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Scenario 9 — Finding funds for a health services initiative aimed at families in need.

 Question: I run a coalition group on the West Coast concerned with the quality of health services available to families in need. We are developing a major children and youth health initiative targeting homeless children and their families. We have already received a commitment from the California Wellness Foundation. How do we find other potential funding sources?

Answer: This sounds like another complicated question, but, in fact, the information provided lends itself to a very effective search strategy that, for someone with a moderate amount of experience doing electronic research, will be fairly easy to construct.

Tip: In this section of the tutorial you are instructed to type search words into the Index Search fields, but it's suggested you use the indexes instead if you're not yet well acquainted with common terms used in The Foundation Directory Online.

Follow these steps:
    1. Type CA or Oregon or WA in the Foundation State field. (Note the OR Boolean operator between search terms which pulls up foundations containing either term. Also, Oregon must be spelled out or its postal code will be interpreted as the OR operator.)
    2. Type Children/youth services OR Family services OR Public Health in the Fields of Interest field. (Again, note the OR Boolean operator which pulls up foundations containing either term.)
    3. Type Seed money OR Program Development in the Types of Support field.
    4. Type NOT California Wellness Foundation in the Text Search field. (We use the NOT Boolean operator here to filter out this specific foundation because it has already contributed funds to the coalition.)
    5. Click Search. The Results List appears displaying a list of all foundations containing your search terms.
    6. Click a foundation name on the Results List to view it in the Record Display window.
    7. Click Close Window when you are through viewing the record, and click on another foundation name in the results list or click New Search to go back to the Search Screen and start over.