OpenGrants has four moving parts. Most questions we get are really about which one to reach for.
Search
Ask in plain English and get ranked results from the grant database, the government contract database, or the funder directory. Search is hybrid — semantic and keyword — so you do not have to guess the exact phrasing a program used.
Use search when you are exploring a topic. See How OpenGrants search works.
Match
Describe your organization once, and matching ranks open opportunities by fit, with a 0–100 score and a one-line reason for each. Matching answers “what should we go after,” where search answers “what exists about X.”
Matching requires an active subscription. See How match scores work.
Track
Save anything interesting to your pipeline and move it through six statuses as work progresses: saved → researching → drafting → submitted → awarded or declined. The pipeline view groups everything by deadline urgency so the thing due in five days is impossible to miss.
See Saving grants and pipeline status.
Alert
Save a search as a named alert on a daily or weekly cadence, and OpenGrants keeps watching for new matches after you have moved on.
The order that works
For most new accounts the fastest path to value is:
- Set up your org profile — one sentence about your mission unlocks matching and eligibility checks everywhere else.
- Run one broad search in your own words, and look at the facets before narrowing.
- Save three or four things to your pipeline so deadlines start tracking.
- Turn your best search into an alert so it keeps working without you.
That sequence takes about fifteen minutes and is worth more than an afternoon of unstructured browsing.