How To Use Instrumentl's Grant Database

Learn the Grant Writing Unicorn Method for focusing on the right grants with the highest likelihood of success.

Press play above to watch the replay of this fabulous webinar.

At Learn Grant Writing, we love Instrumentl! Use the discount code LGW to get $50 off your first month of Instrumentl here.

We appreciate Instrumentl’s commitment to clean, user-friendly design. They are continually improving their grant database, making it better every time we use it. We think you will like it as well!

We know that they aren't cheap, but for the superb tracking system and all the other relevant tools, Instrumentl is the best database we’ve found for its value. It’s well-designed and easy to use.

👉 After your free trial, if you end up liking the tools much as we do, use the discount code LGW to get $50 off your first month of Instrumentl here.

Frequently Asked Questions About Instrumentl

How can Instrumentl help me?

Instrumentl is the institutional fundraising platform that brings grant prospecting, tracking and management to one place. While other tools may do one of these three things well, Instrumentl does all three things well.

Instrumentl features the concept of a project, where you’re able to maintain a saved grants search, while also having a dedicated Tracker for each project. Trackers serve as the single source of truth around all the grants you may be working on. When you save opportunities to your Instrumentl Tracker, you can create tasks for yourself or your team members, upload final proposals, and manage everything around your grants from Instrumentl.

When it comes to finding good fit funders, Instrumentl’s matching algorithm searches through thousands of active and open funding opportunities to find the best fits for you, based on your organization & project requirements.

Then, whenever you have new matches fit your project, or an upcoming task / deadline coming up, Instrumentl pings you to let you know. Instrumentl also makes researching funders much easier. With their 990 reports, you can dig into multi-year trends such as a funder’s openness to new grantees, most popular areas of giving, and more.

With Instrumentl, you eliminate much of the administrative work that makes grant seeking frustrating, and instead focus your valuable time and energy on what matters most: applying for and winning more grants.

Who is Instrumentl for?

Instrumentl primarily serves organizations with at least $90K in operating revenue and 501c3 status in the United States best. The reason why is because oftentimes, these organizations have validated grants as a viable funding source and are focused on scaling up their annual grant strategy.

Instrumentl customers range from development team members to nonprofit consultants and grant writing consultants who serve nonprofit organizations that meet the aforementioned two criteria. If you’re unsure if Instrumentl can help you out, email them at [email protected].

What kind of grants does Instrumentl feature?

Instrumentl matches nonprofit grantseekers with over $1 billion in active grants from corporate funders, federal governments, state governments, private foundations, community foundations, and clubs & societies.

For academic researchers, Instrumentl is specialized in grants for researchers related to the environment, earth sciences, and agriculture.

How does Instrumentl compare to other grant tools out there?

Instrumentl is the institutional fundraising platform that brings grant prospecting, tracking and management to one place. Most other grant tools out there are only capable of doing one or two of these three components to grantseeking.

The Instrumentl team has created helpful product comparison pages to other commonly used grant tools here:

One of the strongest aspects of Instrumentl is you can learn it in under an hour. The same cannot be said for a number of the aforementioned alternatives. Nonprofits and grant writing consultants often choose Instrumentl for its superior user experience, intuitive and helpful data insights, along with all-in-one grants functionality.

How much does Instrumentl cost?

Instrumentl’s pricing can be found here.

The team is constantly adding new features so the best way to learn about the latest pricing and more is in the link above.

Instrumentl’s Basic plan is packed with value in helping you identify good fit funders.

Their Plus Plan features even more value with Advanced Funder Insights, Foundation Discovery, and Recipient Profiles. These Plus Plan features help you spot multi-year trends about funders, find funders who may not have an active website or may be invite-only, and reverse search the funding of other nonprofits to find even more good fit funders.

Instrumentl’s Professional plan supports even more projects and personalized support & training.

What results does Instrumentl get its customers?

When Instrumentl conducted a customer survey, they found that customers increased their grant applications 78% within a year of using the tool, and that each team member brought onto the site was saving more than three hours a week.

This latter data point shows you the importance of inviting other team members to your account if you haven’t already done so!

To read and watch more of the stories of Instrumentl’s impact on its customers, you can check out their wall of love here.

I’m a grant consultant. How can I help my client understand the value of Instrumentl and help cover the subscription cost?

The best way to do this is to set up their grant results and show them! People are always amazed by Instrumentl’s matching algorithm because it often features opportunities they already know of, as well as new opportunities. That’s the sign of a great algorithm!

We always tell grant consultants a great way to get clients interested in Instrumentl is to set a project together with their client and walk through some of the results along with the Tracker. Once clients see how easy it is for you to generate custom reports for them (or their board of directors), as well as all the different features of Instrumentl, it becomes easier to connect the dots in investing in Instrumentl.

Other ways to convince clients to understand the value of Instrumentl is by telling them what you’d be able to do with 12 more hours a month working for them, since that’s how much time on average you’d save with Instrumentl. It’s not uncommon for grant writing consultants to share how Instrumentl turned a prospecting process that used to take fifty hours a client down to two to three hours.

Many grant writing consultants will bake in Instrumentl to their working engagements with clients, or they will set up dedicated accounts for each client in the case where the client would prefer that.

I’m not too tech-savvy...what support is there from Instrumentl?

Instrumentl’s team is always available to help you out, whether you’re a free or paying user. In the bottom right corner of your Instrumentl account, there is a chat bubble you can use to engage with a member of their Customer Success team.

In the case where you need a more in-depth review of your account, just start a conversation there and they’ll find a time to work with you.

When you start your account, you’ll also get a dedicated Onboarding Advisor to walk you through the site and ensure you’re set up for success. That same Onboarding Advisor will check in with you over the two-week trial to ensure you’re getting the most out of the tool.

If you read through Instrumentl’s wall of love, you can see just how much their users appreciate the timeliness and kind support of the team.

I’m still not sure if I should try Instrumentl...

That’s okay if you’re on the fence! They have a free 14-day trial that doesn’t require a credit card to make it risk-free. All you need to do is visit www.instrumentl.com/lgw to create your account and start identifying good fit funders for your nonprofit. Remember we have a cool deal worked out with Instrumentl where you can save $50 off your first month when you use discount code LGW.

Their team likes to recommend you create an account to see the platform for yourself and evaluate whether or not it’d be a good fit for your organization (or clients). Every free account also gets the opportunity to have a strategy consult with an Onboarding Advisor who makes sure you’re set up for success from Day 1.

If you’d still like to learn more about the platform as well, Instrumentl regularly hosts grant workshops with community partners and posts the replays here. These workshops can be helpful ways to get to know more about the company before trying out the tool.