Business and Nonprofits

AtoZdatabases is a directory and marketing database that includes 30 million businesses and 220 million residents. It is ideal for sales leads, mailing lists, market research, job searches and finding friends and relatives. You can email, print or download results. 1,000 downloads are allowed per search.

New listings are added to the New Movers & Homeowners and New Business databases each week. New listings are added to the Healthcare database quarterly. The other databases get new listings monthly. Existing listings are verified annually.

• Use the Quick Lookup features to search by Business Name, Headquarters Location, First and Last Name, City, State or Phone Number. If you don't find the business you are looking for in the Quick Lookup, search the 30 Million Businesses database with the All Businesses option selected.
• Use Universal Search to cross-search Business & Consumer databases to find phone numbers, people or businesses.
• Email records to one or more email address. You can also print and download records to Excel or PDF formats.
• Use QR Code to instantly download business contact information into your device.
• Customize your detailed listings to suit your needs by simply clicking and dragging the section.
• Use the Map Based Search for targeted geographic listings.

The business database is compiled from Secretary of State Filings, national directory assistance data, annual reports, SEC filings, corporate registers, public records, thousands of yellow and white page directories and specialty business directories. The residential database is compiled from data sources including thousands of white pages, national directory assistance data, real estate deed and tax information, voter registration data, mail order data, warranty cards and many other sources. You can search a database of 7.9 million healthcare professionals, and search by specialty, state of license and more.

1. The business database video will demonstrate how to find useful information on possible business competitors, vendors, suppliers or customers (for business-to-business commerce). This video will show you how to search for businesses in your industry and geography and export that data for use in your business plan.
    
2. The consumer database video will demonstrate how to find useful information on possible consumers and potential customers for your business. This video will show you how to search for consumers in a specific geography and segment them by demographic characteristic such as: income, home value, age, etc.
    
3. See AtoZdatabases' Intro Videos for more search tips.
    
4. Register for one-hour webinars at AtoZU on topics such as Basic Searches, Grow Your Business and Job Searching.
    
5. Check out the AtoZdatabases quick course from Niche Academy.
    
6. For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

The Austin Business Journal Online has the latest business news updated throughout the day, some of this week's top stories and other popular features from the print editions.

Check Factiva for articles from 2011 - present.

Austin's annual Book of Lists is available through the online Austin Business Journal.

To access the Book of Lists online:

• Login to the Austin Business Journal
• Click Book of Lists link

Brands and Their Companies lists manufacturers and distributors from small businesses to large corporations, from both the public and private sectors. It covers more than 426,000 U.S. consumer brands; 115,000 manufacturers, importers or distributors; and companies that are out of business as well as brands that are no longer in production or are now considered generic.

This eBook is fully searchable and accessed through the Gale Directory Library.

Watch these video tutorials for search tips.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

The Business and Nonprofits Research Guide provides research tools for the following topics:

• Business Plans
• Company Information
• Funding for Texas Businesses
• Industry Information
• Marketing
• Nonprofits
• Starting a Local Business

Consumer Reports.org provides reliable ratings and reviews for thousands of products from Consumer Reports. Reviews are easily searchable and updated regularly.

• Compare price, performance and reliability all in one place using expert reviews
• Purchase the best product from retailers on an ad-free, frequently updated website
• Find reliable information on new and used cars
• Obtain reliable and unbiased consumer health information to improve healthcare outcomes

View the Niche Academy tutorial

Factiva provides access to the full text of thousands of newspapers, newswires, magazines, and TV and radio transcripts from over 150 countries in 28 languages.

The Home tab > Newsstand: US section links to current articles of publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

Please log out when you're done: the Library has a limited number of concurrent users.

For search tips, see Dow Jones Factiva LibGuide and watch short video tutorials. 

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Access to Foundation Directory Online Professional Edition was discontinued on May 31, 2024.

The Gale Business: DemographicsNow subscription will expire on January 15, 2024. 

Please visit Statista and AtoZdatabases for market research and business information.

Gale Business: DemographicsNow provides demographics data, market research and directory information on 24 million businesses and 206 million residents.

• People: From individuals to large lists, data can be compiled from over 135 million U.S. households—organized by name, address, telephone number, or a variety of U.S. census neighborhood data averages.
• Companies: Includes individual business profiles from 24 million businesses, refined by company name, executive title, business type, number of employees and credit rating.
• Demographics: Information includes income, housing, race, age, education, retail spending, consumer expenditures, and businesses by state, county, zip code, and congressional district. The Demographics tab leverages Census data, consumer expenditures, retail spending, and Mosaic Lifestyle market segmentation groupings to help you "crunch" data in easy-to-use report formats. It provides complete demographic information for any geographic territory, from a summary report to a comparison of up to sixteen different geographies within a single report.
• Maps: Powerful, user-friendly Google mapping technology lets you customize maps in a variety of views, and add thematic layers to the map based on demographic variable.
• Reports lets you create a variety of compiled reports to help make informed and accurate decisions. You can gain consumer and market insight for opening a business, find an untapped audience for products or services, or analyze the shifts and needs of a given population.

1. Watch these video tutorials for quick tips.
    
2. Check out this tutorial from Niche Academy.
    
3. Watch this 35-minute webinar for more training.
    
4. For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Gale Business: Entrepreneurship covers all aspects of starting, financing and operating a business. Resources include sample business plans, how to guides, articles and websites.

Content is updated regularly and embedded in Gale Business: Plan Builder.

View the Niche Academy tutorial

Watch these video tutorials for tips.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Gale Business: Insights has detailed company and industry profiles including SWOT reports, market share reports and financial reports. It also has company histories, industry essays, business news and articles from scholarly journals.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

The Gale Business: Plan Builder subscription will expire on January 15, 2024. Please visit Gale Business: Entrepreneurship for sample business plans.

