If you want to know how to find foundation grants right now, stop starting with mission statements and start with payout behavior. Over the past eighteen months the foundation market split in two: a visible minority of funders pushed their giving far past the legal minimum, while most foundations held budgets flat even as demand from defunded nonprofits hit record levels. A prospect list that treats those two groups the same is quietly wasting most of your research hours.

The Payout Split That Should Reshape Your Search

Federal tax law only requires a private foundation to distribute about 5 percent of its non-charitable investment assets annually — the IRS enforces this minimum distribution with a 30 percent excise tax on undistributed income under section 4942. Most foundations hug that floor. The most recent IRS Statistics of Income analysis puts the median payout rate at just 5.71 percent of assets.

That median hides the split that matters for your prospecting. On one side sit the expanders. The MacArthur Foundation committed publicly to a 6 percent floor for 2025 and 2026, then reported that its actual 2025 charitable spending reached 7.1 percent — roughly $647 million, about $190 million more than originally budgeted — with $622 million approved for 2026. The Marguerite Casey Foundation set a new baseline of at least $50 million a year, a 50 percent jump over its prior decade average. McKnight unlocked an extra $20 million for 2026 on top of an earlier $200 million increase, and Freedom Together moved to a 10 percent payout. Around 50 funders signed the Level Up Pledge, committing to raise grantmaking 20 percent or push payout to 8 percent or higher.

On the other side sits the majority. The Center for Effective Philanthropy reported in January that 70 percent of surveyed foundation CEOs said their institutions have not increased payout, largely because boards fear eroding their endowments. At the same time, 87 percent of foundation leaders report increased demand for funding, and a February survey of 380 nonprofits found most now consider foundation grants harder to win. The payout math behind the 5 percent rule explains why flat-payout funders cannot simply absorb the new demand: their grant budgets are formula outputs, not need-responsive pools.

The practical takeaway: a subject-and-geography database search treats an expanding funder and a frozen one identically. Your search process should not.

The Three-Number Screen: Read Giving Trajectory Before Mission Fit

Before you evaluate whether a foundation loves your program area, check whether its money is growing, flat, or shrinking. Three numbers from the Form 990-PF answer that in about ten minutes per funder.

Number one: the grants-paid trend. Pull three consecutive years of filings and compare total contributions, gifts, and grants paid. A funder whose grants line grew from $1.8 million to $2.6 million is behaving like an expander even if it never issued a press release. A shrinking line means you are competing for a smaller pie against incumbent grantees.

Number two: the payout ratio. Divide qualifying distributions by net investment assets. A ratio near 5.0 to 5.2 percent marks a formula giver that distributes only what the law demands. Anything sustained above 6 percent signals a board that has decided to stretch. Watch for one-time spikes tied to a single large grant — trajectory matters more than any single year.

Number three: the new-grantee share. Scan the grant list attached to the return and mark how many recipients did not appear in the prior year’s filing. Some foundations raised payout but routed every added dollar to existing partners. A funder adding dollars and new names is the strongest possible discovery signal. Our Form 990 look up playbook walks through exactly where each of these figures lives in the filing and how to pull them free of charge.

Run this screen and a mid-sized regional foundation that quietly grew giving 40 percent will outrank a famous name whose grant list has been frozen since 2023 — the opposite of how most prospect lists get built.

How to Find Foundation Grants That Are Actually Expanding

Expanders reveal themselves through three channels, and none of them is a keyword search.

Public pledges. Set it at Six and the Level Up Pledge both publish who signed. Pledge rosters hand you a pre-built list of foundations that told the world their giving is going up — Inside Philanthropy documented roughly $500 million in additional funding from Level Up signers alone. Treat the roster as a starting universe, then verify each signer with the three-number screen, because a pledge is a plan and a 990-PF is a receipt.

Funding news. Payout increases are announced, not hidden. The Marguerite Casey commitment ran on the AP wire, and trade coverage tracks the follow-on moves — McKnight’s $20 million boost, Robert Wood Johnson’s rapid-response grants, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust granting about $10 million above its usual level. A weekly alert on phrases like “increases payout” or “expands grantmaking” plus your state name will surface regional expanders national coverage misses.

Databases with fresh financials. Once you have candidate names, you need current filings and giving histories in one place. Our roundup of the top platforms for finding foundations for grants for nonprofits compares the major options, and the OpenGrants funder directory lets you move from a name to giving history without stitching together PDFs.

One more pattern worth knowing: expanders skew toward general operating support, faster decisions, and lighter reporting — MacArthur, for instance, paired its higher payout with trust-based practices. If your ask is a rigid program budget with heavy overhead restrictions, you are mismatched with the very funders holding the new money.

