Best Grant Management Software for Nonprofits

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Wow! Managing grants is so easy! And not at all time-consuming!” Believe me—in managing grants for over a decade, neither have I!

Often, grant management feels like a maze of paperwork, deadlines, and frustration. So choosing the right software to help you manage it all is paramount.

In this article, I’ll guide you through the top grant management software options for nonprofits with a recommendation on my favorite: Instrumentl.

Here’s a quick summary of the tools we will review:

• Instrumentl: Best for end-to-end grant prospecting and management.
• GrantSeeker.io: Best for organizing and scaling grant management programs.
• GrantStation: Best for limited budgets and a DIY-approach to prospect research.
• GrantHub Pro: Best for managing grant applications and ensuring compliance.
• GrantWatch: Best for straightforward yet limited grant searching.
• Amplifund: Best for detailed government grant tracking and compliance maintenance.
• Impala Digital: Best for data-driven insights for strategic decision-making.
• WizeHive: Best for program setup and post-award reporting.

We will review each tool's pricing, the type of organization it is best suited for, its top features, and, of course, its weaknesses.

Note: Instrumentl was built to solve all of the challenges of grant management for established nonprofits. If you already have a grant program in place, but want to find grants more efficiently and scale how many applications you submit each year, read about Instrumentl in detail below or start a free trial if you want to see exactly how it can help improve your grant prospecting and management.

Grant management software is designed to streamline the entire grant lifecycle, from finding and applying for grants to tracking and reporting outcomes.

These tools help grant professionals—like you!—manage deadlines, organize documents, and collaborate effectively with coworkers, ultimately saving you time and reducing errors.

Speaking of errors, when it comes to grant management, there is very little room to make mistakes. Grant professional Arnisha Johnson shares her perspective on this:
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“The biggest mistake I’ve seen organizations make when managing several grants is letting important tasks fall through the cracks. This can easily happen when there is disorganization of information, possibly due to overload or overwhelm.”

Here’s the bottom line: whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, these tools can transform how you handle grants. By keeping things organized and consolidated, grant management software helps you stay on top of your game.

The cost of grant management software varies widely depending on the size and needs of your organization.

• For smaller nonprofits or those just starting their grant-seeking journey, affordable options offer basic features at a lower cost. These can range from free trials to monthly subscriptions starting around $30.
• For larger organizations with more complex needs, there are advanced solutions with comprehensive features that can cost several hundred to thousands of dollars annually.

Pricing models also differ, with some tools charging weekly, monthly, or annually, allowing you to choose a payment plan that best fits your budget.

Here’s how we evaluated the top grant management software options:

• Pricing: How affordable the tool’s subscription plans are, and whether they are geared toward larger or smaller nonprofits.
• Their Best Features: The range and quality of features provided, including tracking, reporting, collaboration tools, and integration with other systems.
• Who It’s Best Suited For: What kind of organization each software was built for, whether smaller nonprofits that need lightweight assistance or larger organizations that need an all-in-one grant management solution.

Considering these factors, you can choose a grant management system that will streamline your grant processes, improve efficiency, and help you secure more funding.

We’re going to kick things off by highlighting our grant management tool at Instrumentl. We know we’re biased, but we think it’s pretty easy to make a case for why we’re the best. Don’t worry—we’ll be fully transparent about our strengths and challenges.

Overview

Instrumentl is a tech-for-good service that connects nonprofits with good-fit funding matches to help boost fundraising efforts.

With over 410,000 funders and 15,000+ active opportunities, Instrumentl’s database is the most comprehensive on the market—and it’s constantly growing. Additionally, Instrumentl offers robust grant-tracking tools that bring all facets of grant writing and management into one place.

Pricing

Instrumentl offers a range of pricing plans to fit different organizational needs and budgets:

• Basic Plan: $179/month
• Standard Plan: $299/month
• Professional Plan: $499/month

While Instrumentl is a premium grant management platform, its comprehensive features and high ROI make it a valuable investment.

Sara D., CEO at Experience Camps, shares:
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“The Instrumentl platform showed an immediate ROI for our organization…What started as a trial has become a staple tool for our fundraising team.”

The platform supports you from prospect research to post-award management, saving you time and enhancing your efficiency. For nonprofits looking to centralize and optimize their grant processes, Instrumentl provides unparalleled value.

