SIFT Tutorial

There is a lot of funding information available on the Internet. Searching for it can get confusing. Some of the information you’ll find will be incorrect, or out of date, or just a ‘shop window’ to try to get you to buy services that are free elsewhere if you know where to look. The SYFAB Internet Funding Toolkit (SIFT) has guides to some of the better funding websites available to groups.

You can read the SIFT overview to explain more about what SIFT is and how it works – available on the SYFAB website – see www.syfab.org.uk/docs/siftoverview.pdf

South Yorkshire voluntary and community groups can receive a copy of SIFT for free - email Danny at SYFAB to receive a copy

How to use SIFT

The SYFAB Toolkit helps you to decide which websites are most useful for your organisation’s funding needs and then gives you easy to understand guides to those websites so you can get to the most relevant information quickly.

Getting started:

For guidance on how to install SIFT and for information on how SIFT updates, read the SIFT Support Guide on the SYFAB website – see
www.syfab.org.uk/docs/siftsupportguide.pdf

Once SIFT is installed on your PC, double-click on the SIFT icon on your desktop.

This should open up the ‘Start’ screen of SIFT. You will see a navigation bar along the left hand side with six sections of SIFT, and two links on the main page.

Clicking on ‘How to use SIFT’ will take you to a screen with information on how to use the software. If you keep scrolling down, you will also be able to find information on using the internet and on the website guides that are in the software.

To start using SIFT, go back to the Start screen (click ‘Start’): You can use SIFT to find websites with information on possible funding sources for your group, or to show you some general websites to find information about a particular funder that you already know the name of. This example will concentrate on searching for possible sources of funding.

Click on ‘possible sources of funding’. SIFT will ask you to pick which area of work you are in. Choose the one which most closely reflects your activities. Then you should choose which area you are based in.

You will then see a list of results which are websites that might be useful for you to look at. Scroll down the list and read the summaries to see if any are likely to be useful to you.

The results are in alphabetical order for each type of website – lottery funders, then charitable trusts, then local organisations such as community empowerment networks, and finally sites with more general funding information and advice, and those that allow you to enter information and search for possible funding sources.

When you find a website that you want to look at, you can click on the title of the website to open up that website in a separate window. You can also click on the spotlight next to the website title to open up SIFT’s website guide in another window. The guide will show you how to find the relevant funding information on each site.

The windows containing SIFT, the website and the website guide all overlap each other so you can click between websites and their guides, to make it easier to use the guide to work out where relevant information is on a particular website.

Remember that websites can be arranged very differently and funders use different language to mean the same thing. It is easy to get stuck and waste time looking at information that isn’t useful to you. So, make use of the website guides to speed up your information searching.

Information on each website guide is set out in the same way. Each guide covers:

• A summary of what information is available on each website
• A screenshot of the home page pointing out relevant links
• Description of how to navigate around the pages on the website
• A description of how to find the funding information available on the site
• Details on other funding related information available such as how to sign up for mailing lists and downloadable advice sheets
• Details of other information available that isn’t related to funding but may be of interest to community groups
• Notes of accessibility features on websites, such as high contrast or large print versions of the sites and how to use them if available

Finding particular websites

From the start page, you can also look for the SIFT guide and link for a particular website that you know the name of. To do this, click on “…a particular funder that you know the name of”. Then click on the type of funder (charitable trust, lottery or government). For general funding websites and for a list of all the websites covered by SIFT guides, click on “Don’t know”.

Feedback! To keep my funders happy, i need to collect info on which groups are accessing these tutorials. So, firstly, please contact me to let me know your name, organisation and email address, and which tutorial(s) you’ve worked through. You can fill in the contact form below or email me (Danny) directly to do this.

Next, comments and criticisms! Please let me know what you think of these tutorials. Did they make sense? Were they useful? What’s wrong with them? Please either send me a few comments along with your contact details using the contact form or emailing me. OR you can fill in a specific evaluation form (Click here to access the form) and send it back to me. If you are going to work through more than one tutorial you don’t need to contact me every time - just the once is fine!

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