At Instrumentl, we know that the work of grant consultants can be overwhelming. Juggling multiple clients with competing interests and priorities can be exhausting.
Luckily, we have the perfect, all-in-one solution to your client management woes!
Instrumentl does more than just support you through grant research and prospecting. We have a comprehensive slate of easy-to-use, consultant-specific grant management tools to help you manage multiple clients with different funding priorities—all in one centralized location.
Through our platform, you can improve team coordination and produce quality client-deliverables faster, giving you more time to build relationships and scale your business.
Manage All Your Client’s Grant Portfolios in One Place
As a grant consultant, your clients probably vary in size, scope, and focus area—meaning your strategies vary wildly from portfolio to portfolio.
This variety requires a nimble, comprehensive platform that can help you track competing deadlines and priorities.
Through the Consultant Plan you can create separate profiles for each of your clients (with individual grant search results and grant trackers for each).
Each client profile has its own location and fiscal year, allowing for individualized grant search results that align with each client’s specific funding priorities and needs. Everything is organized by client, making it easy to track opportunities, deadlines, and awards across different profiles all at once.
This is the best option for nonprofit consultants who have multiple clients who do not have their own Instrumentl accounts.
Alternatively, if you’re working with one or more clients who have their own Instrumentl accounts, you can link your accounts and easily toggle between them.
Linking with an external account allows you to seamlessly switch between your Instrumentl account and your clients’ Instrumentl accounts. You’ll get immediate access to their accounts without having to have separate logins.
Whether through creating separate profiles or linking their accounts, grant consultants have found immense success using Instrumentl to streamline and organize their grant management. Here’s what grant consultant Elizabeth Burrows from Principal at Burrows Consulting had to say:
“We were constantly finding more great opportunities for our clients. It was easier to use, had easier tracking, and had a great return on investment. So we discontinued the other platforms, and now 100% of our work is with Instrumentl.”
The ability to track, manage, and organize multiple clients in one centralized database is what makes Instrumentl such a vital tool for grant consultants.
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Setting up multiple client profiles through the Instrumentl consultant subscription is a piece of cake.
We’ll walk you through simple steps to create client profiles so you can get started tracking and managing their projects faster and better than ever before.
Let’s dive in!
1. Create Client Profiles
First things first, to create a client profile you should go to the Instrumentl Account Homepage and move your cursor to the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
You will see a small button labeled “Account”. Hover over the “Account” button to pull down a drop down menu.
Once you have pulled down the drop down menu click “Client profile” to begin creating your client profile.
Once you have selected “Client profile” from the drop down menu, you will be taken to a list of client profiles.
In the top right corner of the list you will see a small green button labeled “+ Add a Profile”.
Click “+ Add a Profile” to start creating your first client profile.
2. Enter Client Details
After you click “+Add a Profile” you will be directed to enter in client details and information.
Start by entering the Client Name. Next, enter the geographic location where your client is registered as a 501(c)(3).
Pro Tip: Do not only include the state where the client is registered, be specific and include the county information every time. For international clients, enter the name of the country where they are registered.
Lastly, enter your client’s fiscal year.
Be sure to ask your client when you begin working with them what their fiscal year is. Not every nonprofit operates on the same calendar so this information is crucial when identifying best-fit grant opportunities.
Once you have entered in the requested information, you are just about finished.
Click “Save” at the bottom of the page to finish your client profile setup.
3. Link Existing Projects
Now that you have created a client profile you are ready to start linking them to any existing project associated with them.
Linking existing projects to client profiles is helpful because it allows you to have separate grant searches associated with the specific needs and priorities of each individual client. You will be able to save tailored grant matches directly to the client profile for easy tracking.
To start, click the existing “Project Name” in the left-hand project navigator bar on your Instrumentl account homepage.
Select the existing project you want to link to your client profile.
4. Edit Project
Once you have selected the existing project, click the “Edit Project” button to enter in new details about the existing project.
After you select “Edit Project”, navigate to the “Client Profile” drop down. Select the client associated with this existing project.
After selecting the appropriate Client Profile Click the “Save and Exit” button at the bottom of the screen.
Voilà! You have successfully set up a Client Profile and linked it to an existing project!
5. Link External Client Accounts
Like we explained before, this final step is only relevant if you as a consultant have your own personal Instrumentl account and your clients have their own Instrumentl accounts as well.
By linking with external client accounts, you can easily toggle between your clients’ accounts and your personal account, seamlessly switching between projects and tasks as needed.
The process is very simple!
If your nonprofit client has an Instrumentl account, all they need to do is to “invite” you to join their account as a user.
