Institutional Fundraising Platform

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Benefits of using the Institutional Fundraising Platform

Spend less time on grant prospecting

The Institutional Fundraising Platform saves you  3 hours per funder a week. This leaves you with more time to focus on grant writing and your strategy.

Apply to more relevant grants 

Instrumentl users apply to 1.5X more grants per year and raise up to $200K in new grants within the first year of using the Platform. 

Track and collaborate more effectively

No more spreadsheets and scattered data across multiple sources. Organize your submission requests by year, application stage, and project in a visually pleasing tracker.

Easily evaluate funders and 990 reports

Strategically evaluate a new funder each time. See their 990 snapshots, how open they are to new grantees, their geographical giving, grant sizes, and giving by category.

OUR IMPACT
what is an institutional fundraising platform


What is an Institutional Fundraising Platform?

An Institutional Fundraising Platform is software that enables you to research, track, prospect, and manage your grants all in a single place. It is a new software category created by Instrumentl.

Unlike other grant tools that focus on only one or two of the mentioned aspects, an institutional fundraising platform helps you do it all and serves as a single source of truth for all things grants.

Think of an institutional fundraising platform as a specialized type of search engine (like Google for grants, but on steroids) that unifies all the possible data that helps you find, evaluate, and track funders and grants.

Who are institutional donors?

Institutional donors may include private foundations, public trusts, governmental donors, or development agencies with multi-annual funds.

Some of the private funders don’t have an online presence, but imagine having access to them nonetheless? Well, with Instrumentl as your institutional fundraising platform, you can.

Gather all the data and make sense of it. The platform offers you 990 snapshots, visual summaries and funder insights, and a lot of other data points that can help you make the right call when vetting potential funders. 

How is the Institutional Fundraising Platform different from other grant tools?

The main difference between the Institutional Fundraising Platform and other grant tools is in the number and quality of features you get, i.e. the comprehensiveness of the software. While you have grant tools that enable you to either do grant research and prospecting, grant tracking, evaluate funders, and/or create reports the Institutional Fundraising Platform allows you to do all that from a single place.

The old way

Manually or with other grant tools
  • I have to manually sift through 990 report PDFs which is a huge time sucker for me
  • I have to manually track grants in Excel sheets and use a physical calendar or reminders from my smartphone for deadlines
  • I can’t access the right information about grants and funders quickly (plus the data is very siloed)
  • It’s time-consuming for me to properly evaluate funders
  • I have to chase information across multiple sources to collaborate with my grant team
  • It’s challenging to create a compelling report for the ED and/or the board

Who uses the Institutional Fundraising Platform?

501c3 registered nonprofits

Typical users of the Institutional Fundraising Platform include 501c3 registered nonprofits who have an existing grants process or are new to grants but want to create a process. They typically have $1M/year or more in their general operating budget.

Professional grant writing consultants

Another typical user of the Institutional Fundraising Platform is a grant writer who works at a consultancy company or runs their own business. They are looking to find and track grants for more than one profit within a single platform.

OUR CUSTOMERS

Pre-order the book on institutional fundraising

We’re in the process of preparing a digital book on Institutional Fundraising! The launch is planned for 2023, so if you want to be among the first ones to grab it, make sure to sign up for a preorder.

Here’s what you can expect:

  • Actionable advice on how to get started with institutional fundraising
  • Expert insights from leading nonprofits and grant professionals in the industry
  • Templates and exercises you can use 
  • Use cases and examples of organizations that already achieved what you’re aiming for
Institutional fundraising platform book
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK

How to get started with using the Institutional Fundraising Platform?

Step #1: Sign up for the free 14-day Instrumentl trial

If you fall into either of the two groups mentioned above, you can sign up for a free 14-day Instrumentl trial. This will give you an opportunity to test the tool for yourself and follow helpful in-app tips on how to make the most of the institutional fundraising Platform.

  • Fill out the sign-up form to get access to a 14-day free trial
  • Get email reminders and useful tips from the Instrumentl Customer Success team
  • Explore the Best Practices page to see how existing power users make the most of the Institutional Fundraising Platform
sign up for Instrumentl trial
collaborate with your team in Instrumentl

Step #2: Collaborate with your team within a single source of truth

Having grant-related data scattered across multiple sources makes it hard for you to stay on top of everything and do your work properly. Siloed data also breaks efficient collaboration between team members. Luckily, the Institutional Fundraising Platform acts as your single source of truth.

