Introducing Instrumentl’s Spring 2024 Release

The grant management landscape is evolving. At Instrumentl, we're at the forefront of this transformation, ensuring grant professionals navigate these changes with greater ease and efficiency.

We’re excited to release EVEN MORE tools that give you full control of your entire grant life cycle.

What's New in Instrumentl?

Here’s a 6-minute overview of what’s new.

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Instrumentl is with you every step of the way. Here’s what our Spring 2024 Release includes:

Budget Uploads (Pre-Award+); Instrumentl Spenddown (Full Lifecycle+): With Spenddown tracking, it’s simple to monitor whether actual expenditures are consistent with the planned budget. Compliance? Check!
Virtuous Integration (Pre-Award+): Sync your work in Instrumentl with your Virtuous CRM. No more duplicative work.
Custom Fields & Customizable Tracker (Pre-Award+)): Now it’s easier to make Instrumentl your own by adding new columns or fields to your tracker. Track what matters to you.
New Prospecting Improvements (Discover+): We’ve improved our prospecting filters so you can find more relevant funders even faster.‍
Enterprise (Custom): Specifically designed for universities, health systems, and large nonprofits — includes research grants, institution-wide collaboration, and centralized account management. It’s now a lot easier to collaborate across departments and offices.

1. Track Spending For Your Awarded Grants

Managing grant finances has never been easier. Spenddown Tracking allows your grant teams to see at-a-glance progress on grant expenses and the funds remaining across all awarded grants. This makes managing the budget easier and reduces the risk of having unspent funds.

Instrumentl’s Lead Product Designer, Hope, has interviewed a ton of customers. You may have met her. Several months ago, she noticed a pattern emerging.

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“When chatting with customers, they’d tell me again and again that they lacked a unified grant financial tracking tool. They had to create spreadsheets to keep track of everything, which was chaotic. It delayed reporting and hindered their ability to monitor spending effectively.”

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Grant teams were struggling with making sure all the expenses from their programs and projects aligned with the grant budget.

There was always this creeping fear that they weren’t compliant with funder guidelines. And if that turned out to be the case, who’s going to explain to the funder that their money wasn’t spent properly?

It’s not the kind of conversation you want to have.

With our new Spenddown Tracking, you’ll have full visibility into how your nonprofit spends the grant awards.

This way, you have one source of truth that can be referenced at any time to see how grants are spent.

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If you’re using Virtuous CRM to organize your funder relationships and communications, we have some good news for you!

Now you can seamlessly manage your funder relationships and communications across Instrumentl and Virtuous and eliminate duplicate work.

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You won’t have to reenter data into Virtuous each time you create an opportunity. Every change you make in Instrumentl will automatically be reflected in Virtuous!

You can already integrate your Salesforce and Raiser’s Edge NXT accounts. The Virtuous integration makes it even easier to connect your data and break siloes.

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3. Enjoy More Flexible Grant Tracking

You wanted more control over what columns were shown and to create new ones if needed. Now, we’ve made it possible. Your grant tracker is now fully customizable!

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With Custom Fields, add columns for things like:

priority status,
probability of winning,
private notes,
marking renewals,
restrictions, or
internal ID.

Tailor your grant tracking to reflect the key information for your organization.

4. New Prospecting Improvements

Instrumentl has always been the go-to grant prospecting tool for nonprofits.

Dr. Bev Browning, author of Grant Writing For Dummies and mentor to hundreds of grant professionals, says,
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“I started using Instrumentl and thought - oh my gosh, this is a miracle! This is going to save me weeks! It just does everything for me. I insert the keywords, set up a project, and it magically shows me the most relevant funding matches.”

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To make it even easier for grant seekers like Dr. Bev and yourself, we’ve made finding relevant funding opportunities faster and more intuitive.

We have a bunch of filters for both opportunity and funder matches to help you save time and narrow down your search.

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You can now filter your funder matches by Location of Project & Location of Residency and by NTEE codes or fields of work.

These filters make it easier to zero in and find the best-fit funders for your projects.

5. A Plan Tailored For Universities and Colleges

To make it easier for universities to find and win funding, we’ve expanded our grant database and made efficient team collaboration easier for academic contexts.

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Here’s what the plan includes:

Access the most comprehensive grant database for universities and get curated lists of funders and RFPs for your faculty—fast.
Get insights on funders' past giving habits, including their openness to new versus repeat grantees.
Use Instrumentl as the single source of truth for everything grants. Deadlines, tasks, document storage, and payment tracking. It’s all there.
Bring grant administrators and faculty members to a single platform. Easily see what others are working on. Assign tasks, divide ownership, and get a bird’s eye view of your pipeline.
Provide streamlined access with SSO login.
Centralize your grant efforts and forget about duplicative work. Extend Instrumentl with other tools you use and love with CRM and calendar integrations or through API access.
Get dedicated support from institutional fundraising experts who’ve been there. We’ll help you make the most of Instrumentl.

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What's Coming Soon?

We're not stopping here. Here’s what’s coming up next:

AI Form Submissions: Instrumentl has built new functionality that leverages AI to help you submit applications faster. It does so by re-using your past awarded grants. Sign up for the Beta waitlist.
We’re going to help you collaborate more efficiently with people outside of your Instrumentl account. This has been requested multiple times and we’re excited to make grant work easier for you!

Stay tuned for more!

Our Spring 2024 release comes from your ongoing feedback.

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Thank you!

Instrumentl continues to push the boundaries of grant management, making it easier for you to find and win the funding you need.