Establish your grants program with Instrumentl's Discover Plan, which offers a breadth of features that uncover great-fit grants and funders, empower your team to collaborate effectively and track your progress with ease.
Plan overview
The Discover Plan includes 3 Core Users and 40 projects by default.
Features at a glance
Click the hyperlinked features below to jump ahead to the corresponding section.
Intelligent Grant Matching: Tell us about your organization and current project(s) to see results for good-fit, active grants. Now, funding opportunities come to you!
Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches): Get intelligently matched to compatible private foundations beyond active grants, including invite-only or non-website foundations.
Filter by Past Giving: Quickly narrow down your matches to funders who have historically awarded grants to nonprofits in the same location as your organization and/or where your project takes place.
Foundation Profiles: Access 990 Reports with rich funder profiles that include links to Form 990s, specific grant programs & deadlines and funder 990 data analysis to learn about the funders.
Advanced Funder 990 Insights: Get rich data analysis on a foundation’s giving preferences, including their openness to new grantees and top funding categories.
Recipient Profiles: Uncover good-fit foundations by accessing the Recipient Profiles of nonprofits similar to yours.
Grant Tracker: Use our Tracker to access all of your funding opportunities in one place. Organize, sort, filter, and track all saved funding opportunities by project, year, application stage, and more!
Grant Owner Assignments: Assign a dedicated "Owner" to each grant in your tracker to eliminate ambiguity and ensure clear leadership for every opportunity.
Application Cycles: Simplify deadline tracking by selecting an Application Cycle. Applications with multiple steps, such as a letter of inquiry (LOI) & full proposal, are treated as one cycle.
Funder History: Consolidates all the essential funder information, from key contacts to application history, in one convenient location, simplifying your grant-seeking journey.
Tasks & Tasks View: Create Tasks for your custom milestones, such as reporting deadlines or draft due dates, to keep you and your team on track.
Calendar View: Visualize all of your upcoming grant deadlines and Task due dates from your Tracker in a calendar to keep your grant prospecting organized.
Automatic Deadline Reminders: Instrumentl's intelligent deadline system "magically" stays up to date. Get weekly emails with all your upcoming grant & Task deadlines, and be notified of any funder cycle/deadline changes!
Document Library & External URLs: Create a central hub for your team to access all your grant files, including those saved to external cloud storage (e.g., Google Docs).
Reports (CSV & PDF): Export your saved grants pipeline into an easy-to-read PDF or CSV file to present your progress and results! Turn your Tracker into a spreadsheet you can sort, filter and analyze.
Awards View: See all of your awards in one view, along with their statistics, and export them as an Awards Report.
Intelligent Grant Matching
Cut down on manual research with Instrumentl’s Intelligent Matching. Our system recommends high-fit grants based on your mission, location and funding needs so you can spend less time searching and more time winning.
Organization/Client Profiles
Nonprofit Plans include an Organization Profile where residency locations are entered to tailor match results. Consultant Plans include Client Profiles that match clients to their residential locations.
Customized project setup
Next, you'll create a project by specifying various criteria we use to match you to good-fit grants.
Project setup for your account may differ depending on whether you have the Prospecting Assistant (beta) enabled or you're on the "classic" experience.
In either case, when setup is complete, Instrumentl will continuously match your organization’s project to good-fit, active funding opportunities. You’ll get weekly email notifications that identify new matches to keep you up to date on your grant search.
Even on your days off, Instrumentl is always on and working for you. We'll continue to pull new opportunities from our database to match you with standout grants. Save yourself from countless hours of sifting through generic grants, and instead opt for a streamlined vetting process so you can focus on what matters.
Filter by Past Giving
Use the Past Giving filters to hone in on Opportunity Matches from funders who have historically awarded grants to nonprofits in the same location as your organization and/or where your project takes place.

You’ll see two filters: 'Past giving to orgs with my location of project' and 'Past giving to orgs with my location of residency' (read how they're different here). You may decide to focus on one filter at a time. You can also select both filters, which narrows your matches to grants from funders who've given to either one of your project locations or one of your residency locations.
Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches)
See a comprehensive list of all your top-matched funders using Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches). This added discovery tool helps you surface less-visible yet good-fit funders with whom you may want to start building a relationship.
With Foundation Discovery, you get intelligently matched to foundations that may be invite-only or don’t even have a website! Uncover a world of funding beyond just active Opportunities.
Foundation Profiles
Visit a foundation's profile to view its Basic Funder 990 Insights, which reveal key information about historical and current operations, giving you a thorough understanding of the funder's overall status.
Access details on giving to past grantees and the specific grant programs they host, including current opportunity deadlines & cycles. Funder Profiles with 990 Reports also include contact information & EINs, financial statistics and direct links to their Form 990 submissions to the IRS.
Advanced Funder 990 Insights
Instead of having to comb through 990 data yourself, Advanced Funder Insights gleans relevant statistics for you. Now you can easily spot big picture trends about funders to save even more time when prospecting.
Not sure how to locate Funder Insights? Check out Where to find 990 Reports and Funder Insights!
Once you've opened up a funder's 990 Report, scroll down to see the following Advanced Funder insights:
Recipient Profiles
Find the right funders faster by uncovering foundations that give to nonprofits like yours! Conduct a "reverse search" of nonprofits similar to yours and separate their Recipient Profiles from Funder Profiles within 990 Reports to view past giving data.
