Double the Donation vs. Candid: Finding New Funding Sources

For nonprofit fundraisers, finding consistent revenue streams remains an ongoing challenge. Reliance on individual, one-off gifts often leads to volatile funding cycles, while sustaining and expanding real-world impact requires a diversified approach. The solution? Strategically tapping into institutional grants, in-kind donations, and corporate social responsibility programs.

In order to do so effectively and efficiently, two giants essentially dominate the landscape: Candid and Double the Donation. While both provide data tools to connect nonprofits with available funding and resources, they operate on completely different philosophies and infrastructure tracks.

This guide breaks down the top tools, mapping each one’s core mechanisms for capturing grants and in-kind resources. Let’s begin with a quick overview.

The Funding Landscape: Grants, In-Kind Gifts, and Beyond

Before diving into the platforms, it’s helpful to outline the three distinct resource buckets nonprofits seek to secure:

• Institutional Grants: Formal financial allocations awarded by private foundations, family trusts, companies and corporate foundations, or government entities. These require structured proposals, detailed budgets, and meticulous compliance reporting.
• In-Kind Donations: Non-monetary gifts, such as physical goods, corporate services, pro bono legal counsel, or software licenses. These help keep operational overhead low, especially for fundraising events.
• Corporate Philanthropy & Workplace Giving: A diverse suite of corporate-backed, employee-led giving programs that include matching donations, volunteer incentives, direct corporate grants, and corporate sponsorships.

Many nonprofits instinctively look toward institutional grants first. However, the operational reality of grant seeking involves long lead times, intensive administrative overhead, and low success rates.

For the best results, modern fundraising teams are balancing long-term grant applications with active, everyday funding avenues. And that’s exactly where corporate giving and workplace philanthropy become essential!

Platform Profile: Candid (Foundation Directory Online)

Overview and Mission

Candid was established in 2019 following the merger of Foundation Center and GuideStar. Its mission is to connect people who want to change the world with the resources they need to do it. Today, the platform serves primarily as a massive repository of nonprofit sector intelligence. It functions as an information aggregator, collecting, normalizing, and distributing data on foundations, corporate giving entities, public charities, and more.

Core Architecture & Key Features

Candid delivers its data ecosystem through two main products that now operate under its unified umbrella.

Foundation Directory Online is a comprehensive institutional database optimized for prospecting grantmakers. FDO catalogs over 240,000 foundations, corporate giving programs, and public charities. It scrapes IRS Form 990 filings to reveal who received funding, the exact size of the awards, the geographic focus of the giving, and the specific programs funded.

GuideStar is the central clearinghouse for information on active 501(c)(3) organizations. GuideStar issues “Seals of Transparency” (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) based on the depth of information nonprofits share, ranging from basic contact info to detailed impact metrics.

How Nonprofits Use Candid to Find Grants & In-Kind Donations

For institutional grant-seeking, Candid’s Foundation Directory Online is a highly robust tool that nonprofits generally use as a predictive modeling platform.

• Peer Intent Mapping: Instead of guessing which foundations might support an initiative, a development officer can search for direct peer organizations within FDO to see exactly which foundations funded them, down to the precise dollar amount.
• RFP Tracking & Visual Analytics: FDO offers interactive charts illustrating a foundation’s historical giving patterns. Users can also filter by geographic area, population served, and field of interest, ensuring that proposals are targeted to foundations with a proven history of supporting those areas.

On the other hand, finding in-kind donations requires analyzing corporate foundation profiles and Form 990 filings. Corporate grantmakers often indicate within their FDO giving guidelines whether they provide “non-monetary support,” “in-kind gifts,” or “product donations.”

For instance, a nonprofit seeking enterprise software licenses or hardware can search Candid for tech company foundations and check whether their bylaws permit product donations alongside standard cash grants. Unfortunately, this prospecting workflow is inherently manual. It yields a list of potential targets that still require individual outreach, custom applications, and separate vetting processes.