Do Not Ignore the Quiet Majority — Approach It Differently

The flat-payout majority still controls most foundation dollars. Foundation giving totaled about $103 billion in 2023 against $303 billion in federal support to nonprofits, which is why philanthropy cannot replace lost government funding no matter how many boards stretch. Those roughly 120,000 grantmaking foundations still distribute well over $100 billion a year, and most of that money never touches a pledge roster or a press release.

Here is the competitive logic most guides miss: displaced federal grantees are flooding the famous expanders. Every nonprofit that lost an agency grant is now writing to MacArthur and its peers, which is exactly why most organizations report foundation grants getting harder to win even as headline giving rises. The quiet majority — especially small, unstaffed family foundations with no website and no application portal — sees far less of that new traffic.

Finding them takes different tools. Search filings by county or metro area rather than subject keywords, since small family foundations describe their giving in grant lists, not mission statements. Check the funder lists in the annual reports of nonprofits similar to yours — those are pre-qualified prospects. State attorney general charity registries capture local foundations that national databases surface poorly. And because these funders rarely publish guidelines, the 990-PF application-information section is often the only place they state whether they accept unsolicited requests at all. The broader strategies in our nonprofit grants hub pair well with this long-tail hunting.

Build a Two-Track Prospect List

Put the two halves of the market on separate tracks with separate expectations.

Track A: eight to twelve verified expanders. National and regional foundations whose three-number screen confirms growing giving. Expect letter-of-inquiry gates, heavy competition, and professional program staff. Lead with a general operating or crisis-resilience ask that matches how these boards have framed their increases. Move quickly: expansion commitments are mostly two-year windows, and MacArthur has said it will decide its 2027 level during budget planning later this year.

Track B: ten to fifteen quiet local foundations. Smaller asks, slower cultivation, and relationship channels — a board member who knows a trustee is worth more than a polished proposal here. Competition is thinner, but so is capacity: many make decisions once a year at a family meeting.

Refresh both tracks quarterly. New filings post continuously, pledge lists grow, and an expander whose window closes should slide down your list the moment its trajectory flattens. Foundation prospect research in this environment is less like searching a card catalog and more like reading a market: money is moving, and your list should move with it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a private foundation have to pay out each year?

Federal law requires a private foundation to distribute approximately 5 percent of the fair market value of its non-charitable investment assets annually, a figure the IRS calls the distributable amount. Foundations that fall short face a 30 percent excise tax on the undistributed income under Internal Revenue Code section 4942. Most stay close to the floor: IRS Statistics of Income data puts the median payout rate at 5.71 percent, which is why the minority paying 7 to 10 percent stands out so sharply.

How can I tell if a specific foundation is increasing its giving?

Compare its three most recent Form 990-PF filings, which are public documents. Track total grants paid year over year, compute the payout ratio by dividing qualifying distributions by investment assets, and count how many grantees are new in the latest filing. A rising grants line, a ratio sustained above 6 percent, and fresh recipient names together confirm genuine expansion. Public signals help too: payout pledges, press announcements, and trade coverage usually precede the filings by a year or more.

Are foundation grants harder to get right now?

On average, yes. Demand rose sharply after federal funding cuts — 87 percent of foundation leaders report increased requests, and a February survey of 380 nonprofits found most consider foundation grants harder to secure than before. But the difficulty is unevenly distributed. Foundations that raised payout have new money to place and are often loosening restrictions, while small local foundations see less of the surge in applications. Targeting those two segments beats broadcasting proposals across the flat-payout majority.

What free tools can I use to find foundation grants?

Form 990-PF filings are free through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, and they contain grant lists, payout figures, trustee names, and application instructions. Candid offers free basic funder searches, and many public libraries provide no-cost access to its full Foundation Directory. State attorney general charity registries round out local coverage. Free tools require more manual effort than paid platforms, but they draw on the same underlying IRS data.

Bottom Line: Rank Prospects by Trajectory, Then by Fit

Anyone can pull a list of foundations that once funded work like yours. The advantage this year comes from knowing which of them have money that is actually growing. Rebuild the top of your prospect list around giving trajectory: start with pledge rosters and payout announcements, verify every name with the three-number 990-PF screen, and reserve a second track for the quiet local funders the displaced-federal-grantee crowd is overlooking.

How to find foundation grants, in this market, is really a question of reading supply before writing a single proposal. The funders stretching past the 5 percent floor have told you who they are — in filings, pledges, and wire stories — and the window they opened is measured in quarters, not years.

If you would rather not assemble this screen by hand, the OpenGrants grant discovery platform combines funder giving histories, live opportunities, and search built for exactly this kind of trajectory-first prospecting — so your next application goes to a foundation whose budget is moving toward you, not away.