Best Suited For

Instrumentl is ideal for nonprofits of all sizes, especially those looking to centralize their grant work, increase efficiency, and raise more money. It’s particularly beneficial for organizations with a dedicated grant team or those aiming to scale their grant-seeking efforts.

Best Features

Instrumentl is packed full of features that will undoubtedly help you streamline your grant processes and boost your efficiency—especially when it comes to grant management. Let’s look at a few of them in more detail.

Smart Matching to RFPs and Funders: Our intelligent Smart Matching system quickly identifies the best-fit funding opportunities for your nonprofit, saving you time and increasing your chances of success. Instrumentl brings curated grants to you so that you don’t have to go searching for them.

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Automagical Deadline Reminders: Instrumentl will automatically email you reminders, including grant application and reporting deadlines, to ensure you never miss a due date. Even better—we’ll also automatically notify you if a funder changes their grant deadline or funding priorities so you’re always informed.

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Grant Tracker: Instrumentl automatically tracks and organizes all your grants in one place, providing a high-level view of progress toward fundraising goals. You can see the grant’s name, funder, deadline, project status, and award amount all in one place. Each grant can be assigned a different status, helping you stay organized and on top of your workload.

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Grant Awards: Manage all your grant awards in one place, with key stats like the total amount awarded, the awarded amount by funder type, the next report due date, and the number of incomplete tasks.

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Budget Tracking: You can monitor spending for each grant budget to ensure funds are spent responsibly and promptly. View award amounts, expenditures, remaining funds, and a budget breakdown by category.

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Weaknesses

Instrumentl’s higher price point may be a barrier for smaller nonprofits or those with limited budgets. While it offers extensive features, some organizations may need a more affordable tool.

Overview

GrantSeeker.io is an intuitive grant management software designed to streamline the grant application process and enhance collaboration among team members. It focuses on helping nonprofits efficiently manage their grant-related activities from start to finish, offering tools that simplify tracking, reporting, and communication.

Pricing

GrantSeeker.io offers several pricing plans to accommodate different organizational needs:

• Starter Plan: $50/month
• Professional Plan: $100/month
• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing

Best Suited For

GrantSeeker.io is best suited for small to mid-sized nonprofits that need an easy-to-use platform to manage their grant portfolio. It is particularly beneficial for teams looking to enhance collaboration and streamline their grant application workflows.

Best Features

GrantSeeker.io offers some impressive tools, including:

• Grant Tracking: Comprehensive tools for tracking grant applications, upcoming deadlines, and application statuses in one centralized location.
• Collaboration Tools: Facilitates teamwork by allowing multiple users to work together, assign each other tasks, and share updates.
• Reporting and Analytics: Generate detailed reports and insights to monitor progress and improve grant-seeking strategies.
• User-Friendly Interface: An intuitive and easy-to-use platform that simplifies grant management for users of all experience levels.

Weaknesses

While GrantSeeker.io offers some robust features for grant management, it lacks some of the advanced functionalities found in other software, such as integrations with other platforms and financial tracking tools.

From a grant research perspective, this platform lacks the intelligent matching technology and automagical reminders that some higher-end platforms offer.

Overview

GrantStation is designed to help nonprofits and other organizations find new grant opportunities, build a strong grant program, and successfully win grant proposals. In addition to thousands of funder profiles, GrantStation offers a suite of resources to enhance your grant writing and management efforts.

Pricing

GrantStation offers several membership pricing options:

• One Year: $699
• Two Years: $1,258 (save 10%)
• Three Years: $1,782 (save 15% – the best deal)
• One Quarter: $219

These relatively affordable options make this platform accessible to many nonprofits.

Best Suited For

GrantStation is ideal for small to mid-sized nonprofits focused on finding and researching funding opportunities, especially those seeking an affordable tool to build a solid grant-seeking strategy.

It’s important to note that this platform doesn’t offer comprehensive support of the entire grant lifecycle like some of the other more robust tools we’ve covered; its primary focus is on prospecting and education.

Best Features

GrantStation is well-known in the world of fundraising, and we can see why. This tool offers some helpful features:

• Prospecting tools: Access to active RFPs and RFP profiles to identify new opportunities.
• Grant Writing Resources: A comprehensive cache of resources on how to write proposals and build a grant-seeking strategy.
• Personalized Dashboard: Save funders and RFPs on your personalized dashboard to prioritize your leads.

Weaknesses

While GrantStation offers valuable tools, it does have some limitations:

• No Foundation Profiles: Lacks detailed foundation profiles or links to them.
• No Smart Matching: Does not offer intelligent matching to good-fit opportunities.
• Limited Collaboration Features: It does not support collaboration or document storage.