Once they have invited you, go to your Instrumentl account homepage. At the top of the screen you will see a new drop down menu that says “Viewing:” with the client name or your name following it.
Select whichever client whose page you would like to work on and switch back and forth between the external client account and your account as needed.
Now you no longer need to manage passwords and sign-in information for multiple accounts. You can keep all of your clients consolidated in one centralized place without ever needing to logout of Instrumentl!
One of the key benefits of an Instrumentl subscription for grant consultants is how much time it saves.
Typically, grant research takes up a significant amount of a grant professional’s time and there is no guarantee that it will yield great results. Consultant Plans give consultants the ability to target funding needs for all their clients, yielding separate grant matches for each.
Nonprofit grant consultant Elizabeth Burrows raves about Instrumentl’s ability to search for grants for different clients:
"Some of our [nonprofit] clients focus on HIV, some diabetes, some obesity rates, some migrant farm workers. Whatever their needs, [Instrumentl is] great because we can hone in and find specific grants for them."
Through Instrumentl, Elizabeth was able to improve processes for her team at Burrows Consulting. Instrumentl helps her team make strategic, informed decisions, deliver high-quality results faster, and manage their clients’ grant work in one centralized place.
By saving best-fit grant opportunities to an existing project, consultants can easily track opportunities based on specific funding needs and priorities, making for a seamless transition from the research phase to other points in the grant lifecycle.
Successful grant writing and management requires effective collaboration between multiple individuals, including:
Grant writers
Program managers and staff
Executive Directors
Community partners
And others, depending on the project
Knowing this, Instrumentl was designed for easy collaboration.
For example, the grant tracker’s “Task” function allows staff to assign work to keep projects moving forward and everyone up to date on progress.
Instrumentl subscriber and consultant Eloise Casdorph shared how the Tasks function helps her team strategize:
“[The Tasks section] has been extremely helpful in the grants management process and in figuring out the next steps.”
By utilizing features like the the “Tasks” function, Instrumentl allows grant consultants to communicate faster and more effectively, while keeping all essential information and collateral needed to complete critical tasks in one centralized location.
Instrumentl allows consultants to assign tasks and collaborate efficiently among their full time staff and contractors.
Elizabeth Burrows also shared with us how helpful Instrumentl has been in allowing multiple members of her team to use the platform simultaneously and collaborate on research and grants management:
“My team uses [Instrumentl] all the time. We have three members on it every single day."
Manage All Aspects of Your Grants
Instrumentl doesn’t only optimize grant research and collaboration, it helps grant consultants improve tracking and management across all phases in the grant lifecycle—from research to reporting.
Managing each aspect of the grant process is challenging even for grant managers working for a single organization. This is even more difficult for consultants who have to manage multiple grants for multiple different clients.
Luckily, Instrumentl has the solution!
Instrumentl’s status function in the Grants Tracker tool helps you stay on top of deadlines and next steps for each grant.
The grant tracker allows users to stay up to date on the status of each of their saved opportunities. Under the “Status” column in the tracker, you can choose from a selection of stages in the grant process, including:
Researching
Planned
LOI In progress
LOI Submitted
Application In progress
Application Submitted
Declined
Abandoned
Awarded-Active
Awarded-Closed
This keeps all users on the same page regarding where the grant is in the lifecycle and what is required for next steps.
For example, if a grant is labeled, “Awarded - Active” it might be an indicator that a reporting requirement may be on the horizon or it may be time to schedule a site visit with your program officer.
Eloise Casdorph and her team found that tracking the status of grants through Instrumentl was easier and more efficient than with their old system:
“Previously, we relied on separate Excel spreadsheets to manage our grant schedules and to keep a status report of all the grants that we have applied for, were received, or denied. Now with Instrumentl, we do all of that in one place.”
With Instrumentl, your team can say farewell to that old excel spreadsheet and truly improve your grant making processes! The status tracker lets you quickly review high level assignments for each client and helps ensure you never miss a deadline, report, or renewal.
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Wrapping Up: Grow Your Grant Consulting Business
Instrumentl’s platform is a critical tool for any grant consultant who wants to optimize their workflow and save time so they can focus on what matters most—helping their clients secure more funding.
Through Client Profiles and External Client Account Linking, Instrumentl’s Consultant Plans support grant consultants through every step in the grant process, improving the efficiency of each phase in the lifecycle—from researching to planning to application development and reporting.
Ready to get started with Instrumentl? Visit our website and reach out to one of our trusted representatives to learn if a Consultant Plan is right for you and your team.
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