  • Add users to Instrumentl so that you all work within the same workspace where you can collaborate efficiently.
  • Divide grant ownership to clarify who is responsible for leading the opportunity and create tasks for custom milestones with deadlines to keep you and your team on track.
  • Keep all your grant documents stored, organized, and easily accessible in one place so your team has a single source of truth.

Step #3: Discover smart grant tracking and management 

Have you been tracking grants in Excel Spreadsheets? Well, there’s a much easier and more efficient way to track and manage your grants with an Institutional Fundraising Platform.

  • Use the Grant Tracker to add opportunities from Instrumentl’s large database as well as opportunities found elsewhere.
  •  Automatically get weekly emails with all your upcoming deadlines.
  • Visualize important deadlines in a centralized calendar: see all task deadlines, funder deadlines, submission goals, and future cycles so your team never misses grant deadlines and deliverables. 
Smart grant tracking in Instrumentl
Intelligent matches in Instrumentl

Step #4: Explore features for grant prospecting and funder evaluation

In the grants world, separating the wheat from the chaff is time-consuming. With the Institutional Fundraising Platform, you can easily leverage different features that will help you find great funders.

  • Get intelligently matched to good-fit funders, including ones that are invite-only or don’t have an online presence.
  • Strategically evaluate a new funder by looking at their 990 snapshots, and save time while prospecting. See how open a funder is to new grantees, geographical giving, grant sizes, and giving by category.
  • Do a reverse search and look up a nonprofit similar to yours and see who funded them. Find more good-fit funders faster.

Step #5: Easily report to your ED or board members

How much time did you use to spend on creating reports for your executive director or board members? It can be a tedious task, but it’s an integral part of the grant business. However, with an Institutional Fundraising Platform, beautiful reports get generated within a single click.

  • Export your saved grants pipeline into an easy-to-read PDF or CSV
  • The report includes everything from the number of won grants, those you’re waiting to hear from, lost grants, and more
  • PDF reports include clickable links meaning your team members can always dive in deeper for additional context if they want to
Report feature in Instrumentl

Our customers often realize 92% in time savings using Instrumentl. Try it today.

Apply to 1.5X more grants by working smarter, not harder.
Or, if you’re not ready yet, read & watch our customer stories.

Useful resources you can check out

Customer testimonials

See why people prefer using our Institutional Fundraising platform over other grant management software.

TESTIMONIALS

Grants management software comparison

See what makes Instrumentl different from other grant tools on the market. There’s also a free PDF you can download.

WHY INSTRUMENTL

Best practices for using Instrumentl

See how you can make the most out of grant prospecting, tracking, management, and reporting by using Instrumentl.

BEST PRACTICES

Real business impact our customers achieve

On average, our users apply to 1.5X more relevant grants per year and raise $200K in new grants.

OUR IMPACT

Institutional Fundraising Platform FAQs

Here are the most common questions we get asked about the Institutional Fundraising Platform:

1. I’m actually quite used to Excel and spreadsheets. Do I have to give those up completely to use the Institutional Fundraising Platform? What happens to all the grants I used to track?
Open and close answer

You can easily import your grants into Instrumentl as your Institutional Fundraising Platform. Just create your account and your first project.  In the case where you have a lot of opportunities, you may find our template here helpful. Our team at Instrumentl will be on standby to help you make sure everything is imported as needed. 

2. What type of grants can I find within the Institutional Fundraising Platform?
Open and close answer

You can find active grants from corporate funders, federal governments, state governments, private foundations, community foundations, and clubs and societies. Even those funders that are “off the radar” and don’t have an online presence can be found within Instrumentl as the Institutional Fundraising Platform.

3. How many of my team members can work within the Institutional Fundraising Platform?
Open and close answer

By default, the Basic, Standard, and Professional plan cover 3 users. However, Instrumentl’s plans grow to fit your team's needs. You can add additional users for $5 per month. Check the pricing here

4. Can Instrumentl as the Institutional Fundraising Platform help me create a stronger grant strategy and a better list of prospects?
Open and close answer

Yes! According to our annual customer survey, 9 out of 10 Instrumentl users developed a stronger grant strategy while 10 out of 10 users developed a better list of prospects.

5. What is something that only Instrumentl as the Institutional Fundraising Platform can do?
Open and close answer

Some things that only Instrumentl has includes automagical deadline reminders and updates, RFP data connected to foundation profiles, intelligent matching to RFPs and funders, workflow for prospecting, reports with auto-created links, and more. To see a complete list, please scroll down this page.