Platform Profile: Double the Donation

Overview and Mission

Double the Donation takes an actionable, conversion-driven approach to funding. Rather than building a passive library of institutional funders, Double the Donation focuses on revenue capture and accessibility. Its core mission is to empower nonprofits by making corporate giving opportunities accessible, ensuring that organizations never miss out on valuable support.

Historically known as the leading resource for matching gift fundraising, Double the Donation has executed a major expansion of its primary infrastructure. Over the last few years, their platform has evolved into a one-stop resource for corporate giving, integrating sponsorships, direct corporate grants, and in-kind opportunities into a robust corporate directory alongside its signature workplace giving tools.

Core Architecture and Key Features

Today, Double the Donation’s database is the leading resource for nonprofits seeking to maximize corporate giving opportunities of all kinds. It serves as a comprehensive, real-time database that provides information on thousands of companies offering corporate philanthropy programs.

The user experience is built around intuitive search functionality. Here’s how it works:

1. A user clicks into the database search tool (embedded on a nonprofit’s website, donation page, or backend system) and begins typing a company name.
2. The user selects the appropriate company from the auto-completing dropdown menu.
3. The user is instantly provided with company-specific information regarding available workplace giving and corporate partnership programming in real time, including eligibility guidelines, contact details, and direct links to request forms.

However, with its latest expansion, Double the Donation now offers a comprehensive directory of corporate sponsorship and grant programs designed to help nonprofits secure diverse funding, in-kind donations, and operational support.

How Nonprofits Use Double the Donation to Find Grants & In-Kind Donations

With the integration of corporate sponsorship and direct corporate giving programs, nonprofits no longer have to blindly look for grants and sponsorships. Rather, fundraisers can navigate Double the Donation’s platform to easily identify and secure high-value partnerships.

• Search for Sponsorship and Grant Opportunities. Nonprofits use the database to search for companies that actively provide corporate sponsorship funding or direct corporate grants. If a company offers these programs, the database results allow users to expand the listing to view applicable details and navigate to the online request portal to submit an application.
• Review Deep Partnership Details. Each company profile includes key information about its corporate giving or sponsorship programs, such as funding amounts, specific application processes, eligibility restrictions, and grant cycles. This data allows organizations to determine if an opportunity is a good fit before investing time into outreach.
• Connect with the Right Contacts Immediately. To streamline the request process, the database provides relevant contact information for corporate philanthropy or sponsorship teams. Many listings feature direct online application links, eliminating the need to hunt down corporate HR portals or hidden landing pages.

Not to mention, Double the Donation users can also leverage their supporters’ employment information (sourced through integrated giving forms, registration pages, and email follow-ups) to identify their best prospects for broader corporate support. If 50 employees at a regional tech firm are all donating to or volunteering with your mission, reaching out to the company to formalize the partnership with a grant or major donation can go a long way.

A Quick Comparison: The Double the Donation vs. Candid Difference

To understand how these platforms fit into your organization’s existing fundraising framework, it’s essential to evaluate them side-by-side across core operational categories. After thoroughly researching each tool, here’s what we came up with:

Double the Donation vs. Candid: Top Use Cases for Each Platform

Choosing between Candid and Double the Donation isn’t necessarily about finding the “better” database. It’s about aligning the platform with your team’s immediate fundraising objectives.

Let’s examine a few operational scenarios that may call for one tool or the other, as well as a few that would benefit from a combination.

When Candid Might Be a Better Fit

Candid excels in scenarios that require high-level institutional lookup, competitive intelligence, and structural due diligence.

• Mapping Private Foundations: When a nonprofit wants to target family foundations (such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that do not have public-facing websites, Candid’s FDO is the industry standard for accessing their financial documentation to identify who they are and what they fund.
• Peer Vetting and Benchmarking: When a nonprofit needs to analyze its local or national competitors, Candid can be a huge help. By searching peer organizations on GuideStar, you can evaluate their financial health, view their revenue mixes, see who funds them, and determine the level of transparency “Seal” your own organization needs to achieve to remain competitive.
• Securing Government Grants: When a development team is looking for a comprehensive map of federal, state, or municipal funding histories alongside private foundation matches, Candid provides the macroeconomic view required for long-form grant writing.

