Public API

Grantr Public API for Developers

The Grantr Public API was created to give developers a free alternative to having to manage the 1.7 million organizations and schools that their grant makers want to perform due diligence on. Grantr and Good Done Great believe that free data should also be easy to use and we wanted to make sure that our developer colleagues were able to pass on the benefits membership in Grantr provides to their clients easily from right within any application that their grant makers are using.

Benefit to Developers

The Grantr Public API provides an easy way to add the Good to Grant due diligence interactivity to your existing application with no hard costs. We used the industry standard oAuth for easy authentication and have a few simple HTTP methods to move data between your application and Grantr. We will also be doing all of the data updating and maintenance so that you don't have to worry about managing hundreds of thousands of records from multiple sources.

Your grant making clients need to perform this due diligence to avoid penalties or additional taxes. Incorporating it directly into your product makes it easier for them to do what they have to do at no extra cost to them or you. This saves the client money, money which could be much better spent making grants or buying additional software from you that will make them more efficient.

Marketing Opportunities

We expect Grantr to have traffic from grant makers that aren't using one of our community of developer's software platforms. This is a great marketing opportunity for us all to reach new clients. There are several ways that you can participate:

1. Advertise on Grantr - We have a nice big right column that is waiting for you.
2. Advertise on your own site - Once you've implemented the API, you can promote that on your site. Once search engines pick that up, grant makers searching for Grantr may find you.
3. Contribute to the newsletter - Write articles or place an ad in the newsletter or notification emails. We hope to send a newsletter at least once a month to all registered Grantr members (who have not opted-out).
4. Tight Integration - Use oAuth and have your application be a sign-in option in Grantr (like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.)

If you wish to participate in any of the above marketing opportunities to promote your product, or if you have other ideas please contact us.

Why is it Free?

Good Done Great's clients needed this functionality and this was one of those rare occasions where it didn't cost us that much more to build than it would have been to buy and integrate. Since this was already a sunken cost, why not make life easier for everyone else by sharing it? Our hope for Good Done Great is to gain some marketing value. Our hope for the industry is to help our colleagues and clients to avoid paying for something that the government provides for free while at the same time help clients protect themselves from being fined or taxed by that same government.

All that said, there are going to be ongoing costs to maintain the site: hosting, new functionality and data management. Our plan is to recoup those costs through advertising, sponsorships, and the sale of the Grantr Corporate API.

Public API Terms of Use

The Grantr website and the Grantr Public API were developed for the free and unfettered professional and reasonable use of grant makers and others that need access to the data and functionality in Grantr. Use of the Public Grantr API is only for developers that offer the same free and unfettered reasonable use to the intended audience and not for any other use. Free and unfettered reasonable use means:

1. Free - It is prohibited to charge (license fee, subscription, etc.) grant makers or any other individual or entity for the use of the Public Grantr API or Grantr data. 
2. Unfettered - It is prohibited to use one login for all of your users, as that reduces the functionality made available to each grant maker/user. Each individual user must have a free account in Grantr to have access to the data and to manage their own personal watchlist.
3. Reasonable - It is prohibited to scrape the data or any other assets from Grantr by any means. If you want the data in bulk form, please go to the sources.

We don't want to belabor this. Apply the Golden Rule to what you want to do and if you wouldn't want someone doing that to you, don't do it to Grantr.

Instructions

1. Sign up with Grantr
2. Go to Applications  and click the New Application button
3. Specify your application name and a description, then click Save
4. Use the App ID and App Secret in your application to allow your members to access their Grantr accounts from your application using our API

For a live demo application, see http://grantrclient.heroku.com. Create a Grantr account, then go to the demo application and click the Grantr link under Sign in.

Public API Methods

Use our oAuth-based API to:

1. Authenticate a member in your application
2. Retrive a member's first and last name, email address, member ID, watch-list, and notifications
3. Manage a member's watch-list
4. Retrive detailed organization and school information in JSON or PDF formats

The Public API includes the following methods:

Mehod	URL Relative to Grantr.com	Parameters	Results
member	/api/v1/member.json	none	Returns the current member's first and last name, email address and member ID
notifications	/api/v1/notifications.json	none	Returns the current member's notifications, each of which are a JSON string, such as: {object: {an organization or school object}, message: 'some message...', seen: [true or false], created_at: [timestamp]}
watches	/api/v1/watches.json	none	Returns the current member's watches, each of which are a JSON string, such as: {object: {an organization or school object}, created_at: [timestamp]}
watch	/api/v1/watch.json?ein=12-3456789&school_id=123456789	Either ein or school_id, but not both	Adds an organization or school to the current member's watch-list
unwatch	/api/v1/unwatch.json?ein=12-3456789&school_id=123456789	Either ein or school_id, but not both	Removes an organization or school from the current member's watch-list
organization	/api/v1/organization.json?ein=12-3456789 or /api/v1/organization.pdf?ein=12-3456789	ein	Returns an organization as a JSON string or a PDF
school	/api/v1/school.json?school_id=123456789 or api/v1/school.pdf?school_id=123456789	school_id	Returns a school as a JSON string or a PDF