Most critically, it lacks post-award management functions, meaning there are no tools to help you manage and track grants after funds have been awarded. This can be a significant drawback for nonprofits looking for an end-to-end solution.

Overview

GrantHub Pro is an online grant management software designed for nonprofits and grant consultants. It manages the entire grant process from application to closeout, helping to increase efficiencies and improve the chances of winning grants.

Pricing

GrantHub Pro costs $349 per month and is billed annually. There is also a one-time implementation fee of $500.

Best Suited For

GrantHub Pro is best suited for nonprofits and grant consultants who need a robust tool to manage their pre and post-award grant processes. It is ideal for those looking to stay organized, maintain compliance, and preserve institutional knowledge throughout the grant lifecycle.

However, it’s important to note that GrantHub Pro is not an all-in-one tool and relies on external resources for prospecting, making it less suitable for those seeking a comprehensive solution for finding new funding opportunities.

Best Features

GrantHub Pro lets you manage your entire portfolio in one location and offers some competitive and impressive features, including:

• Task Prioritization and Reminders: Prioritize tasks, set reminders, and sync events and deadlines to your calendar to ensure your team is always on track.
• Compliance and Organization: Keep all grant-related information and documentation in one place to ensure compliance and preserve institutional knowledge.
• Grant Research and Pre-Award Support: Use Foundation Directory Online and GrantStation to identify potential funding sources and funding matches.

Weaknesses

While GrantHub Pro offers some impressive features for managing grants, it lacks the smart-matching tools that some of its competitors (like Instrumentl) offer for grant discovery. Its discovery tools rely on platforms like GrantStation and Guidestar for their data, which makes prospect research slower and cumbersome.

Overview

GrantWatch is one of the leading grant discovery platforms on the market. This platform is best known for its exhaustive list of grants available to individuals, nonprofits, and businesses.

Pricing

GrantWatch offers a few different pricing options to choose from based on how long you plan to need access to the platform:

• Weekly: $18 gets you complete access for one week
• Monthly: $45 gets you access for one month
• Quarterly: $90 gets you access for three months
• Annually: $199 gets you access for one year

Best Suited For

GrantWatch is well-suited for small nonprofits or organizations with limited budgets that need a reliable tool for grant research. Mainly because of its flexible pricing plans, this tool is a good fit for organizations that might want to make a smaller investment—maybe a one-week or one-month subscription—rather than a longer-term, more costly commitment.

It’s ideal for users primarily interested in discovering new funding opportunities and don’t need extensive post-award management features.

Best Features

Some of GrantWatch’s key features include:

• Extensive Database: Search for grants by recipient type, location, category/focus area, and deadlines.
• My Grants Calendar: Both free and paid members can access this feature to organize opportunities and submissions.
• Grant Discovery: Comprehensive search capabilities to help you find relevant grant opportunities.

Weaknesses

While GrantWatch excels in grant discovery, it lacks key project and post-award management tools.

The platform does not offer application tracking, automated deadline reminders, or collaboration tools, which are necessary for successful grant management. This means that grant professionals will need to invest in another more robust management tool for comprehensive support of the entire grant lifecycle, which can be costly.

Overview

Amplifund is a comprehensive grant management software designed to support the entire grant lifecycle, from pre-award to post-award management. Its popularity is primarily due to its robust tracking, compliance, and reporting functionalities.

Pricing

Amplifund offers customized pricing based on the organization's specific needs and size. For detailed pricing information, it’s best to contact their sales team directly for a tailored quote.

Best Suited For

Based on our research, Amplifund is best suited for government agencies, large nonprofits, and educational institutions that manage a high volume of grants and need a powerful system for tracking, compliance, and reporting. It’s ideal for organizations that require detailed financial oversight and comprehensive grant management capabilities.

Best Features

A few of Amplifund’s key features include:

• Advanced Reporting and Compliance: Robust tools for compliance and reporting, helping organizations meet stringent regulatory requirements.
• Financial Tracking: Detailed financial management features to track budgets, expenditures, and remaining grant funds.
• Customizable Workflows: Flexible workflows that can be tailored to fit your organization's specific processes.
• Collaboration Tools: Facilitates team collaboration with task assignments, deadlines, reminders, and document sharing.

