Searching for grants is tedious. You spend hours searching for opportunities across Google and grant databases, reviewing criteria, and chasing deadlines. That’s the old way to find grants for your nonprofit. This guide will show you a better way.
![How to Find Grants for Your Nonprofit [The Experts’ Guide]](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/60b65772307b850ced32fd47/67ba2fe436b021e4a73315c6_Webpage%20Revamps%20Frame%20from%20TinyPNG.png)
Experts consulted in the guide
Meredith Noble
Chief Grant Writing Unicorn at LearnGrantWriting
Julie Starr
Grants Professional and Owner of Write Epic Grants
Erin Sekerak
Grant Consultant at QUINNtessential Grant Works
Summary
Finding grants for nonprofits used to be a tedious process (and for many organizations, it still is).
You’d have to search for opportunities manually, review the criteria to identify if you were a good fit, and hope that the deadline hadn’t passed yet. If you were lucky, you’d have enough time to pull together the resources needed to submit a competitive grant application within time.
Thankfully, the process for how to find grants and win funding for your organization isn’t as complicated anymore.
Enter Instrumentl.
With Instrumentl, you can discover best-fit grants, craft winning proposals, and manage your funding all on one platform.
By the end, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge and resources needed to not only find grants, but find the right ones worth pursuing.
Short on time? Here's a video from Will on the Instrumentl team, walking through how to start finding good-fit grants all within 15 minutes.
You may be wondering, “Is learning how to find grants even worth it for my organization?”
The truth is, grants are an indispensable funding stream for nonprofits. But don’t just take our word for it; listen to what these grant professionals have to say about why grant funding is key to organizational growth:
“Organizations need diverse funding options because the industry is so fickle. Grants can significantly give nonprofits breathing room to fund large and small-scale projects, so other funding sources can support day-to-day operations.”
—Erin Sekerak, Grant Consultant at QUINNtessential Grant Works
“1. Once you are funded once, the chance of securing recurring funding in higher amounts is greater. 2. Grant funding lends itself to stellar marketing opportunities. 3. Grant funding can be leveraged to secure additional grants.”
—Julie Starr, Grants Professional and Owner of Write Epic Grants
“The nonprofit sector tackles many of society’s most complex challenges, from homelessness to climate change. These are problems that demand innovation—and innovation requires the ability to take risks. Grants provide the flexibility for nonprofits to explore creative solutions, especially for initiatives that go beyond the scope of core general operating needs.”
—Meredith Noble, Chief Grant Writing Unicorn at LearnGrantWriting
Overall, the biggest benefits to grant funding are:
However, grants also aren’t without their challenges:
Fortunately, there are ways to overcome each of these challenges.
For example, grants may be hard to find, but there are databases like Instrumentl that make it easier and can help streamline the process. And while there’s no guarantee you’ll win, the right prospecting strategies can help you narrow in on the grants with the highest odds of success for your nonprofit.
The key to winning grants is strategically identifying the right funders with the best-fit opportunities that are worth your time and effort to apply for.
The first step to that process? Making sure you’re grant ready.
Before you even start to explore how to find grants, it’s imperative that your organization is adequately prepared.
Many nonprofit professionals refer to this as being “grant-ready”.
But what exactly does grant-ready mean?
Grant readiness can be split into three different buckets:
Organizational:
Program:
Financial:
For a more in-depth explanation of these criteria, we’ve created a comprehensive grant-readiness checklist.
Applying without being ready wastes time and lowers your chances of success. Funders know the signs to look out for if a nonprofit isn’t ready, and it may sour future relationships if they think you’re not taking the process seriously.
“I know people are eager to start looking for the funds to support important work, but applying for those funds before things are in place will likely only serve as a lesson in what not to do.”
—Patrice Shumate, Founder, A Village for Good
Thankfully, grant-seeking has evolved over the years.
Gone are the days when you had to cold call funders to see if they had open grant opportunities or manually search for grants online, just hoping to find a match. Now, grant databases significantly streamline the search process.
Grants databases are online repositories of funding opportunities. They pull together grants from various sources, centralizing them in a single location so you can search, filter, and save opportunities.
While there are many grants databases on the market, here’s a quick list of the most popular:
For a deep dive into the differences between each of these platforms, we’ve created this comprehensive guide: Top 19 databases for nonprofits. In it, we break down each tool’s pricing, features, weaknesses, and who it’s best suited for.
Now, we may be biased, but when you’re searching for grants online, we believe that Instrumentl stands above the rest. Here’s why:
Whatever platform you choose to go with, a grants database makes searching for funding a much more manageable and efficient process.
Many nonprofits fall into the same traps when learning how to find grants. Their searches are too broad, they aren’t pursuing best-fit opportunities, and they struggle to identify which grants are worth applying for.
