Grant Forward Pricing: Which Plan is Best for You?

Not sure if GrantForward is the right investment for your organization?

No worries—in this article, we are going to take a deep dive into GrantForward’s features and pricing plans to help you make an informed decision. We will also compare GrantForward to Instrumentl so you can decide which tool better meets your needs and provides the most bang for your buck.

Let’s get started.

GrantForward is a grants database specifically built for researchers.

Typically, a research institution will sign up for the platform, giving all of its members access to GrantForward’s extensive database.

GrantForward’s pricing plans vary depending on the size of the institution they are working with. These organization can be classified as Small, Medium, Large or Super.

‍

We’ll go over GrantForward’s pricing in a little bit more detail later on in the article.

GrantForward’s main feature is its extensive database of research-focused grants. It includes over 84,000 funding opportunities and 21,000 sponsors from around the world.

Not only that, but GrantForward’s features make it easy for researchers to sift through all of the results. These include:

• The ability to save a search so you can get notifications when new grants that fit its criteria appear
• The ability to favorite grants so you can receive a notification if something about it has changed
• The ability to keep a grant list to keep track of possible funding opportunities

GrantForward also provides unique features for institution administrators, including:

• The ability to create custom groups based on research interests
• The ability to share search results and grant lists with its members
• The ability to create customizable newsletters

However, it’s important to note that because GrantForward is a database of funding opportunities aimed at researchers, its scope is pretty limited. GrantForward also doesn’t provide robust grant management tools, meaning users would need to invest in separate solutions to track and manage their grants once awarded.

While GrantForward does offer a free 30-day trial for those interested in working with the platform, they do not provide information on their website about what the cost of each plan is—you have to reach out to them for details.

However, we do know that GrantForward’s pricing plans are based on the size of the institution. Below is a more detailed breakdown of what those size classifications entail:

• Small Institution – Any research institution with fewer than 3,000 students and employees and that spends less than $10 million USD in annual research. Under these parameters, Davidson College, in North Carolina, would be considered a small institution.
• Medium Institution – Any research institution with more than 3,000 but fewer than 15,000 students and employees, or any institution that spends more than $10 million but less than $50 million USD in annual research. The College of New Jersey would be classified as a medium institution according to these parameters.
• Large Institution – Most institutions with an annual research fund in between $50 million and $100 million would be considered a large institution. The only exception is if they have over 30,000 students and employees. Under these parameters, Northern Illinois University would be considered a large institution.
• Super Institution – Any institution with an annual research fund over $100 million, regardless of number of students and employees. Similarly, any institution with over 30,000 students and employees is a super institution, regardless of how much research funding it spends annually. The University of Rochester in New York state would be classified as a super institution according to these parameters.

While we don’t know pricing specifics, given that the subscription would be for an entire institution, one can only imagine that GrantForward’s cost would be on the higher end compared to some other grant discovery databases.

GrantForward can be a helpful resource for finding research grants, but is there a better alternative?

We may be a bit biased, but we believe that Instrumentl provides grantseekers—including those looking for research funding—with more value at a better price.

‍

Instrumentl is an end-to-end grant discovery and management platform that helps thousands of organizations find and secure grant funding. With tools to support the entire grant lifecycle, Instrumentl streamlines the entire process of identifying, tracking, and managing good-fit grants.

Let’s explore some of our top features and how they stack up against GrantForward.

Smart Grant Matching

Instrumentl’s grant database is incredibly comprehensive, with more than 15,000 active RFPs, 400,000+ funder profiles, and 150+ new opportunities added weekly.

Rather than having to search the database manually, Instrumentl uses Smart Matching technology to curate a list of relevant grants for you in seconds.

Here’s how it works: you tell Instrumentl a little bit about your funding needs—what type of organization you are, the kind of funding you’re looking for, your area of focus, etc.—and it will deliver a list of good-fit grants that match your search criteria.

‍

There are even options specifically for academic researchers: You can specify that you are looking for research grants, fellowship grants, scholarship grants, conference grants, or all of the above.

‍

You can take a look for yourself by browsing some of the grants available.

Advanced Funder Insights

Not only does Instrumentl have thousands of active grants available in its database, it also has funder profiles with key insights that make it easy to determine if a grant is worth pursuing.

This is possible thanks to Form 990. As grant expert and founder of Chase Consulting Solutions Jacob Chase explains:
‍

“Always review the funder's 990 -- this will help you understand what types of organizations a foundation will typically fund, how much they typically give, and where (geographically) they tend to give.”--Jacob Chase

That being said, 990s are notoriously difficult to read and glean helpful information from. But Instrumentl makes this task simple by taking the information provided in these forms and presenting them in easy-to-understand graphs and snapshots.

‍

These 990 snapshots include a funder’s:

• Average and median grant sizes
• Number of grants awarded annually
• Total assets
• Location of past grantees
• Key people
• Openness to new grantees
• And more!

Recipient Profiles/Reverse Search

Instrumentl also goes above and beyond by providing its users with Recipient Profiles and the ability to reverse search.

This means that your quest to find the right funder is not limited to trying to guess what kind of foundation would be interested in your project—instead, you can rely on history and real-world evidence. You can easily discover obscure funding opportunities by seeing what awards were granted to projects similar to yours in the past, and use that to build up a list of potential funders.

Grant Tracking and Submissions

Unlike GrantForward, Instrumentl is more than just a grant discovery platform—it’s a grant management one as well!

Instrumentl provides solutions that streamline and organize the pre- and post-award management process, including:

• A dedicated Grants Tracker where you can organize your applications, track deadlines, and more.
• A Calendar view that your whole team can access where you can assign tasks and monitor your to-do list.
• An Awards Dashboard where you can manage your funding, track your financials, and stay on top of reporting deadlines.

‍

CRM and Calendar Integrations

Cultivating good relationships with funders is key to winning grants. That’s why Instrumentl makes it easy to nurture those bonds with its CRM integrations.

You can also integrate Instrumentl with your Outlook, Google, and iCal calendars, making it even easier to keep on top of deadlines and tasks.

‍

By seamlessly integrating with other software, Instrumentl saves your team time from manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors.

GrantForward is a great grant discovery platform for researchers, but it has its limitations. For starters, because its focus is solely on research, nonprofit organizations or independent scholars working outside institutions will not be able to fully take advantage of its resources. Furthermore, GrantForward is only a grant discovery platform, lacking features that would help institutions during other parts of the grant lifecycle.

Instrumentl is both more inclusive and more robust in terms of tools and services it provides. You can sign up for a 14 day free trial today!