Do you help write and edit grant proposals, and recommend where to submit them?

We do not engage in consulting or grant writing. Moreover, we do not comment on grant proposals sent to us via email or postal mail.

What is the scope of the Directory?

We specialize in international grant makers that focus on programs and projects in agriculture, energy, environment, and natural resources. We also include other grant makers which have smaller or limited programmatic areas in these sectors, and which operate internationally.

A large amount of development aid is for victims of natural disasters, usually in the form of grants. Does the Directory capture this?

These are grants for emergency relief. They are delivered mainly through organizations focused on humanitarian and social objectives. This departs from the central orientation of the Terra Viva Grants Directory. However, we include grant makers which fund activities to prevent and mitigate natural disasters (i.e., before they happen).

What other topics are not included in the Directory?

We no not include international population studies and demographics, even though many opinion makers consider this area to be relevant through considerations of population pressure on finite resources.

We omit grants in human nutrition, even though they are indirectly related to agriculture. Similarly, we do not include grants which support emergency food supply. Emergency feeding is humanitarian relief more than agricultural development.

Why do users have to pay for a subscription?

While we understand that many of you would like us to go back to offer all services at no cost, this won’t be possible. But we would like to assure you that you still have access to all calls for proposals and the complete collection of grantmaker profiles. All of this information is available for free. We publish new calls for proposals about every 10 days.

For those of you who are looking for extra features and want to save time, we offer subscriptions. Subscriptions include funding alerts by email, a monthly grants overview, and a searchable database. This is the paid segment of our service.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we need the subscription fee to cover our basic expenses in order to keep going. We made the subscription rate as low as possible. We are a nonprofit NGO, not a business. And please be reminded again that everyone, with or without a subscription, has online access to all the information items we offer.

Where are the email funding alerts?

You need to be a subscriber in order to receive the funding alerts by email.

If you are a subscriber, please visit “For Subscribers” >> “Funding Alerts”. You can sign up for as many subject areas as you like. Just click on the links to sign up for the funding alerts. You will then receive email reminders.

Additionally, you can receive a monthly summary of new and updated information during the previous 30 days. Click on “Monthly Update” to receive your monthly grant summary.

Why are some deadlines so short?

Some grant makers are not realistic in the time frames they offer. Others change their deadlines from year to year,  making it challenging to find their information. We search for new information on a cycle of 10 days. We might miss a few deadlines, but we end up getting most of them.

Could the Directory offer more specialised grants and a larger number of grants in general?

We publish grants in the fields and sub-fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, biodiversity conservation and wildlife, climate change, water resources, sustainable energy and cross-Cutting subjects. Our geographical orientation is  the entire developing world, defined as the low-income and middle-income countries. We look for funding opportunities from organizations around the world — international, government, and civil society — that contribute to this scope. Within this global framework, we believe that we are able to find and publish an estimated 90% of the relevant opportunities.   

We are of course not publishing information about grant makers who use a closed process for applications and inquiries. It seems to us that more and more grant makers are opting for closed selections.

Finally, we are unable to address subject areas such as grants for education, health, or humanitarian affairs. These are beyond our competence and implementation capacity.

Does the Directory offer more categories and better segmentation options?

We offer a searchable grants database. This allows you simultaneous segmentation by deadline months, subject areas, world regions, and grant types. This is the most precise way to locate information. The database is available for subscribers.  

We tag our online Funding News, and you can search these tags. You search for regions, for example South Asia, or Africa. You can search by subject areas, for example coastal/marine or agriculture. You can also search by grants type, for example fellowships and scholarships, or community projects. We also enable you to search tags for deadlines, such as grants with deadlines in May 2017.

Our search box is helpful for names and keywords. You can search it for country names (e.g., India, Uganda, etc.), or names of grant-making organizations (e.g., Toyota, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, etc.). You can also search by subjects (e.g., birds, biotechnology, etc.). Please take the time to practice until you find a search method that works best for you.

Why does the Directory not offer an annual calendar for calls?

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to implement an annual calendar for calls. The majority of funding opportunities have non-repeating deadlines.

Furthermore, we observe that programs are being delayed, funding levels are declining, and deadlines are moving around while grant makers struggle to confirm their budgets. There is too much instability for us to be able to produce an annual calendar that will be reliable.

To get a calendar view, please make use of the monthly tags in our Funding News. If you are a subscriber, you have access to the calendar organization of our database. Moreover, our Monthly Updates are by definition a calendar. We keep past Monthly Updates online for anyone wishing to consult them as a reference.

Can users be assured that the information provided in the Directory is objective?

Yes, we have every reason to be fair in our treatment of organizations profiled in this website. We are independent of all of them. Moreover, we have no political, religious, or philosophical agendas to promote.

We select grant makers on the basis of their relevance. We do not make judgments regarding their motivations, program effectiveness, and other aspects of their organizational behavior and performance.