Grant Gopher Pricing: Which Plan is Best for You?

Have you come across Grant Gopher and are wondering if it’s the right investment for your nonprofit?

We’re here to help—in this guide, we are going to break down Grant Gopher’s different pricing plans and features so that you can make an informed decision for your organization. We will also compare Grant Gopher to a top alternative, helping make sure you get the most out of your investment in a grant search tool.

Let’s dive in!

Grant Gopher’s easy-to-navigate search platform is targeted to beginners in the grant-seeking process, specifically those in the education sector.

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Grant Gopher allows you to try some of their features for free to see if it is the right platform for your nonprofit. However, this free “LITE” option only allows you to perform simple database searches and only attain details for up to five grants in the search results. If you want details for more than five grants, you will need to pay for one of the following plans:

• Pro/$9 a month
• Pro Success Path/$49 a month

We’ll explain what you get with each of these pricing tiers in more detail a little later in the article.

Grant Gopher’s main feature is its database of more than 8,000 grants from a variety of funding sources. Its search features are easy to use and allow you to tailor your search based on your location, funding type, and grant category.

Grants listed on Grant Gopher are targeted to small nonprofits, schools, and municipalities located in the United States from a variety of funders, including:

• Community foundations
• Private foundations
• Federal, state, city, and county programs
• Corporations
• Local organizations

All of Grant Gopher’s pricing plans include its resource library, which has tools and resources to help you write successful grant proposals.

However, it’s important to note that Grant Gopher is just a database—it doesn't provide any robust grant management or post-award features. There are also no funder profiles or insights to help you determine if a grant is worth pursuing. It’s essentially just a database of active grants, which is reflected in its lower price point compared to other grant platforms.

As noted above, there are three Grant Gopher pricing plans to choose from:

LITE/free:

• Search the database and filter by nationally available grants at a state or county level.
• View full details for up to five grants in your search results.
• Get a small amount of samples from the proposal sample library.
• Have access to the customer care team.

PRO/$9 per month:

• Search the database and filter by nationally available grants at a state or county level.
• Sort by the newest grants added and filter for grants with no deadline.
• Gain access to all grantmakers in the database currently accepting applications.
• Get detailed grant descriptions, maximum award information, contact information, and links directly to the guidelines and application.
• Gain access to saved or passed grants anytime, and sort them by name or deadline date.
• Attain access to saved grants that are passed the deadline but are expected to re-open in the future.
• Gain full access to all of the samples in the proposal sample library.
• Have access to the customer care team.
• Get grant email alerts with same day notification when new grants matching your saved searches are accepting applications.
• Use multiple save search options.
• Use account set-up to better match your organization and programs with searches.

PRO Success Path/$49 per month:

• All of the benefits of the PRO plan.
• An average of $500/month of in-kind research services donated to each member.

Although Grant Gopher can be a useful search tool for small nonprofits just starting out in grant seeking, it’s very limited in its ability to help you actually win and manage funding.

We might be a bit biased, but we believe that a platform like Instrumentl—while more expensive—provides users with more value and a greater bang for their buck.

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Unlike Grant Gopher, Instrumentl is designed to streamline the entire grant lifecycle, from identifying good-fit funding to tracking applications to managing awards and cultivating funder relationships. With Instrumentl, you can save time and win more funding:
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“Instrumentl has been like an elusive purple unicorn that I was looking for when I started my business. It makes me look like a rock star. I’m dealing with a lot of organizations with smaller budgets that have not had a lot of grant success, and now we are seeing a tremendous return on investment.”--Dawn Moeglin, CEO and Nonprofit Consultant at Full-Circle Fundraising LLC.

Let’s explore a few of Instrumentl’s top features:

Smart Grant Matching

One of the main features that differentiates Instrumentl from Grant Gopher is its “Smart Matching” function, which uses a unique algorithm to match your organization with best-fit funding opportunities.

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Rather than searching manually, Instrumentl’s Smart Matching technology analyzes its database of more than 15,000 active RFPs and 400,000 funders to instantly deliver a list of curated, good-fit matches based on your organization’s funding needs.

Using Instrumentl’s Smart Matching is easy! You simply tell Instrumentl about your nonprofit—where you’re located, what you do, and what kind of funding you’re looking for—and the tool does the rest of the work. Before you know it, you’re looking at a list of curated funding matches, with new opportunities sent to your inbox every week.

