Candid levels up to help nonprofits find funding faster

Funding fuels the mission. Effective funding empowers nonprofits serving communities to sustain consistent services, expand successful programs, and innovate solutions. Most U.S. nonprofits have revenue under $1 million, and even those with earned income depend on grants and donations to cover expenses.

At Candid, our goal is to help nonprofits focus on their mission-critical work while maintaining a strong fundraising pipeline. Candid search streamlines the fundraising workflow, combining the power of AI with the sector’s most comprehensive grants and organizational data.

Unmatched data and search capabilities

With over 304,000 funder profiles and more than 29 million grants records, Candid search makes it easy to identify the best funding opportunities for your nonprofit or program. Our AI-enhanced search understands the intent and context of your queries, delivering more relevant results for funders, grants, and requests for proposals (RFPs) than a traditional keyword search.

AI-powered intelligence

Moving beyond search, we’ve integrated AI into our tools to simplify fundraising tasks—from searching for prospects to writing letters of intent (LOIs). Subscribers can access an AI-generated ranked list of recommended funders tailored to your organization’s specific needs. Simply provide your organization’s location, name, EIN, and program information.

Additionally, Candid’s AI-powered LOI writer can help draft compelling letters of intent, reducing the time and effort it takes to craft persuasive proposals. It offers guidance section by section and proofreads your work along the way.

Don’t have a subscription? Nonprofits with under $1 million in annual revenue or expenses that earn a Gold Seal of Transparency get free access to Candid Premium for a year.

Project management for strategic fundraising

The fundraising project feature for subscribers provides a centralized workspace for organizing and managing ongoing projects. Create a new project from your dashboard; add details such as project goals, success criteria, and impact metrics; and access funder recommendations and the LOI writer. You can track your progress on each fundraising project—updating your prospect research results, status of grant applications, and upcoming deadlines.

Your personalized dashboard

The personalized dashboard, which you’ll see as soon as you log in, is your launch pad to a more efficient workflow using Candid tools. From this central hub, subscribers can initiate and save searches and access lists of organizations you’re tracking and pre-loaded lists of your current funders, nonprofits in your funding cohort, and local and national peers for benchmarking. You can organize your prospects into lists that align with specific criteria or those you’d like to include in a certain fundraising project.

Learn more about the dashboard and AI-powered tools.

Your streamlined fundraising workflow

With these advanced features, you’ll be able to save valuable time, effort, and resources as you refine your fundraising strategy. Here’s how to get started:

1. Search and discover. Search for grantmakers and peer organizations using keywords and filters such as subject area, population served, geographic area served, and organization type. Look up similar nonprofits to see who funds them, and refine your fundraising strategy accordingly. With a subscription, you can save your custom search results.
2. Organize your fundraising projects and build quality prospect lists. Create a fundraising project, defining goals, needs, and success criteria. Review detailed funder profiles, including priority areas, recently awarded grants, typical award amounts or ranges, geographic preferences, and application processes. Evaluate how well your nonprofit’s and the grantmaker’s priorities are aligned. Add strong prospects to your customized list, and organize your outreach strategy.
3. Generate LOIs. Save valuable time by using the LOI writer to create tailored letters based on your organization’s information and the funder’s interests. Personalize drafts for authenticity and alignment.
4. Track your progress, repeat, and scale. Update your project details as you submit inquiries to grantmakers. Mark prospect status, set follow-up reminders, and document conversations. You’ll be able to review saved projects, prospect lists, and search history, so you can build on previous work rather than starting from scratch. This means fundraisers with limited time and resources will no longer have to spend hours doing prospect research and duplicating efforts.

Ready to transform your fundraising?

Whether you’re a solo fundraiser or part of a larger team, Candid search offers the data, advanced tools, and streamlined workflows to identify the right funders, craft compelling proposals, and manage their fundraising projects efficiently. Throughout 2026, we’ll introduce additional tools that will save time so you can focus on what matters most. Visit us at app.candid.org and learn how to get the most out of your prospect research on Candid.