Gale Business: Plan Builder, formerly Small Business Builder, helps you plan and optimize your business or nonprofit. It provides a step-by-step process that helps you produce complete business plans and other documents essential for gaining access to capital and growing your enterprise.

Get Started:

1. Go to Gale Business: Plan Builder. You will enter your library card number for verification.
2. Click Sign In in the upper-right corner.
3. On the Sign In page, click Get Started.
4. Create your own username and password.
5. The Small Business Builder account is not linked to your library card number or the My APL catalog login.

Gale Business: Plan Builder seamlessly includes information from these resources: Gale Business: DemographicsNow, Gale Business: Entrepreneurship and Texas Legal Forms.

• View the Niche Academy tutorial.
• Watch these video tutorials for tips.
• For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

The Gale Directory Library contains:

• Brands and Their Companies
• Encyclopedia of Associations: National Organizations of the U.S.
• Encyclopedia of Associations: Regional, State and Local Organizations
• Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media
• National Directory of Nonprofit Organizations
• Publishers Directory

Watch these video tutorials for search tips.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Gale OneFile: Business provides full-text coverage from nearly 4,000 leading business and trade publications.

Gale OneFile: Economics and Theory contains articles from full-text academic journals and magazines that are useful for starting a business, marketing a product, developing policy, analyzing trends, constructing economic models, investing for the future, researching rates and more. 

Gale OneFile: Entrepreneurship contains business articles from over 500 magazines and trade journals.

Gale OneFile: Hospitality and Tourism provides articles about the cultural and economic aspects of travel and tourism as well as vacation planning resources.

Gale OneFile: Insurance and Liability contains articles about protection of physical or intellectual assets for laypeople and professionals.

Gale OneFile: Leadership and Management provides career development articles covering topics such as 21st-century skills, organizational dynamics and leadership, adult learning and continuing education.

Investor's Business Daily provides information about stocks, funds and markets with daily data tables and investment tools.

In-library access only. A Library staff member must log customers into the site. When finished, please log out to allow other users to access to the site.

The Austin Public Library's subscription to Investor's Business Daily does not include the subscriber-only features on Investors.com.

The Morningstar Investment Research Center is now called Morningstar Investing Center.

Morningstar Investing Center includes research on more than 30,000 stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It is designed specifically for individual investors.

The Library subscription only allows a limited number of concurrent users. Please sign out to allow others to access the database.

Check out the Morningstar tutorial from Niche Academy.

Go to Investing Classroom for tutorials.

National Directory of Nonprofit Organizations is a comprehensive guide to the growing nonprofit world designed for marketers, sales staff and nonprofit professionals. It provides contact and basic factual information on the largest nonprofit organizations in the United States.

This eBook is fully searchable and accessed through the Gale Directory Library.

Watch these video tutorials for search tips.

SizeUpAustin is an easy-to-use platform that allows you to receive data to help your small business make better decisions around competitive benchmarking, customers, suppliers, even marketing and advertising.

This tool is provided by the City of Austin Small Business Division. It does not require an Austin Public Library card and only includes Austin metro data.

Watch SizeUpAustin Video

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Library access only: A Library staff member must log customers into the site on a Library PC.

SOSDirect provides up-to-date access to information about Texas business organizations maintained by the Office of the Secretary of State. Name availability, assumed name, federal employer identification number (FEIN) and taxpayer identification number (TID) are among the search options. Both active and dead corporations are included in the database. Access to UCC and trademarks searching is also available. No fees are charged when using this database in the Library.

Statista provides statistics and reports for business, nonprofits and general research. 

Statista includes:

• More than one million statistics on over 80,000 topics across 170 industries
• 22,500 sources
• 7,000+ topic dossiers
• 41,000+ studies
• 330+ industry reports
• Infographics
• Market forecasts and business evaluation tools

Visit the Webinar Hub for live and recorded training.

Texas Legal Forms offers thousands of customizable online legal forms specific to Texas.

Users should consult an attorney for serious legal matters.

Watch these video tutorials for search tips.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Texas Venture Capital and Private Equity Directory provides investment firm profiles updated in real-time. This directory serves local entrepreneurs looking to raise capital, investors who wish to network with other investors and service providers who need a directory of investment firms.

For additional resources, the City of Austin Small Business Division provides business training, educational events, and coaching to empower entrepreneurs.

Value Line provides investment research on companies, industries, markets and economies. The Library's subscription includes coverage of 1,700 stocks in The Value Line Investment Survey Plus and 1,800 in the The Small and Mid-Cap edition. Value Line is compatible with iPads and Android tablets, but not with mobile phones.

Check out the Value Line tutorial from Niche Academy.

To get started, watch a short video overview and read these user guides.

For in-depth training, watch the Value Line Webinar Series.

If you're having problems with the site, please Ask a Librarian.

Weiss Financial Ratings Series includes important financial literacy tools from Weiss Ratings and Grey House Publishing.

With Weiss Financial Ratings, you can:

• Check the values and ratings of stocks, mutual funds and exchange traded funds
• Check ratings of banks, credit unions and insurance companies
• Compare Medicare Supplement Insurance Plans
• Download financial literacy & planning eBooks (PDF files to keep forever)

More features:

• Independent, unbiased financial strength ratings of banks, credit unions & insurance companies
• Conservative buy-hold-sell ratings of thousands of stocks, mutual funds & exchange traded funds
• Create your own personal account to create a watchlist, get upgrade/downgrade notifications and log in from anywhere
• Medicare Supplement Insurance - which plan to choose, how much it will cost, compare rates & plan benefits

Check out the Weiss Financial Ratings tutorial from Niche Academy.