcoming deadline
Related tools:
- search_funders: Find grantmaking organizations by name or location —
use this alongside search_open_grants to identify foundations that may
be a good fit even if they don't have a posted open grant right now
- get_funder_profile: Get detailed profile for a specific foundation
- get_foundation_grants: See past grants made by a foundation