Weaknesses

While Amplifund offers a wide range of features, it can be complex and may have a steep learning curve for new users. Smaller organizations or those with limited grant management needs might find it overwhelming and cost-prohibitive.

Additionally, many of Amplifund’s features are designed to help streamline the audit process rather than the entire grant management lifecycle. This is great if you receive federal funding, but it may not be as helpful for organizations that receive primarily corporate and foundation grants.

Lastly, the customized pricing model can make it difficult for nonprofits to determine the cost upfront without investing time engaging with the tool’s sales team.

Overview

Impala Digital is an innovative grant prospecting tool that makes social impact data available to all. Impala provides the data, insights, and relationships needed to drive positive change in communities worldwide by connecting nonprofits and funders on a single platform.

According to their website, Impala aims to help organizations enhance their fundraising strategies, foster collaboration, and revolutionize social impact.

Pricing

Impala Digital offers several pricing plans:

• Free: The free plan gets you access to basic prospect lists and searchable funder profiles.
• Premium: $5,000/year gets you everything in the Free Plan plus curated prospect matches, relationship mapping to funders, funder contact information, solicitation calendars, and smart prospect lists.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing—Includes the Free and Premium features, a customized onboarding plan, data concierge services, and API integrations.

Best Suited For

This platform best suits organizations that want to leverage data-driven insights to enhance their grant-seeking efforts. It is particularly useful for organizations hoping to build smarter prospect lists, understand funding trends, and improve fundraising efficiency.

However, it’s important to note that this platform lacks the post-award management features to support grant professionals after grant funding has been secured. While it might be a powerful funder search tool, you’ll need to invest in additional post-award management software to support those needs.

Best Features

Let’s review some of Impala Digital’s key features:

• Data-Driven Insights: Provides comprehensive analytics to help organizations understand the funding landscape.
• Smart Prospecting: Tools to build targeted prospect lists based on existing funders and similar nonprofits.
• Collaborative Tools: Enhances team collaboration with task assignments, deadline reminders, and document sharing.
• Customizable Dashboards: Flexible dashboards that can be tailored to fit the specific needs of each organization.

Weaknesses

While Impala Digital offers robust grant-seeking tools, it may be more complex and costly than necessary for smaller nonprofits or those with limited grant-seeking activities.

Additionally, the lack of post-award management support means that you’ll need to invest in additional software; using multiple platforms for prospecting and management is cumbersome and expensive.

Overview

WizeHive is a versatile grant management platform designed to streamline the grant administration process. It offers comprehensive solutions for managing applications, tracking progress, and reporting outcomes. It’s known for its user-friendliness and robust integration capabilities.

Pricing

WizeHive does not share its pricing information publicly. Instead, it offers customized pricing plans tailored to organizations' specific needs and sizes. To obtain detailed pricing information, you must complete a questionnaire on its website and speak to its sales team.

Best Suited For

WizeHive is a great fit for nonprofits, educational institutions, and government agencies that require a robust and flexible grant management system.

It’s well-suited for organizations that receive federal funding due to its advanced tracking and reporting features and its ability to integrate with other tools.

Best Features

Some of WizeHive’s best features include:

• Comprehensive Reporting: Generate detailed, customizable reports that provide insights into your grant activities and outcomes, helping you make data-driven decisions.
• Seamless Integrations: Connect easily with other software tools and platforms to enhance overall efficiency and streamline your workflow.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Enable team collaboration with features like task assignments, document sharing, and communication tools that keep everyone aligned and informed.
• User-Friendly Design: The intuitive interface is designed for ease of use, making it accessible for all team members, regardless of their level of tech-savvy.

Weaknesses

While many of WizeHive’s features are impressive, smaller organizations may find this platform to be more than they require for their grant management needs.

Additionally, the lack of grant search tools, like intelligent matching to good-fit funding opportunities, funding insights, and past giving trends, means you’ll need to do your prospect research elsewhere, which can drain your time and energy.

As we wrap up this review of the best grant management software, Instrumentl stands out as the best, most comprehensive tool on the market.

Instrumental offers a robust suite of features designed to streamline every aspect of the grant lifecycle, from prospect research to post-award management. Its unmatched database of over 14,000 active grants provides unparalleled access to good-fit funding opportunities, which helps grant professionals like you save time and increase the amount of money you raise.

Don’t just take our word for it—experience the benefits of Instrumentl for yourself. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today and discover how Instrumentl can transform your work, help you achieve tremendous success, and significantly impact your community.