A Nonprofit's Guide To Grant Prospect Research

We know that nonprofit grant research can be confusing. You’re digging through hundreds of opportunities, not sure how to speed up the process to find which are relevant to your organization’s needs

Below, we’ll unpack grant prospecting fundamentals so you can feel more confident in researching grants effectively.

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What Is Grant Prospecting and Research?
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Grant prospecting is the strategic process of searching for grant opportunities that align with your nonprofit’s mission, funding needs, and goals.

Effective grant research isn’t just about finding funders—it’s about finding the right funders.

But what does that mean?

The right grant funder should:

• Have a giving focus that aligns with your organization’s mission
• Is actively receiving grant applications within the timeframe you need
• Has a history of giving to nonprofits like yours and where you operate
• Has eligibility requirements that your organization can meet

So while you can try to sift through grants one by one for these criteria with a simple Google search, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time (and frustration) on irrelevant opportunities.

The solution? Grant databases.

Grant databases are curated collections of grant opportunities that you can filter and search through to find good-fit funders more easily.

Some of the top grant prospecting platforms include:

• Instrumentl
• Foundation Directory Online
• GrantWatch
• GrantSeeker

We’re obviously biased toward Instrumentl, as it’s the most comprehensive grants database on the market. Unlike the competition, we don’t just help you search for good-fit grants—we proactively bring them to you.

Keep reading and we’ll show you how.

Why Is It Important to Do Grant Research?

Without a solid grants prospecting plan, you and your team will probably end up wasting precious time applying to (and losing out on) funding opportunities that simply are not a good match for your work.

Funders are generally very particular about the kinds of projects and organizations they fund, which is why taking the time to research their individual giving priorities is so important.

Just listen to this advice from Valerie A. Grant, CEO at Grant Consulting Services, GPA Approved Trainer, and Certified Grant Professional:
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“That’s where doing the research is super important, finding out what the funder loves to fund, what are they interested in doing in the community. Doing the research, looking at their 990s, looking at profiles online, studying their website, getting their annual report, see who they have funded before, and then speak to [the funder’s] funding focus areas that they have published, and make sure that you can show a connection between your organization and their funding focus area.”

You may be thinking, “but how do I determine a funder’s priorities to see if they align with my organization's needs?”. Not to worry! Instrumentl is on it.

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Instrumentl’s grant prospecting tools make it easy to streamline the grant research process and narrow in on the best-fit funders in minutes.

Unlike other grant prospecting tools, where you’re often presented with an unbearable number of grants to sift through, Instrumentl provides a more efficient and effective way.

Simply set up a free Instrumentl account for 14 days (no credit card required). Once logged in, follow each step below to streamline your grant prospecting journey.

To truly maximize the grant prospecting process, you need to start by understanding your organization's specific funding needs.

This is where an annual grants strategy is essential.

You should have a clear idea of what you actually need the funding for:

• A new project you're kicking off?
• A specific program that already exists?
• General operating support for your whole organization?

Your grant strategy will guide your search and keep you on track, keeping you from randomly applying to things as you find them.

Once you have your plan in place and have identified the types of funding your organization needs to keep doing great work, you can set up a new project in Instrumentl that reflects those exact funding needs.

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An Instrumentl project is similar to a saved search, and there are three main steps to setting one up:

1. Sharing details about your organization
2. Creating an overview of your funding needs
3. Setting up your matches

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First, you will want to specify if your organization operates either inside or outside the United States (or both). This will help match you with grants that are relevant to your geographic area.

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Click “Save and Continue”.

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Next, you’ll be prompted to provide an overview of your new project.

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You will want to create a project name that is related to the program or area that you are seeking funding for. 

For our example, we will create a “Project Name” called “Food Bank and Homeless Shelter.”

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You will also want to make sure you select “Matching & Tracking” so that Instrumentl can match you with relevant grants that fit your specific criteria.

Choosing just “Tracking” is only best used if you already have grants and you just want to track them within Instrumentl.

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Click “Save and Continue.”

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Now you can move on to the Matches Setup.

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In this next step, you’ll want to share more about your project so you can be matched with the most relevant grants.

For our Food Bank and Homeless Shelter project, we will choose “Nonprofit” for applicant type and then “No” when asked if we would like to search for specifically faith-based grants.

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The next step in the grant prospecting process is to define your location and field of work.

For our example, we’ll select our location as “Inside the U.S.”

Pro Tip: Curious where most grant funding is going in the United States? Check out this insights report.

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You can also specify if your project is national in scope or in a specific state. In our example, we are going to say that we operate out of Pennsylvania, specifically the counties surrounding the state capital of Harrisburg.

Simply search your state and then select the counties that are relevant to your nonprofit. That way, you can possibly find federal, foundation, or even state and local grants that align with helping your local community.

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Next you will narrow your grant research by selecting the fields of work you operate in. This will ensure you get matched with grants from funders who support nonprofits like yours.

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When clicking “+Select Field of Work,” you should search for the cause(s) you support (in our case, fields for a food bank and homeless services).

We suggest you select 2-3 keywords from the drop-down that fit your mission.

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Pro-tip: It’s best practice to select 2-3 fields of work so you have a wide enough scope for relevant grants. In our example, first we searched “food” and found two fields of work, and then we searched “homeless,” as illustrated below.

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Now that you have chosen relevant keywords and phrases related to your project, you’ll be matched with grants that specifically align with your area of interest.

You will now want to set a minimum or maximum amount of grant funding you’d like to be matched with. This will filter out grants that are either too small, making them not worth pursuing, or too large, making them too competitive.

In our example, we set the minimum to $1,000 and no maximum.

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Next, you will want to make sure you select all the types of grants you are interested in so you can get matched with them.