When Double the Donation is Likely the Better Choice

Because fundraising thrives on momentum, conversion, and corporate synergy, Double the Donation is the preferred platform for everyday revenue generation, event monetization, and modern corporate partner recruitment.

• Sourcing Event Sponsors: When planning your annual 5K run, charity auction, or regional gala, Double the Donation is the preferred choice for securing sponsorships. Instead of cold-calling, your team can use the extensive database to search for local businesses, uncover their sponsorship or grant guidelines, identify typical funding amounts, and access contact details for outreach.
• Securing Rapid Corporate Grants and In-Kind Equipment: If your nonprofit needs physical resources (such as laptops for an after-school program or catering for a community drive), Double the Donation is the go-to tool. Rather than waiting months for a traditional grant cycle, fundraisers can research companies to determine whether they offer direct grants or in-kind donation programs that bypass formal foundation boards.
• Maximizing Online Donation Flows: When an organization wants to increase the value of its everyday donations, Double the Donation’s lookup widget can be integrated directly into the checkout pipeline. This means a donor giving $100 can instantly discover whether their employer will match it, doubling the value of the transaction without any manual intervention by your staff.
• Building Warmer Corporate Partnership Pitches: When your corporate relations team wants to turn small-dollar individual donors into major corporate allies, Double the Donation’s employer data insights can go a long way. If the backend dashboard shows that 20 of your recurring donors work at a local bank, your team can use that insight to approach the CSR director about a formal partnership, knowing their workforce is already invested in your mission.

When a Combined (Double the Donation and Candid) Approach Is Right

A truly resilient non-profit development strategy recognizes that corporate philanthropy and institutional grant-making are deeply intertwined. Combining both tools creates a highly effective fundraising ecosystem.

• Leveraging Corporate Foundation Grants: Many large multinational companies split their giving between corporate foundations (tracked by Candid) and corporate marketing or CSR budgets (tracked by Double the Donation). By using both tools, your development team can look up a company like Walmart or Google on Candid to target their multi-million dollar community grant cycles, while simultaneously using Double the Donation to capture everyday sponsorship opportunities.
• Creating High-Converting Pitch Decks: When pitching a multi-year corporate partnership, numbers win arguments. A combined approach allows you to draw on a corporation’s philanthropic focus areas, historical funding data, and board connections via Candid, and overlay them with real-time employee giving data from Double the Donation. Showing a CSR officer that their own employees already support your nonprofit makes your proposal incredibly hard to ignore.
• Unlocking Multi-Tiered Relief Funding: In times of sudden crisis or emergency community campaigns, non-profits must move fast. A combined approach allows you to deploy Double the Donation to trigger corporate matches alongside sudden waves of disaster-response donations. Simultaneously, your grant writing team can use Candid to source institutional relief funds, sizable grants, and community foundation allocations for immediate crisis management.

Key takeaway: Treating these platforms as complementary assets rather than competing choices is the key to building a resilient fundraising pipeline. A dual-engine strategy ensures your organization can confidently pitch high-level foundation boards while simultaneously extracting maximum value from the corporate networks within your everyday donor base.

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Conclusion: Taking Action for Automated Growth

Each hour your development team spends on manual work carries an opportunity cost. While searching through grant directories is a useful step for uncovering foundation support, it cannot replace the immediate revenue and streamlined outreach that comes from a comprehensive corporate giving directory.

Workplace philanthropy programs, sponsorships, corporate grants, and in-kind donation opportunities open up incredible doors for nonprofits like yours. Organizations leveraging Double the Donation’s extensive database or Candid’s research-backed platform can access the information they need to grow institutional support and expand their impact with ease.

Best of luck!