What a profile that wins over foundations and donors looks like

Spheriq Best Practices

If you want to be discovered, you need to show what your organization stands for—and what it accomplishes. But what makes for a compelling profile? And what do grant-making foundations and donors look for when they first learn about your organization?

Funding organizations and donors search for organizations and initiatives that align with their funding goals and interests. Donors want to understand what an organization stands for and what impact their support has.

Potential supporters actively search for specific causes, compare projects, and discover new, exciting organizations in the process. Your profile on Spheriq can serve as that first point of contact.

It’s crucial that interested parties quickly recognize what you do, who you serve, and what you’ve already accomplished.

Four steps will help you design your profile so that your organization can be found and evaluated more easily.

1. Get noticed: Show where and for whom you are active

Foundations aren’t just looking for well-known organizations. They’re also on the lookout for new initiatives in their funding areas. Topics, target groups, and areas of impact play an important role here.

Therefore, describe as precisely as possible where you are active. “Education” alone doesn’t say much. “Vocational integration of young people facing barriers to the labor market” makes it clear what you’re about.

Consider three points:

1. Topics: Are your most important areas of activity and priorities clearly identified?
2. Target groups: Who do you serve?
3. Scope of impact: Where are you active?

The more precise this information is, the easier it will be for funders and donors to find you using the appropriate search filters. Your information also serves as an important basis for matching on Spheriq, which assesses the thematic, geographic, and target-audience fit between organizations, projects, and grant-making foundations.

Your professional network may also be of interest to donors. On Spheriq, you have access to about 20 free thematic and methodological trend networks, ranging from education and health to AI and fundraising. Here, you can follow current developments, exchange knowledge, and connect with other professionals. The “Connected” badge highlights your active participation in networks on your profile at .

Discover trend networks and join for free

2. Present your mission: Explain specifically what you’re changing

Anyone visiting your profile for the first time should understand, within a few sentences, what you do and why your work is important.

Avoid general statements of intent. Instead, describe the problem you are addressing and your specific contribution to the solution.

The second description explains who you serve, what you do, and what your goal is. Also highlight what makes your organization unique. Meaningful, authentic images and concrete project examples help bring your mission to life. Perhaps you have many years of experience, work particularly closely with a specific target group, or take an innovative approach.

Here’s a simple test: After reading this, could someone who doesn’t know your organization explain what you do and why your work is important?

3. Showcase your successes: Make your impact clear

Foundations and donors want to know what their support can achieve. That’s why it’s worth including not only your goals on your profile, but also your past experiences and results.

For example, highlight:

• Projects: What have you already accomplished, and for whom?
• Results: How many people have you reached? What has changed as a result of your efforts?
• Evidence: Are there annual reports, key metrics, evaluations, or real-world examples?

Be sure to distinguish between output and impact.

Output: “We conducted 100 counseling sessions.”

One possible outcome: “Thanks to the counseling, 25 participants were able to start new jobs.”

Not every impact can be measured immediately. It’s important to describe in a clear and understandable way what you’ve achieved—and what that says about the value of your work.

4. Build Trust with Badges and Recommendations

The badges on Spheriq also help others assess your organization.

“Complete” indicates that your profile is fully maintained, “Tax-Exempt” confirms verified cantonal tax-exempt status, and “Recommended” indicates a verified recommendation. Since badges also serve as search filters, they can further improve your visibility to donors.

Personal recommendations are a particularly valuable sign of trust.

Ask funding partners or other organizations with whom you have successfully collaborated to recommend your partnership on Spheriq. Recommendations are reviewed before they are published and can draw the attention of other funding organizations to you.

Read more in the article “The New Badges on spheriq.ch: Recognition for Your Commitment and for a Consistent Database.”

The RheumaCura Foundation’s profile on Spheriq serves as an example of what a compelling organizational profile looks like in practice.

5. Control the information: Decide what others learn about you

Your profile isn’t just a digital business card that you fill out once and then forget about. Organizations continue to evolve. Projects begin and end. Teams change, and new results are added

This makes it all the more important to keep your content up to date.

Pay attention to three things:

• Timeliness: Are your areas of responsibility, projects, contact information, and points of contact accurate?
• Consistency: Do your website, your Spheriq profile, and your other communication channels convey the same message?
• Clarity: Is your information understandable and easy to follow even without prior knowledge?

There’s also a new aspect to consider: People are increasingly using AI applications to learn about organizations. Such systems cannot be fully controlled . They can draw on publicly available information and generate summaries from it.

Keeping your information up-to-date and consistent improves the digital information base that such systems may draw upon.

Tip: Set aside some time regularly to update your profile—for example, after the fiscal year-end, after an important project milestone, or when you can publish new results.

Checklist: Is Your Organizational Profile Ready?

Before you consider your profile complete, check the following:

• Are our key areas of activity, target groups, and areas of impact accurately described?
• Can someone without prior knowledge understand what our organization stands for and what we actually do?
• Have we presented our key projects with meaningful descriptions and images?
• Do we use concrete examples or figures to show what we’ve already achieved?
• Are our contact information, points of contact, and other details up to date?
• Have we reviewed available credentials and badges and, if necessary, asked previous partners for recommendations?
• Do our Spheriq profile and our website convey a consistent image?

If you can answer these questions, you’ve laid a solid foundation for raising your organization’s profile and building trust.