How Candid’s AI can uncover new funding opportunities

Candid has a wealth of data and insights on decades’ worth of foundation grants. Every day, nonprofit fundraisers use our in-depth data to identify prospective funders to approach and requests for proposals (RFPs) to apply for.  

Now we’re introducing AI tools to recommend new funders and funding opportunities personalized to your needs, eliminating work that might have taken hours and surfacing opportunities fundraisers might not have discovered on their own to help fundraisers find what they need even more quickly and efficiently.  

In the same way that apps suggest your next favorite video or song, our recommendation systems harness AI to analyze user behavior patterns and data characteristics to suggest funders and RFPs. This translates into a personalized grants prospecting experience designed to meet fundraisers’ unique funding needs. 

Our recommendation tools save time, so nonprofits can focus on mission-driven work 

Candid is dedicated to helping the social sector increase its impact. So, we’re deeply invested in developing products and services for fundraisers that reduce the time they spend researching new funding opportunities.  

Finding a grants prospect is a daunting task, especially for small nonprofits that cannot afford to have dedicated fundraising teams. With our recommendation systems, small nonprofits can quickly identify funders and RFPs that would be a good fit—and focus instead on their mission-driven work.  

Candid’s recommendation tools leverage data on tens of millions of grants 

Our AI tools are built in-house and from the ground up, using both Candid’s robust data and expert knowledge of the sector. Just enter your nonprofit’s name or EIN and our algorithm analyzes your nonprofit’s data to provide relevant funder and RFP recommendations.  

What data is considered in our algorithm? Candid has information on more than three million nonprofits with tens of millions of grant transactions, including grant amounts, award dates, recipient locations, and more; plus we analyze freeform content, such as notes that enrich the data. We’ve built custom algorithms to understand correlations among the hundreds of fields of data we collect, such as details of recently awarded grants, the recipient organization’s mission, programs, causes, and geographic area served. And we’ve leveraged advanced deep learning AI models that find patterns in data and user behavior to draw connections between millions of organizations. And based on those correlations and patterns, the system curates a truly customized list of potential funders and RFPs for each fundraiser. 

Embrace the benefits and address the challenges  

As with most AI technology, these recommendation systems come with both benefits and challenges. Benefits include: 

• Faster decision making: Recommendation systems improve decision-making process and quality. 

• Personalized user experience: Making highly relevant and valuable suggestions, recommendation systems improve the user experience. Personalization is made possible using Candid’s vast collection of enhanced grants and organization data. 

Meanwhile, Candid is investing significant data processing and computing resources to build these resources. We constantly review the performance of these recommendation systems to optimize them. This is a work in progress, and we’re working to preemptively address challenges such as: 

• Bad recommendations: We’re being careful to ensure the systems don’t recommend any “false positives.” Feedback from users helps us improve the quality of the recommendations. 

• Bias: We’re working to minimize unintended bias in our data from historical fundraising patterns.  

Try out the funder and RFP recommendation tools now! 

Our funder and RFP recommendation systems are ready for you to explore. We offer the funder recommendation system today on the Beta version of next-generation Candid products to paid subscribers. The RFP recommendation system is available to the public to test on Candid labs. We’re constantly monitoring feedback from users to evaluate performance and make necessary improvements. 

It’s easy: You simply input the name or EIN of your organization and get funder and RFP recommendations. There’s also an option to provide program specifics to refine the recommendations for specific funding needs. 

What do you think? We’re actively seeking your feedback on both resources so we can continue to make improvements. Thank you in advance for helping us help you do your work more effectively!