Pro tip: Access deeper recipient insights to uncover even more ideal-fit funders with Peer Prospecting, available to nonprofits on the Pre-Award Plan and above.
Grant Tracker
The bulk of your grant work lives here. The Grant Tracker displays an organized view of all opportunities you've added from Instrumentl’s comprehensive database, as well as your own custom grants, to store them all in one place.
Users can also upload a spreadsheet of historic grant data to the Tracker, even for older opportunities that predate Instrumentl's database. This feature ensures a complete and organized record of all grant activities, including those with missing deadlines.
Each project space has its own designated Tracker, allowing you to organize your saved grants and tailored grant matches across different programs and clients with unique needs.
You'll also have an 'All Projects' Tracker, which provides a centralized view of saved opportunities across all of your projects.

The Tracker organizes grants by fiscal year, name, deadline, status, amount, and more. You can customize the Tracker to your preferred view in several ways.
Within the Tracker, simply click into any saved grant opportunity to directly access key grant details. View and update the status of your grant submissions as you keep track of your progress, add opportunity/funder notes, record funder responses and review other key grant information for all your saved grants.
Pro tip: Read our Tracking best practices to maximize your team's productivity using the Tracker view.
Grant Owner Assignments
You can assign a distinct “Owner” to each grant that you save. This helps increase collaboration across your team and reduces duplicative work!
To do so, open an individual grant you’ve saved and then click Select Owner or the initials of the current grant "owner".
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You’ll be able to see who is responsible for the grant directly from your Tracker view under the Owner column. You can filter your Tracker by "Owner" as well -- simply select the filter button next to 'OWNER' and search or scroll to find the "owners" whose grants you wish to view.
Application Cycles
Simplify deadline tracking with Application Cycles. Select the cycle you’re targeting, which could include multiple steps such as a letter of inquiry (LOI) & full-proposal. If a funder changes a deadline, we’ll notify you both in the platform and by email so you're always up to date.
Pro tip: You can learn more about managing your application cycle by staying organized with Instrumentl's date fields.
Funder History
Streamline and record your funder cultivation efforts with Funder History, which includes Funder Notes and Funder Contacts. These tools allow you to centralize your relationship-building insights, ensuring that you never miss a detail or an opportunity to strengthen your connections with funders.
Tasks
Keep your team on track with Tasks. Create tasks for your custom milestones, such as reporting deadlines or draft due dates, and assign them to team members. When you assign a task, the Assignee gets an email right away, making your collaboration smoother.
Followers of the Task (which by default includes the Assignee) will be notified by email when their Task due dates are approaching, provided a deadline has been entered. No more worrying about forgetting key action items for grant opportunities!
Tasks View
Much like the Tracker, the Tasks View displays a list of all Tasks across all projects as well as a project-specific list of Tasks.
Calendar View
Visualize Task due dates & deadlines from your Tracker in an interactive Calendar View to improve your grant-tracking organization and co-working efficiency. You can adjust the Calendar View using a variety of filters.
Pro tip: On the Pre-Award Plan and higher, you can sync your Instrumentl Calendar View with external calendars via Calendar Integration, and share your Calendar View with Collaborator users (learn more about Collaborators here).
Automatic Deadline Reminders
You’ll never miss a deadline with Instrumentl’s Automatic Deadline Reminders. We’ll email users when a Task deadline is approaching or when funders change the application cycle due dates for opportunities you've saved. You'll also receive a Weekly Deadline Digest email summarizing upcoming grant deadlines across all your projects.
Instrumentl consistently reviews & updates the grants included in our database when funders make changes.
Note: Grants you've manually added to your Tracker from outside Instrumentl are not automatically updated. Users must independently manage and update details, such as deadlines, for "custom grants" within their account.
Be sure you have the appropriate email notifications enabled to easily see deadline changes!
Document Library
Easily store, organize and access any grant-related documents in your Instrumentl account's Document Library. Consolidate and reference important docs and files with teammates as you collaborate and build your resource base together.
External URLs
Upload shared files from external cloud storage by adding links to your Document Library! This creates a single hub where your team can access all resources, including files stored outside Instrumentl (Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.). Spare yourself the extra steps of downloading and re-uploading files by simply entering the URL to your document!
Reports (CSV & PDF)
With Instrumentl Reports, you can export various types of data from your projects into CSV/Excel files and create visually appealing PDFs of your Tracker's grant data.
Quickly create and customize reports using data straight from your Tracker, choosing the specific projects, statuses, and date ranges you'd like to include. Available Reports include:
Opportunities Reports (PDF or CSV)
Tasks Reports (CSV)
Contacts Reports (CSV)
Funders Reports (CSV)
Awards Reports (CSV)
Awards View
Our Awards View makes it easier to manage awarded grants, ensuring you never miss a crucial step! The Awards View enables you to stay on top of your reporting deadlines and deliverables. With this feature, you can see all of your awarded grants in one place and review Award Statistics.
Looking for a more robust option with additional features and a larger user capacity? Check out our Pre-Award and Full Lifecycle Plans on our Pricing page!
Contact us 
Have any questions about the Discover Plan? We've got answers! Message our friendly Support team via your account's chat bubble, or email us at hello@instrumentl.com.






