In the section, “What will you use the funds for?,” you could select any or all of the following:

• Education/Outreach - Get matched with grants specifically for educational programs and projects.
• Project/Program - Get matched with grants specifically for programs or projects that are not research projects or education projects.
• General Operating Expense - Get matched with grants specifically for overhead expenses.
• Capital Project - Get matched with grants for construction, renovations, or equipment.
• Training/Capacity Building - Get matched with grants that support internal training.

We decided to choose “Project/Program” and “General Operating Expense.”

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Pro tip: Choosing “General Operating Expense” will match you with more flexible grants— either capacity grants, that can be restricted, or unrestricted funding, meaning you can use it however you’d like (within reason).

You will also want to specify what kind of funders you want grants from. In our example, we’ll take grants from any kind of funder, whether an association, a corporate foundation, a government entity, or a private funder.

Then, click “Save and Exit” to start seeing the grants you are matched with.

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At this stage, Instrumentl has narrowed down all of the potential grants you could pursue in your area. That way, you can prioritize what grants support your cause. In our case, Instrumentl found more than 200 grants that matched our nonprofit’s needs!

You’ll see that your grants are divided into three categories:

• Foundation grants
• Corporate grants
• Government grants

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Instrumentl will search through its database to find opportunities that align with your fundraising needs.

These are then output into a Matches tab, where you’ll be able to dig deeper and learn about each potential funder.

Not only that, but Instrumentl continuously updates your matches so that you have the most timely and relevant data available.

This is critical for ongoing grant work because one of the most common mistakes in grant prospecting is using old, outdated data. For this reason, Instrumentl ensures you always have the freshest grant opportunities.

Instrumentl’s grant matches resemble an email inbox. The matches are all on the left, and when you click one, the details will show on the right.

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As you can see below, the “Funding Opportunity Matches” are individual active grants and the “Funder Matches” are funders who match your search criteria.

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You will see that Instrumentl matched us with quite a few results. You will want to review what you see to determine which grants are the best-fit for your nonprofit.

The right side of the screen expands the details of the grants you clicked on the left. Under “FUNDING OPPORTUNITY” you can see the details of the grant, such as the amount, the funder’s website, their application period, and much more.

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There are also specific fields highlighted in either gray, yellow, or green colors. These colors explain why the grant was matched with your project.

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We have a helpful video that details how to spot trends in the keyword coloring so you can use your project’s keyword selection to find more specific matches for your program.

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Instrumentl summarizes other key details in an easy-to-digest format so that you can see:

• An overview of their finances (assets, total giving, average amount)
• Contact details (EIN number, phone, websites, address)
• Key people (directors, board members)
• Key financial stats over time (total giving, average and median amount)
• Links to 990 reports
• Past grantees
• Their openness to new grantees
• The causes they support

When you’re ready to refine your results further, you can use the filters to narrow down your information even more based on your search criteria:

• Funding use
• Field of work
• Location of project
• Past giving
• Funder type

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For example, if we wanted to specify homelessness services in only Dauphin County, we simply choose those filters and Instrumentl does the rest.

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This video explains how you can learn more about how to prioritize your funders by filtering down your Matches.

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You can explore detailed profiles of grantmakers within Instrumentl to gain a better understanding of their mission, priorities, and giving history. For example, you can see the 990 reports by clicking on “FUNDER 990 REPORT” to see key details about the funder and their history.

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For example, you can view information about past grantees to see if your project aligns with their funding interests.

This information reveals if they have awarded similar grants to your location, the historical grant amounts, and if there are similar giving purposes.

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To learn more about how to analyze a funder’s past giving trends through their 990 reports, watch this quick video.

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For the funding opportunity above, the 990 report didn’t have much information on a funder’s giving trends and how open they are to new grantees.

Note: Instrumentl will populate as much information as is available, but if a funder is behind on filing their 990s, it can leave holes in the available data.

To find a better-fit grant, let’s review another opportunity from our matches.

Although the example below only shows 4% of this funder’s grants over the last three years going to new grantees, we may still be interested in pursuing this rolling grant opportunity further:

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Once you find the grants you are interested in possibly pursuing, the next step is to save your searches.

Once you find grants you are interested in pursuing further, you can save them in the “Tracker” section of Instrumentl to prioritize later.

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Here is an example of potential good-fit grants we saved for further review.

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As you can see in our example, we saved one grant as “Planned,” one as “Researching,” and one as “Application in Progress.”

Just as we did, you can organize and save your own grants’ statuses depending on where you are at in the grant process.

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Using the Tracker will help you and your team manage your grants, whether you’re just researching or you have taken the step to apply.

Pro tip: We have a helpful checklist here about managing grants, meeting deadlines, and maintaining communication with your team.

One final step is to prioritize the funding opportunities in your list based on certain factors:

• Alignment with your project
• Eligibility
• Application deadlines

We decided to prioritize our three saved grants based on the “Application deadline.”

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As you continue to add more grant opportunities to your Tracker, you’ll find the priority sections to be valuable in organizing all of the funding opportunities you find.

These are just some of the best practices you can use when researching grants. Using our grant research strategies will help you find matches quickly to determine if you want to take the time to apply for funding.

Now that we’ve broken down each step in the grant research process, we hope you see how much easier, faster, and more efficient Instrumentl makes grant prospecting.

With a research plan in place, you can streamline the prospecting process to quickly identify the grants with the highest ROI and greatest chance of success for your organization.

And remember, with the 14-day free trial, there is no risk. Try it out and see if Instrumentl is right for your nonprofit.

By following our process of prospect identification and research, you can create and save a list of top funders to apply for in the future, making the success of your mission only a few clicks away.