How to Find Foundation Grants for Nonprofits In Instrumentl

Tired of spending countless hours searching for foundation grants?

That manual process can be a thing of the past when you invest in Instrumentl!

Discover how we can transform your nonprofit’s grant-seeking efforts and give you back the gift of time in your day!

What Are Foundation Grants?

Let’s take a step back and make sure that we’re all on the same page when it comes to foundation grants for nonprofits.

A foundation can be public or private, and they often exist to help target specific areas of need. In many cases, foundations do not complete the work themselves but help invest in organizations who will through foundation grants.
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Foundation grants are charitable contributions, often awarded to fund specific causes that align with their foundation’s mission.

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There are a few different types of foundation grants you can look out for:

• Corporate foundation grants come from companies that have a foundation. They help further charitable causes that are close to the company’s mission. For example, IBM supports the next generation of developers through Open Source @ IBM.
• Private foundation grants are often from an individual or family foundation. The Anthony & Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation is a great example of that, and they focus on education, environment, foster care, health, and community development.
• Community foundations focus on giving back in localized geographic areas, and they can also be called public foundations. The Nebraska Community Foundation is targeted toward building a greater Nebraska through local communities.

Foundation grants are often large and reliable funding sources. They can play a key role in supporting new programs, initiatives, and operating expenses.

Challenges in Finding Foundation Grants

While foundation grants are great sources of funding, finding them can be a challenge:

• Time Consuming Search: Traditional methods of finding foundation grants for nonprofits are time-consuming. You either have to know exactly what you are looking for or hope that you’re hitting the magic keywords in Google as you manually search for them. You may even search one-by-one through companies, hoping that they have a charitable foundation or that there is a community foundation available by city, region, or state.
• ‍No Websites: Some foundations don’t have websites at all. Or they might be invite-only and difficult to find. When you don’t have a system or process in place for finding well-aligned foundation grants quickly and efficiently, it can be tempting to skip over this type of funding and miss out on great opportunities.
• ‍Limited Resources: Most nonprofits are operating with limited resources, and it can be difficult to convince the organization to invest in new funding avenues, especially if there is no guarantee of a return on investment.
• ‍Shiny Object Syndrome: On the flip side, some organizations may have the opposite problem. Perhaps they have a well-meaning member of the Board of Directors who wants them to invest in every single new foundation grant for nonprofits they hear about. We call that shiny object syndrome, and it can be just as damaging.

All these roadblocks aside, once you find the opportunities, you need to understand if you meet the qualifications, if they are accepting applications, what the deadlines are, and so on.

Thankfully, there’s a better way to find foundation grants—and it’s with Instrumentl.

With more than 400,000 funders and 15,000+ live RFPs in our database, finding relevant foundation grants is a breeze.

All you have to do is tell us a little bit about your mission and funding needs, and our Smart Matching technology will curate a list of good-fit foundation grants for you in seconds, including those from private, public, corporate, invite-only, and unlisted foundations.

Keep reading and we’ll show you exactly how.

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Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Grants with Instrumentl

Setting Up Your Instrumentl Account

First, you need to create an Instrumentl account. If you haven’t yet, you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial.

Once you’ve created your account, you will set up your first project. Your projects are how Instrumentl will match you with relevant grants, so it’s critical you set them up properly.

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Start by entering information about your organization, including your location and fiscal year.

Next, you need to provide an overview of the project for which you’re looking for foundation funding, including its name, geographic location, fields of work, type of grant, and more.

The more specific you can be in this initial setup, the more relevant grants you will be matched with. If you aren’t getting good matches, you can always revise to get better results.

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You can even select what type of funders you want to see, so make sure to check the box next to foundation!

Once you finish setting up your project, Instrumentl brings the grants to you by analyzing its entire database to bring you your perfect matches.

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Using Advanced Search Filters

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Once Instrumentl presents your list of matches, you can also use filters to help narrow down the results even more. This will help you focus in on the foundation grants that are the best fit for your organization. 

