Using Data to Find and Manage Nonprofit Grants

Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course: A 15-minute nonprofit crash course on fundraising and marketing best practices. Josh Kligman from Yearly was joined by Gauri Manglik from Instrumentl. In the age of big data, it’s more important than ever to leverage any quantitative insight you can around the funders you’re applying for funding from. How can you do so and what are the best nonprofits doing differently than others? Gauri breaks down what unique trends are crucial to look out for.

 

You can read the discussion here:

All right, Gauri, how are you doing today?

Doing really good. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for being here. So this is Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course, we’ve been doing a series that we started earlier in the fall for a 15 minute digest of tips and tricks for all nonprofit Professionals in the world of fundraising and marketing to try to learn new best practices.

So we’ve been talking going to people across various different industries and different nonprofit consultants that are providing all types of thoughts. But you know, I know today we’re gonna talk about the age of big data and how it’s more important than ever to leverage quantitative insights when you can especially when you’re looking at funders that could fulfill Grant needs so I want to welcome Gauri Manglik from Instrumentl and Gauri wants to tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to.

Sure. Yeah, so I run a company called Instrumentl, it’s an end-to-end institutional fundraising platform. So we help you with your prospecting and discovery of new funders and active opportunities. And we also have a very easy to use like tracking and grant Management System where you can stay organized build your grant calendar work with your teammates build reports and automate a lot of the kind of manual grunt work of staying organized in grant and managing those grants and focus more time on actually like writing and applying to grants.

We’ll work with over 2,000 organizations today. They’re able to send out 78% more applications when they use Instrumentl while saving three hours each week, which we feel is pretty incredible. We’re excited to see that sort of impact and yeah, we’ve been able to you know work with a ton of nonprofits over the years and just kind of see best practices in terms of how you be successful with grants and how do you also leverage tools and data to make sure that you can stand out from other applicants.

So I worked at a at a non-profit, but I was on the marketing side and I worked closely with the fundraisers and the grant managers so I knew about I knew I guess about the grants that that had a kind of a marketing arm to them where there was budget that could help us with certain types of like promotions around new activities that we were creating but I guess I only knew about what I knew about meeting, you know outside of the industry. I was in you know, does that mean that all sides of nonprofits?

Charities, maybe even foundations can go after grants whether they’re you know, like local grants from counties or large grants from large corporations. Yeah grants are a great fundraising channel to like layer on your overall strategy. I would say it’s really important to make sure that you’re ready to go after grants. It’s not typically like the first thing you’d want to do. Like when you’re just starting out.

Typically the best practice that I suggest is like getting initial traction from like individual donors and from channels that have more of a faster feedback cycle right where you can like bring in Revenue prove out the success of you know, an initial program at some sort of some sort of way so that you can demonstrate success before you go after those institutional funders institutional funders like grand Tours will have like a lower risk tolerance typically because they’re typically going to give like a larger sums of money and they’re just they have more of, you know often have more of a formal process so there’s like some kind of

There’s like a you know, some place you want to get to with your organization where you can demonstrate that track record of success and also have the capacity to go after a more a bit of a longer term fundraising channel where you know, you might apply to grants you might start building relationships and you’d want to give yourself I would say like at least a solid year. If not more to really like learn and iterate on your process. And if you don’t have the capacity to really do that, it might make more sense to actually focus on you know, individual donors or like events or you know some other place before and then get to that stage where you’re like, okay. Yeah, we can actually dedicate a solid, you know chunk of a person’s time or like a you know, full-time person on grants or be able to work with like a grant writing consultant so that you’re able to really give that like a meaningful shot what

Well, sometimes see is that folks will get really excited about grants and they’ll kind of not understand the legwork of being grant ready. They’ll apply to like, you know, three or five kind of ones that came across their inbox, you know ones that were sent to them again, like not fully understanding the full landscape and like having that grand strategy sending those applications out cold, not building those relationships and then getting rejected and then getting kind of disappointed on grants as a channel and that always you know, I feel like there’s there’s definitely like a

That that’s kind of disappointing because like that channel could have been really lucrative for them and they might be like sour on that channel, but they just kind of weren’t thinking about that the best way in light of like the other priorities that they had in the capacity that they have on their team and that’s interesting. So it’s like any other type of you know, warm up to a sales process. So how do you warm up that channel from that funder and go about that process?

