Meet Monica Coleman. She is the Director of Foundation Relations and Grant Writing at Eureka College, her alma mater.

Eureka is a private college located in Eureka, Illinois. Founded by abolitionists from Kentucky in 1855, Eureka College provides a student-centered experience that cultivates the essential skills to serve with passion, lead with purpose, pursue growth opportunities and learn for life.

When Monica stepped into her current role, she faced a blank slate—no grants process, no existing portfolio, and no established processes.

Monica didn't back down from the challenge. In just two years, she successfully secured an impressive $7 million in new grant funding for the College. Thanks to her expertise and dedication, Eureka College now has a thriving grants pipeline and is well positioned for a healthy financial future.

Let’s take a look at how Monica used Instrumentl to transform Eureka College’s grant process and build a powerhouse pipeline!

From Scratch to Success: Building a Grants Pipeline that Delivers Results 

“First thing is, you need to know where you’ve been. You need to know where you have been to know where you want to be.”

When Monica started in her role at Eureka College she was starting from the ground up. When she evaluated their existing grants processes and pipelines she found she had very little to go off of.

Fortunately, Monica came prepared with a plan of action.

Monica knew that to get to where the college needed to go, she needed to understand where the organization had been.

She began by analyzing Eureka’s current state, incorporating a four step process to gauge the lay of the land:

• Update and Tidy Up: Reviewing existing materials, databases, and documents with relevant information related to the grants process.
• Explore Existing Portfolio and Pipeline: Evaluating the existing grant portfolio and pipeline. Monica identified existing funders and dug deep to determine if there were upcoming deadlines, outreach, or stewardship she needed to be aware of.
• Evaluate Historical Goals and Performance: Identifying past successes and challenges to craft a strategy for moving forward.
• Aligning Key Stakeholders for Successful Collaboration: Securing support and buy-in of the new direction for grants program, including program staff, educators, and organizational leadership. Monica took the initiative to reach out to key staff at the organization, identifying funding needs, level setting expectations about internal capacity, and collecting feedback.

These steps helped Monica get acquainted with the college’s existing workflows and practices, setting the foundation for her to begin creating a new grants culture at the organization, all while continuing to fundraise. 

Monica also knew that to create a successful grants program at Eureka, she had to create some clear, attainable goals. Monica worked to determine:

• How many grants she planned to apply for;
• How much in total she planned to apply for; and
• What percent of those grants will be successful?

Monica knew that tracking and analyzing key information would be essential as she developed fundraising objectives for the college. She also recognized that Eureka needed to secure new revenue sources, with her focus on identifying funders who were well-aligned and had the capacity to meet those objectives.

“In fundraising and grants you're working with a lot of external partners, and those are super important in relationship building—but I think internal collaborations is key. It's so key to build those intra and inter departmental relationships because a lot of times you need help from others to get things that you need.”

To ensure her goals were realistic, attainable, and shared across the organization, Monica sought meetings with key stakeholders to secure buy-in and cultivate a strong grants culture. She understood that collaboration was critical to the grant process, and that intra-organizational coordination and communication would require the right tools.

While Monica had a clear vision of where Eureka College had been and where it needed to go, she lacked the proper tools to make it happen. With industry success rates for securing grants averaging just 10-30%, optimizing her time and resources was crucial.

“When somebody is at an organization for a long time, they keep that knowledge in their head. [The information] is not really written down anywhere, or the processes have changed…technology changed. So I have to devote a little bit of time to building the process [while] at the same time trying to fundraise.”

Fortunately, Instrumentl was there to help Monica move forward with confidence!

Future Focus: Using Instrumentl to Jump Start Growth 

For Monica, Instrumentl was a lifesaver.

Instrumentl helped Monica to create more efficient workflows for the grant process and freed up time for her to focus on perfecting the College’s fundraising strategy.

“I stumbled across Instrumentl and it was leaps and bounds ahead of what I was using. It has saved me so much time, so I am not spending as much time prospecting and researching. The information is so available and there are other functions that I can use to make myself more efficient.”

Using Instrumentl, Monica was able to help Eureka College secure $7 million over a two year period and achieve a 65% success rate for grant applications—well above the industry standard.

Instrumentl was an invaluable asset as Monica worked to build out Eureka College’s grants culture. Instead of devoting the majority of her time to prospect research, Monica was able to use Insturmentl’s database of over 400,000 open opportunities to find grants that were best aligned with Eureka College’s mission.

Notably, Monica was able to bring in more money faster by utilizing Instrumentl’s search tool to filter best-fit opportunities based on keywords and university specific grants. Instrumentl was able to quickly identify hundreds of opportunities specific to colleges and universities while refining further based on issue area.

Monica effortlessly balanced strategy and interorganizational collaboration, all while never missing a grant deadline. Instrumentl automatically sent email reminders for key deadlines and tasks, keeping her on track and ensuring applications were always completed and submitted on time. This tool kept her organized and on top of urgent tasks, effortlessly prioritizing internal responsibilities, communications, and deadlines.

“I use the task tool a lot. You can make a task for whatever you would like…and the great thing about these tasks is you get an email [reminder]!”

Instrumentl’s task tool enables users to efficiently track tasks tied to each funder across multiple stakeholders and teams, ensuring streamlined workflows and on-time execution. Monica used the tool to seamlessly manage tasks for new funders sourced directly from Instrumentl's database, while also managing existing funders within the college's portfolio.

Using tools like this, Monica was able to direct more of her time to creating new processes, stewarding existing funders, and cultivating stakeholder relationships to foster a strong grants culture at Eureka.

After using the platform to win new grants, she was able to further strengthen relationships within the College, providing quantitative evidence that her approach to grants works—and works well!

With Instrumentl’s toolbox at her disposal, Monica was better prepared to manage the complexities of the grant process and strengthen organizational knowledge, workflows, and approach to drive the success of her fundraising efforts.

Ready to jumpstart your college or university’s grant program? Visit Instrumentl today and sign up for the 14-day free trial. By tailoring best-fit opportunities specific to higher-education there is no better tool to help you unlock potential revenue and drive sustainable growth.