“Grant writing is definitely a quality over quantity situation. A shorter list of prospects, that are all higher quality, are way more valuable than reaching out to a large number of foundations where you may be stretching the fit.”
—Loree Lipstein, CEO and Founder of Thread Strategies
The good news is that you can learn how to search for grants effectively, and with practice, it will become second nature. Below are eight steps to help you get started.
The first step is to identify your funding needs.
You can’t just start searching for grants without knowing what you need funding for—so before you jump in headfirst, take a step back. Make sure you know exactly what you hope to fund with your grant and how much funding you need. Ideally, these things should be covered in your annual grant strategy.
There are different types of grants that funders provide, which is why you need to know what you’re looking for before you start your search. Most grants will fall into these categories:
You may also want to consider what type of grant funder you want to go after:
There are pros and cons to different types of grant funders; for example, government grants are generally very large—but also very competitive. When just starting out your search, you may be open to exploring grants from every kind of funder to see what’s out there before narrowing down your focus.
Now that you know what you’re looking to fund, skip past Google and start your search with a grants database.
Like we mentioned before, there are plenty of options available. Here’s a list of criteria you should consider when evaluating different databases:
With Instrumentl, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial to explore our database and full suite of tools to see if it’s the right fit for your needs.
After signing up for a grants database, you’ll have access to a list of grants to explore.
Once you come across a grant that seems promising, the very first thing you need to do is check your eligibility.
Every grant will come with a set of requirements that you must meet to be eligible to apply. Examples of requirements might be:
It’s essential to have a process in place to quickly check your eligibility so you don’t waste your time and resources on pursuing a grant you have no chance of winning.
For many grants databases, this might mean leaving the platform and going to the grant funder’s website to find a list of eligibility requirements and application instructions there.
For example, you can visit the Home Depot Foundation’s website to see a list of qualifications for their Veteran Housing Grants.
But with Instrumentl, all it takes is the click of a button.
Every grant listed in Instrumentl’s database comes with the eligibility information clearly listed and easily accessible. If it turns out you don’t meet the requirements of a certain grant, you can immediately move on to explore ones that you do.
Once you’ve identified a grant that you’re eligible for, you need to check for mission alignment between the funder’s giving priorities and your nonprofit’s work.
If your missions don’t align—even if you’re eligible for the grant—you won’t be a competitive applicant.
For example, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation awards funding to nonprofits that share in their vision of a world where every child and family sees the road to success through the advancement of innovative, community-driven solutions.
As you’re looking to evaluate potential mission alignment with a funder, consider the following questions.
Even if you meet the basic eligibility requirements, you don’t want to waste time on a grant you’d never win because the funder isn’t interested in your kind of work or you have different focus areas.
Kimberly Hays de Muga, expert grant professional and cohost of the Fundraising HayDay podcast explains this concept best:
“Am I eligible to maybe audition to be a New York Rockette? Maybe. Am I competitive? Nah”
—Kimberly Hays de Muga, Cohost of Fundraising HayDay podcast
Applying to grants without clear mission alignment can also lead to mission creep, which is when you “chase the money” by making small concessions to try fit within the funder’s giving priorities. Eventually, you’ll find yourself pursuing projects that deviate significantly from your core mission, wondering how you got there.
While ensuring mission fit isn’t a surefire way to win a grant, it’s an integral part of the process.
If it looks like your missions align, you’ll want to dig deeper to confirm the funder actually awards grants to nonprofits like yours.
“Sometimes funders say they fund ABCD options, but when you check their grantees, there’s only AB. So if you work with CD and they haven’t funded this, it will be a waste of your time.”
— Thais Thomazini, Development and Grant Manager
This is where a funder’s Form 990 comes into play, officially known as the Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax.
Form 990s are reports that all tax-exempt organizations are required to file annually. These forms include critical insights into a funder’s operations, including:
By providing transparency into the organization’s inner governance, Form 990 allows the government to assess whether its funds are being used in accordance with its mission as well as state and federal law.
The great thing about Form 990s is they reveal key information about a funder’s giving history.
But don’t just take our word for the importance of integrating Form 990s into your grant search. We asked our experts, “What strategies do you use to uncover the true priorities of a funder?”
The consensus was clear:
“Always review the funder’s 990.”
—Jacob Chase, Federal and Foundation Grants Consultant
“Reading the 990 and looking at past recipients.”
—Rachel Waterman, Founder & CEO of Global Development Solutions (GDS Grants)
“Checking their website and 990s.”
—Theresa Fowler, Grant Professional and Consultant
Form 990s include a treasure trove of information that you can use to:
But here’s the problem: Form 990s are tax documents. They are lengthy, dense, and difficult to parse helpful information from. Below is an example of just a single page from a 990.
