Why Share Your Grants Data?

Take Control of Your Story


It’s Good for the Sector


It's Easy


How Does it Work?

Share Data: How Does it Work?

To share your grants data all you need to do is:

  1. Register for a Foundation Center Updater account. 



What are the Benefits?

Get a Compelling Communications Tool


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See Your Giving in Context


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Frequently Asked Questions

What information do I need to provide?



  • Recipient name
  • Recipient city
  • Recipient state
  • Recipient country (if not US)
  • Grant description
  • Fiscal year
  • Grant amount
  • Grant currency (if not USD)

Highly Recommended

  • Transaction ID
  • Recipient address
  • Recipient postal code
  • Recipient EIN / international ID
  • Grant program area
  • Subject(s)
  • Population(s) served
  • Geographic area served
  • Grant duration or grant start/end dates


Dos & Don'ts for Data Mapping & More!

Dos & Don'ts for Reporting Geographic Area Served

Why is it important to provide a grant description?


In general, a good grant description includes the following information:

  • WHAT: What is the primary objective of the grant?

How is my grants data coded by Foundation Center?



How frequently should I share my grants data?


How quickly will my information appear on my complimentary map?


Can I embed my complimentary map on my website?





If you notice any errors or need to make changes to your data after it has been processed, just email egrants@candid.org. We will take care of any needed changes right away. If you do not already do so, we encourage you to include your internal grant ids in data you submit to us. This will make the process of making corrections easier and more accurate.

How will my grant information be used and shared? 


In short, it should be assumed that any data sent to us will be published in Candid platforms. Please do not share information with the project that may not be made public. For more information on how to share sensitive grants data, please see the next FAQ.

How do I responsibly share sensitive grants data?

Candid is committed to being a responsible steward of the data that is shared with us. We recognize that in some cases it may not be possible to share full details about your grants, and that circumstances can change, making grants data that was once safe to share more sensitive. This FAQ provides guidance for how to share your data with Candid and what to do if your organization finds itself in the latter situation.

When sharing your data, please keep the following things in mind:

·        Any grants or individual grants details that should not be made public should not be shared with us. It should be assumed that any data sent to us will be published in Candid platforms. If the work covered by the grant is of a sensitive nature, please refer to the first question below, “What are my options for sharing sensitive data?”

·        Email is not a secure means of transferring sensitive data. Please do not include such data in what you share with Candid or our partners, even if it comes with instructions to anonymize or exclude certain details. Sensitive data should be anonymized, aggregated or removed by your organization before it is shared externally.

·        The degree to which you anonymize or exclude data should reflect the degree or nature of the risks associated with sharing that data. For example, if there is a high likelihood that the safety or lives of a grantee’s staff could be put at risk were details of the grant to be made public, your organization may opt to anonymize several aspects of that grant, or if necessary, exclude it entirely from what is shared with Candid.

What are my options for sharing sensitive data? 

Field Notes
Recipient name List recipients as ‘Anonymous Recipient’ or ‘Anonymous Individual(s)’
Recipient location

If anonymizing the recipient alone is not enough, information about the recipient’s location can be excluded to different degrees:

  • Exclude street address
  • Exclude street address and city
  • Exclude street address, city, and state
  • Exclude street address, city, state, and country (in this case location would be a region)
Grant text

Grant text can also be excluded to different degrees. Depending on the degree and nature of the risk, the following fields can be excluded:

  • Program area(s)
  • Grant title
  • Grant description
Grantmaker name If there are potential risks to the grantmaker as well, the grantmaker name can be anonymized in Candid’s records. The grantmaker name would appear as “Anonymous Funder”

If these anonymization or exclusion options are not enough, funders can also submit their data to Candid as an aggregate. For instance, you can provide us with a total amount funded to a particular geographical region for a specific issue area such as abuse prevention and we’ll process the data as one grant to an anonymized recipient in that region, coded for abuse prevention as the subject and for that total grant amount.

How do I remove or modify grants that have previously been shared with Candid?

In rare cases – such as those where security risks arise – it may be necessary for Candid to delete or modify a grant or set of grants from our database and products. 

If deleted, the grants information would no longer be available in Candid databases, products and platforms. In these cases, we will not be able to re-add the grants data if the security risk no longer poses a threat.

A less permanent solution to address security concerns involves anonymizing grants data.

Who do I contact to if I need to anonymize or delete existing data?

To request that grants be anonymized or removed from Candid databases, please send requests to egrants@candid.org.

How long will it take before the changes appear?

If anonymization is requested, we may suppress grants temporarily in our products (i.e., Foundation Maps, Foundation Directory Online, etc.) while we work to modify the data to reflect the chosen level of anonymity. Once we’ve landed on a course of action, it will take up to two weeks before these modifications are reflected in products.




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