Candid GuideStar vs. Factiva

GuideStar Pro is well suited in two scenarios: when you want to demonstrate your organization's commitment to transparency (through the seals) and when you know what you're looking for when searching through 990s. Basically, if you can mine a 990 well, GuideStar Pro is perfect for you. If you are new to the grant-seeking industry and need more guidance/clearer information already mined for you, then GuideStar Pro is likely to be overwhelming.

Incentivized

Factiva is particularly useful when I work on securities litigations involving shareholder lawsuits -- i.e. shareholders who bought and sold shares during a specified class period when the company was misrepresenting, for example, its financials. Specifically Factiva is quite useful in helping me understand what company events were known by the market and when they were known. Factiva has also been useful in helping me on various research studies. It is less relevant for other types of litigation that I work on (i.e. Patent litigation, etc).

Incentivized

• Excellent data.
• Easy to use site to find what I need.
• Provides relevant data that is recent and not many years old.

Incentivized

• Putting broad swaths of news in one place
• Organizing information
• Constant updates

Incentivized

• None - anything missing from GuideStar Pro can be found in FDO, also from Candid

Incentivized

• Lengthy setup for searches
• Repeated articles appear frequently
• Unannounced interface changes were unpleasant surprises

Incentivized

I have not had any issues with GuideStar Pro where I needed personal support. They have helpful tutorials and overall the platform is very user friendly.

Incentivized

I have always used Guidestar as my go-to not only when I was a non-profit executive and wanted to ensure we remained worthy of their rating but also now as a non-profit consultant where I need to understand my current and potential partners across financials, key contacts, board members, etc.

Incentivized

Each of the tools I have described share the same kind of premise: the main thing they do is source and collect media content. Then to varying degrees they run filters against this content and produce a range of data visualisations and ways of slicing the data and content. Factiva's strength lies more in the sourcing of content than in the manipulation of the results (much like the others do with more sophisticated dashboards and visual interpretations). We chose it because of the integrity of its sourcing breadth. It doesn't matter so much about the display of results because the source material you're working with isn't as dynamic as say social media.

Incentivized

• More informed grant proposals.
• Able to easily and efficiently complete grant research.

Incentivized