So you’re not kind of going in cold, especially if they don’t know if that funder doesn’t know who that nonprofit is right from the start. Yeah, there’s a couple things I mean the first thing you want to do right is you want to make sure you are grant ready? As I mentioned? Like there’s a lot of resources out there. Instrumentl has you know some posts on that so definitely make sure
that you’re able to demonstrate that track record. And then the second is that you’d want to make sure that you’re really looking at the full landscape of grants and opportunities.

And so you can use tools like Instrumentl to do that. But before you go to like that specific funder you want to like make sure that you’re also picking the right funders to invest your time in because. You want to invest you know substantial time in making sure that there’s really that alignment and seeing if there’s a way to build that relationship and then of course potentially like crafts that proposal if it gets to that stage and then in terms of actually yeah warming up that relationship. There’s a lot of things you can try I would say the first place to start if you’re just getting started with grants just to try to prioritize those local funders where there’s gonna be some sort of Additional shared context in just like the geography and also more likely ability for you to find a mutual contact that could potentially give you an intro if that doesn’t work one thing that we’ve seen.

Folks do also try to build relationships with the grantees of that funder. So if you’re able to see that data on their past giving of you know a grantee that maybe is in your space or maybe in an adjacent space to you you cannot and that that you know, you could actually reach out to that grantee understand what their process was like did they need a relationship with that funder to to get funded and then if you you know, if you hit it off with that grantee, then that grant you might actually be open to making that connection as well. And then if those like introduction type channel aren’t materializing then the next thing I would try is just to actually call that funder email that funder and all you’re trying to do with that initial touch point is like you know, I think going as far as saying, hey, like can I jump on a call and like talk to you or can I like take you out for coffee.

Like I would even go a step before that and and really just try to make the what you’re trying to get from that initial touch Point even like easier for that funder to give you and that’s just like does the funder think that you should apply does this funder think that you’re like generally aligned with what this funder is like caring about for this particular program. And so making it really easy to in a couple sentences give context on what you’re working on and just saying like based on, you know, based on your priorities like doesn’t make sense for us to apply so, you know if it’s actually worth it and then if that if you’re able to get that kind of feedback then to go into like try to develop that relationship further and and go through the application process.

So let’s say you’re a nonprofit that’s you know, between five and twenty five million dollars a year and you have a small or medium-sized team where you know, you do have someone that can take the time to write the grants and apply for the grants and then do the grant Management, too. Taking a step back from that relationship building. Where do you recommend people go now, like what are those trends for finding the fastest sources of funding and finding, you know, finding those grand opportunities in the first place.

Is it Instrumentl or there are other places, yeah, there’s like two main data sources that people that like exist to find information on grants and funders one is funder’s websites where they often will post opportunities to apply for and those funders could be private funders. They could be corporate funders. They could be government funders and they have information on the website. There are other data sources that people leverage often is 990 data, which is a tax filing set by private funders. Have to fill out every year and in those filings those funders must report on their past grantees, like who they funded this past year.

And if you are to look at that, you’re able to see even if that funder doesn’t have a website or even if they do have a website. Really what this funder cares about because you can see who they’ve give into in the past. And there’s a couple tools out there that really focus on 990 data.

There’s a couple tools out there that really focus on the like scraping and collecting the website data on instrumental. We bring both of those two together, which is really powerful. So like if you’re looking at an active opportunity from that a funder has on the website and their private funder, you can also see their 990 data and their past giving Trends right next to it. And then of course if somebody if a funder doesn’t have an act of community or doesn’t have a website you can then use instrumental to also just like use that 990 data to go deep and understand if their past giving is aligned to your organization.

Oh, that’s cool. So yeah, I saw on the Instrumental website, there was a list of the 990 data and then I clicked by state. So I’m in Maryland, right? So I just let’s see what comes up in Maryland then all the foundations popped up and how much they are donating to nonprofits and what they do in revenue and then I guess you can go deeper and then find the insights that you’re talking about and then taking begin one way to begin to figure out where those grant opportunities are using data on a website like that.

Yeah, and like what you’re really looking for, right is you’re trying to find funders where you feel like, there’s like true alignment with what this funder cares about and I like to say that the website data if it’s available is kind of like their explicit preferences where they’re like stating what they care about and then they’re 990 data. If it’s a private funder are there like implicit preferences where you can actually see truly what they care about based on like what they’ve done in the past and like often I would say, sometimes those things are not necessarily always aligned you might have a funder that says I’m open to funding anywhere in the United States and you see that on their website then you look at their 990 and you’re like, okay like for the past five years.

