Unlock the full potential of Grants.gov and discover the perfect grant opportunity for your organization. Use these essential search tips and tricks to navigate the vast landscape of funding opportunities offered on Grants.gov.
Understanding the Keyword search
Grants.gov allows you to search for phrases or parts of words, as well as complete words. The search engine compares what you have entered in the Keyword(s) search field with the title, description and documents related to each grant opportunity.
Search results are returned to you in order of relevance; that is, we assume that your keyword(s), if found in the title of a grant, are more relevant than if it is found in the description or related documents. Examining the results of repeated searches will help you develop a feel for the best keywords to use in your searches.
Phrases and parts of words
You can use single words like energy or phrases like solar energy. Enclosing your phrases in quotation marks (that is, double quotes) ensures an exact match—especially helpful if you know part of the title or a technical phrase:
“solar energy“ or “Fisheries Conservation Grant“
You can represent multiple characters with an asterisk (also called a star), like this,
fish*
to obtain results that include the words fish, fishery, fisheries, and fisherman.
If you only want to specify part of the word—or part of a unique string of numbers and characters—you can substitute one or more characters with question marks, like this:
RFP-2?-????
Advanced search techniques: logical operators
Logical operators allow you to combine keywords to refine your search even further. Here are some common operators, their shortcuts, and their function:
OR (||) searches for opportunities containing either of the entered keywords or phrases. For example,
water OR conservation
will return results with water, conservation, or both.
AND (&&) narrows your results to opportunities containing both keywords. For instance,
water AND conservation
will return results containing both water and conservation.
NOT (!) excludes opportunities containing the following word or phrase. For example,
water NOT habitat
will return results for water but exclude those that mention habitat.
Combine operators for powerful queries
By combining keywords or phrases with logical operators, you can formulate search queries that even more precisely target relevant grant opportunities. Here are some examples:
To find certain grants related to renewable energy research, you could enter:
“renewable energy” AND research NOT solar
Too Many Results? Try This – To identify opportunities for community development in rural areas of the United States, you could enter:
“community development” AND rural NOT “Department of State” NOT USAID
Note: In this scenario, adding NOT USAID and/or NOT “Department of State” may eliminate results for opportunities from USAID or DOS.
Don’t forget!
Use uppercase letters for AND, OR, and NOT.
Asterisk (*) and question mark (?) cannot be used alone. Use them in combination with letters and numbers as shown above.
Grants.gov is a valuable resource just waiting to be explored. Don’t hesitate to experiment with different search combinations and discover the grant opportunities that align with your goals.
Looking for more information? Visit our Search Tips page for a full list of operators that you can use on the Search Grants page.
Disclaimer: Any topics or agencies mentioned in this blog article are used strictly for example and instructional purposes.
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