Too Few or Too Many Alerts?

• On average we update 60 records every week, and FOCUS runs automatically each night. If there have been no alerts for 2 or 3 weeks, or they arrive with annoying frequency, try adjusting your search criteria. One or two relevant alerts per week is the norm but this varies from one subscriber to another and with the time of year.

• To check your saved criteria, go to SavedSearch (Single Users) or www.grantsearch.com.au/cgi-bin/grantsearch/domain/search (Institutional Users). Your chosen keywords are displayed in the textbox. Press the Search button to run them through the database and take appropriate action depending on the number of records returned.
   

  • 0 records returned: the most common cause is the default SearchType ALL having been saved unintentionally. Test this by selecting SearchType ANY and pressing Search again. If records are now being returned, reset the SearchType to ANY, tick the FOCUS Alert checkbox and press Submit.
    If there are still no records returned, check that any words you typed into the textbox are spelled correctly. To avoid error, and because many common words and phrases have more than one spelling, it is advisable to use only the keywords appearing in the drop down list (eg community rather than non-profit, nonprofit, not for profit or not-for-profit).

   

  • 1 to 5 records returned: your keywords may be too specific or rarely appear in combination with each other. Use broader topics or reduce the number of keywords.

   

  • 500+ records returned: your criteria may be too wide (eg arts, or research) or include words in common use (eg grant, or Australia). Narrow your search by substituting a sub-topic (eg performing, or medical research) or specific keywords (eg acting, or diabetes) and select ANY. In some cases it is more effective to take the opposite approach, combining several broad topics, but limiting the results to records that match them all, by setting the SearchType to ALL (eg community arts rural) 

• FOCUS is triggered whenever changes are made to an entry, due to a new address, for example, or if an entry has been created for a newly identified funding source. This kind of ongoing database maintenance is essential, and may occur between funding cycles. If you occasionally receive an alert about a program whose closing date seems far away, you will be notified again when we are advised of the latest funding round.

If you have followed the suggestions above but are still experiencing difficulty with this feature, please contact support@grantsearch.com.au including a short description of the nature of the problem.