They’ve only given to California organizations in California, New York. So, you know, they might say they’re open but like in reality they might have like an implicit preference or that it just might be so unlikely that they would fund you if you’re not in California or New York. So you just want to like deep prioritize that unless you have like a relationship and so having both of those pieces of information both of those data set side by side can really help to inform your strategy. Like read between the lines which is really important. Especially if you can’t like get in direct contact with that funder. Yeah, it’s really smart.

And you know in that example, they probably know people in California and New York because those people have built relationships with them and that further emphasizes that need for that relationship building over time, but now that I think about it and you say that I have seen on on websites, you know that, you know, like the foundation for XYZ company. It’s interested in these three missionary, you know, you know Mission man, they type areas and then if that aligns with your nonprofit’s mission as well, then then maybe have a good chance of getting funded or at least, you know, there’s like a theme alignment there but there’s a very how else does it vary by like type a nonprofit or industry just generally speaking like if you’re a you know a food bank in Philadelphia either by industry or geography verse, you know, let’s say an animal shelter.

And you know and yeah, California, I mean are there different places that you look for funding you mentioned earlier? I mean, there’s local funding that you can look for but then I guess you could just find the foundations that align with with your industry right or your or your city like ideally you’re using help this like be more efficient for you, or you can kind of give information about your organization and your programs and kind of be matched to the relevant funding opportunities or funders and it’s not that I think with these different types of nonprofits like animal shelter versus like an education nonprofit. You’re going to be looking at different data sources, but you’re going to need to be able to see on the 990 for instance.

Um specifically does this funder give to organizations in my state or specifically does this funder give to my type of organization. Do they give to animal shelters? Do they give to education nonprofits? And then what you can even do on, you know, tools like Instrumentl you can like drill down to see like those specific organizations that they gave to in those categories and also like the specific amounts they gave to those types of nonprofits.

So you might see funders have different preferences of like a mountain sizes based on the, you know type of organization and that’s really important to also understand as you’re building your relationship or developing your proposal. Like if you just were to look at the overall median and you were to say it’s like, you know, 500,000 or something and like that’s what you go through ask about that’s not quite specific enough because their median for like a University versus like an animal shelter might be very different and so you’d want to actually drill down at that level and use that specificity to inform your application.

All right. So let’s say your application’s done. You get the grants. It’s successful and our final minute here. I want to ask what you’ve seen out there in terms of reports back to the grantors and maybe even the public. I mean, how do you share that success or show that you got X number dollars and you move the needle with it and impacted your community. I mean, have you seen other nonprofits do a really good job about it? And like what would a poor job look like as well? I can’t say that it’s not a trivial problem for nonprofits like oftentimes. It’s a challenge for them to collect information from the finance person from the program’s people and synthesize it all together. The grant’s person is like the relationship manager that often has to report back to the funder and it’s like on the line for the relationship.

And so that coordination process can be challenging. I think also like it’s really important to have a tracking system in place for those like midterm reports those final reports and make sure those like, you know subtasks are broken out because the best thing about grants and like these funders is that it can be hard to break into a funder but it can once you do you can you can become a repeat funder which can then, you know layer become a really valuable make the grants, you know strategy of really valuable channel overall in your in your approach and that’s what you want to get to and like making sure you do a good job on those reports you’re on time you’re building that that strong relationship or the funders like yeah, you know, I can just keep funding this organization and keep getting good results. Like that’s where you want to get to.

Yeah, I think the funders that see the impact could feel the impact through the storytelling through the metrics that come back to them. And the form of some type of report is where you get that kind of, you know, that repeat donation or repeat business as I as I call it sometimes and I think that I’ve seen it done really well through digital reports, which is like a web page using using yearly where I am and sometimes they include all the metrics if it’s tracked and that’s probably like the gold standard what you’re saying, but you know, even if you just have the stories that you’re telling and you can explain and show people with images videos what happened couple that with the metrics if you can then that’s like a real winning combination.

All right, anything else to add Gauri before we have our time down here? Yeah, folks want to check out Instrumentl they can go to our website and we have a 14-day free trial and totally free to give a you know, you can get some opportunities that might be good for you and then if you’re not ready for Grants and we have a free webinar.

We’ll host lots of free webinars, you know content on our blog instrumentl.com/blog. You can check that out. All right, great. Well, this will be posted on the yearly blog as well. And this is yearly’s nonprofit crash course gory. Thanks for joining us from Instrumentl today totally. Yeah. Thank you for having me. All right. Take care. Bye.