This tailored approach helps you focus on opportunities that specifically match your program requirements so that they have a high potential return on investment. By filtering out opportunities that aren’t a good match, you will save hours of time and effort.

As Dr. Bev Browning, Author, Grant Consultant & Coach at Bev Browning LLC, explains:
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“I started using Instrumentl and thought - oh my gosh, this is a miracle! This is going to save me weeks! It just does everything for me. I insert the keywords, set up a project, and it magically shows me the most relevant funding matches.”--Dr. Bev Browning

Advanced Funder Insights

Instrumentl’s database also includes foundation profiles with key insights that make it easy for you to evaluate the funder’s giving history and determine whether they are a good fit for your organization.

All of this information is pulled directly from the funder’s 990 and organized into easy-to-read snapshots. You’ll be able to see a funder’s:

• Giving patterns
• Openness to new grantees
• Past grantees
• Key contacts
• Average and median grant sizes
• Total assets
• Giving by NTEE codes
• And more!

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As Maureen McGuire, Grants Manager at Habitat for Humanity DuPage Chicago South Suburbs, shares:
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“With Instrumentl, there isn’t any wasted time. They identify the funder, link you to their website, show projected deadlines, and provide information about communities where they work - before, we could have wasted time on a potential funder without that information.”--Maureen McGuire

Instrumentl’s Advanced Funder Insights will help you more quickly identify good-fit funders with the highest ROI.

Recipient Profiles/Reverse Search

Finding relevant grant opportunities and well-aligned funders is a main challenge nonprofit professionals face in their grant search. Luckily, Instrumentl has another unique feature that will save tons of time: reverse searching for recipient profiles.

Instrumentl’s reverse searching allows you to look up grantees that are similar to your organization and see exactly who funded them.

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Instrumentl user Cynthia Ceilan, Director of Institutional Giving at the Marlene Meyerson JCC, uses reverse-search strategies in her own prospect research:
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“One really cool thing that you can do is look up any recipient profile, in addition to grantmaker profiles. So if I know an organization in our area or town that’s very similar to ours, I want to see—ok, who’s funding them?”--Cynthia Ceilan

Using Instrumentl, Cynthia leaves “no stone unturned,” capturing as many best-fit funders as possible. In fact, by using this strategy, the Marlene Meyerson JCC was able to raise over $1 million in just under a year.

Grant Tracking and Submissions

Grant Gopher is well known for its basic grant search and prospecting features. However, it lacks tools for managing the application and post-award phase. Users seeking comprehensive solutions that can support the full grant lifecycle would need to invest in additional software for these functionalities, which is not cost-effective.

Instrumentl’s dedicated Grant Tracker makes it easy to organize all of your saved grants in one place. Within your Tracker, you can see:

• The grants you have saved
• What stage of the process they are in (i.e. “Researching” vs. “Applied”)
• How much funding they are for
• What their next task is
• When their deadlines are

Instrumentl’s Tracker optimizes and streamlines your workflow by keeping everyone on the same page from beginning to end.

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Cynthia Ceilan also gets a lot of use out of Instrumentl’s Tracker:
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"I love the ability to track everything in Instrumentl. Take deadlines for reports and email reminders I get, for example. I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and think—oh my gosh, did I miss it?"--Cynthia Ceilan

Instrumentl also provides users with a Calendar View and Awards Dashboard so that they can monitor and manage their funding throughout the entire lifecycle.

CRM and Calendar Integrations

Instrumentl integrates with CRMs like Salesforce, Raiser’s Edge NXT, and Virtuous CRM, saving time and helping you better cultivate your funder relationships.

Not only that, but you can also sync your external calendars—such as Apple, Outlook, and Google—with Instrumentl, allowing you to keep track of deadlines more seamlessly.

Through these integrations, you don’t have to waste time with manual data entry and you reduce risks for errors. It’s a win-win!

Since Grant Gopher is targeted to smaller nonprofits and educational institutions located in the United States, it could be a solid choice for beginners in the grant-seeking process and those with smaller budgets in the educational field. However, it lacks many advanced search and management features that help you actually win more funding.

Instrumentl is a comprehensive grant management software that brings grant discovery, research, and tracking to one place. You can search and prospect new funding sources, collaborate with others on your team, and streamline your fundraising process all in one platform. You can try Instrumentl risk-free with a 14-day free trial.