However, with an Instrumentl account, you’re not stuck having to comb through these lengthy tax files. Instead, Instrumentl analyzes all of this data and presents it in an intuitive and easy-to-understand format.
All you have to do is click on a funder’s 990 report within the platform and you’ll be able to quickly scroll through their:
These advanced funder insights help you identify patterns in giving, providing you with a data-backed understanding of your chances of funding success.
“Grant funders are creatures of habit. Before investing time in an application, review the organizations funded in past years. Do any of them look like your organization? A competitive applicant matches previously funded organizations and amplifies the funder's stated focus area(s).”
—Julie Starr, Owner of Write Epic Grants
“It’s also helpful to spot trends in how they give. Maybe they’ve started focusing on a particular region or their average grant size has changed over time. Knowing this helps you figure out if your project is a good match and how to tailor your request to fit their current priorities.”
—Batya Willmott, Founder & CEO of Fundsource26
By now, you should know if:
Finally, it’s time to check the funder’s openness to new grantees.
Not all funders like to work with new nonprofits, especially if they are just starting out. Some prefer more established organizations that they have long-standing relationships with. In the same vein, some funders might award much larger grants to repeat grantees and smaller grants to new ones.
Every funder is different, but you need to understand their openness to new grantees before you get started down a path of applying for a grant you’ll never win.
To make things easy, Instrumentl’s funder insights include a breakdown of giving between new and repeat grantees. You can easily compare the ratio of new vs. repeat grant winners as well as the median grant size for each year over year.
Not only do these insights help you determine how competitive of an applicant you’d be, they also help you identify what an appropriate funding ask might look like.
It should be clear by now that the goal of effective prospect research is to narrow in on the best-fit grants that you’d have the highest chance of winning. And having a dedicated system to help you prioritize these types of grants will make your job infinitely easier and more efficient.
One of the best ways to do this is to develop a scoring system that you (and your team) can use consistently to evaluate grants. Some nonprofits even use a decision matrix to help them make the most strategic choices.
“Even if you’re amidst chaos, multiple deadlines, and new opportunities, [a decision matrix] can help streamline that process and give you a tool to make better decisions faster.”
—Stacy Fitzsimmons, Federal Grant Expert
In addition to the criteria we’ve already gone over, some of the things you might want to consider when prioritizing grants are:
These factors may carry varying weights, depending on how they fit into your overall grants strategy. For example, if it’s a low-effort, high-reward grant, you might decide to pursue it, even if it’s highly competitive.
Ultimately, with a refined and strategic prospecting process, you’ll be able to streamline your search and make decisions with confidence.
Once you have a short list of grants you want to go after, it’s time to map out your grant application calendar!
A grants calendar will help you allocate your resources effectively and make sure that your application deadlines aren’t bunching up. And by mapping all of your opportunities on a calendar, you can aim for consistent funding throughout the year to help fuel your nonprofit’s operations.
So, what type of information should you include in your grants calendar?
Whenever you save a grant from your search in Instrumentl’s database, it will automatically be added to your Tracker. Each grant’s deadline, status, amount, next tasks, and notes are organized and accessible in one place.
Instrumentl also provides a calendar view so you can get a big picture overview of the key dates associated with each of your grants and can identify times of the year when you may have more capacity to apply for additional funding.
And there you have it! You should now have an organized list of good-fit grants that you’re ready to go after.
With these strategies we’ve shared, discovering the most relevant and high-impact opportunities doesn’t have to feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Instead, you can quickly and efficiently identify the funders who are most likely to be receptive to your cause.
Even with thousands of active grants available, sometimes it may feel like you’re finding the same opportunities over and over again.
When you feel like you’ve exhausted all of your immediate options, there are ways you can take your grant search to the next level:
“Funders look for applicants who show they’re not working in isolation but actively engaging with others to amplify their impact. True partnerships, built on shared goals and mutual contributions, show funders that your project is grounded, well-supported, and has the buy-in needed for success. In short, eligibility gets you in the door, but partnerships help you stand out.”
—Meredith Noble, Chief Grant Writing Unicorn at LearnGrantWriting
So many nonprofits end up using the “spray-and-pray” approach when it comes to their grants strategy. They broadly apply for whatever grants they come across and hope that something will stick.
However, more isn’t always better when it comes to the grant world. You want to be thoughtful and strategic about what grants you spend your time and resources on so that you can make sure you are maximizing your return. And with the eight steps shared in this guide, discovering the most relevant and high-impact opportunities can become your organization’s standard practice:
While you can do all these steps manually, Instrumentl’s intelligent matching, expert-curated RFP database, and advanced funder insights allow you to spend less time combing through irrelevant opportunities and more time building meaningful relationships with the funders who matter most.
If you’re ready to start exploring how to find grants with the help of Instrumentl, sign up for our free, 14-day trial today.