You can filter your list of grants by:

• Funding Use
• Field of Work
• Project Location
• Residency
• Past Giving
• Funder type 

These advanced filters really help nonprofits save time by focusing on the most relevant opportunities.

Managing and Tracking Grant Applications

Instrumentl isn’t just for prospecting—it helps oversee the entire end-to-end grant management process. 

Once you find a grant you’re interested in, you can save it. Instrumentl will then automatically add it to your Tracker for you!

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Instrumentl tracks:

• Grant deadlines
• Grant status
• Grant Amount
• Task Owners
• Notes

The calendar view can give you a comprehensive look at what’s in your pipeline for the month, quarter, or even year. And, best of all, Instrumentl will send automated reminders when you have deadlines coming up so you never miss another opportunity. 

Previously nonprofits would have to manually pull these details together, wasting time and energy. Now, Instrumentl can do it for you, helping you focus your energy on securing more funding.

Organizational Benefits of Using Instrumentl

We recognize that Instrumentl is an investment, but it’s well worth it. Here’s why:

Improved Efficiency and Time Savings

Instrumentl takes the guesswork out of finding new grants, and we’ve shared many different reasons why throughout this article. Thankfully, you don’t just have to take our word for it!

Lovel VanArsdale, Grant Administrator at Tucker’s House, shared more about how Instrumentl has helped save them 15 hours a week:
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“I brag about Instrumentl all the time. Before, I was searching in the dark—and we've had a couple of other databases that we had joined, and got memberships for, but they're so random and very limited. With Instrumentl, I’ve never missed a single deadline.” - Lovel VanArsdale, Grant Administrator at Tucker’s House

Now that they use Instrumentl, Lovel’s team has centralized their workflow to be more efficient and brought their entire end-to-end grant management process under the same umbrella.

Lovel’s team has saved 15 hours a week by using Instrumentl—how much can you save?

Increased Success Rates

Because Instrumentl only matches you with best-fit grants, it can help you increase your success rate. You are only finding opportunities that you qualify for, and our detailed funder insights help you evaluate whether you’d be a strong candidate.

One of our clients, Eversight, increased their grant success rate from 14 % to 22% simply by using Instrumentl to help streamline their grant application process.
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“Our strategy before was definitely born out of the pandemic. I think a lot of [nonprofits] felt like, ‘Okay, we just need money now because our operations have been shut down for a few months, and things are crazy. So, let's just put out as many applications as possible to whoever may fund us, and hopefully, they'll respond.” - Becky Harris, Philanthropy Director for Foundations and Corporations, Eversight

After Becky started to streamline their grant-seeking with Instrumentl, their efforts were completely transformed. They could apply for fewer grants and receive the same, if not more, funding year over year.

That’s the dream scenario for many nonprofits, and Instrumentl can help make it possible.

Better Reporting and Justification to the Board

Instrumentl makes it easy to pull comprehensive reports, reflecting the live data you have in the platform. Reports you can pull include:

• Grant opportunities, including saved and hidden opportunities
• Awards to showcase your portfolio with your organization
• Tasks to keep your team on track
• Contacts to share details from your funder profiles
• Funders to keep track of funder insights and giving history

These reports can help keep your nonprofit’s leadership in the loop.

Why is this important?

Your board may have insights or suggestions to make it better. They could also have connections to certain foundations, which can help you get your foot in the door. When you’re able to share details with the click of a button, they can see the value of the platform because you can give them what they want, when they want it.

Coupled with the vast grants database, robust task management features, and educational resources, your board can easily identify why Instrumentl is worth the investment.

Wrapping Up

Instrumentl is a great resource when it comes to finding foundation grants for nonprofits, helping you quickly locate available, active, and relevant grants in just a few minutes.

This helps save your nonprofit time and resources, and it’s easy to get started. Experience all Instrumentl can offer with a free, 14-day trial or by scheduling a free demo.

When you’re done, you can share your findings with your board on how much value we can add to your nonprofit by revolutionizing your funding strategy.