Grant management software is an investment, so you want to make sure you make the right choice for your organization.
In this guide, we will break down everything you need to know about Grant Holster’s pricing plans and top features to help you make an informed decision. We’ll also be evaluating how well Grant Holster stacks up against Instrumentl, seeing which platform gives you the greatest value for your budget.
Sound good? Let’s jump in!
Grant Holster’s Pricing at a Glance
Grant Holster is a cloud-based grant management software. Here’s a quick overview of their different pricing tiers:
Bronze Level: $10/month
Silver Level: $49/month
Gold Level: $89/month
They also offer a free, 30-day trial and the option to upgrade your plan at any time if you need additional resources. We’ll go into more detail about what’s included in each of these tiers a little later in the article. But first, let’s take a look at Grant Holster’s top features.
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Grant Holster’s Key Features
Grant Holster seeks to simplify the grant management process through the following tools:
Projects: Users can create projects to help track their applications, deliverables, deadlines, and more and to help them stay more organized. While there is a simple dashboard, there is no calendar view to allow for a holistic take on your pipeline.
‍Funders: Users can enter information about potential, current, or past funders. This is an easy reference for nonprofits juggling multiple funders, allowing them to quickly locate details, contact information, and notes. However, you will need to manually input all your data.
‍Grant Vault: This is a searchable database where users can access overviews of different funders, including their governance and past awards. However, there are no active grants and the funder insights are somewhat limited.
Bottom Line
Overall, Grant Holster offers a basic project management tool that’s targeted toward grants. The interface is simple, and it’s a step up from trying to track everything in a spreadsheet. However, it’s important to note that while you can manage your workflow in Grant Holster, there are no capabilities for actually helping you find and win active grants.
Grant Holster offers transparent pricing for nonprofits looking for grant management software.
Grant Holster pricing should be accessible to most nonprofits given its low entry point. Here’s a closer look at what’s included in each plan:
Bronze Level: For $10/month, users get 25 projects and funders, 100 contacts, 200 actions, and one admin. There is no access to the grant vault with this tier.
Silver Level: For $49/month, users get 100 projects and funders, unlimited contacts and actions, access to the grant vault, and one admin and two editors.
Gold Level: For $89/month, users get unlimited projects, funders, contacts and actions, access to the grant vault, and one admin and five editors.
Like we mentioned before, none of Grant Holster’s tiers have prospecting features to help you identify and learn more about active grants, significantly limiting i’s value in the pre-award stage of the funding lifecycle.
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Is There a Better Grant Holster Alternative?
We may be a bit biased, but we believe that Instrumentl is a much better alternative to Grant Holster. While more expensive, our platform provides a higher ROI by streamlining the entire grant lifecycle from start to finish—helping you win more funding and save more time.
Check out what Dawn Moeglin, CEO and Nonprofit Consultant at Full-Circle Fundraising LLC had to say about using Instrumentl: ‍
“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
So how exactly does Instrumentl provide this value? Here’s a snapshot of some of our top features:
Smart Grant Matching
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Instrumentl’s Smart Matching tool quickly shows you how many new opportunities you have each time you log in.
Instrumentl provides users with a searchable grants database of more than 400,000+ funders and 15,000+ active RFPs. However, instead of having to comb through the database manually, Instrumentl’s Smart Matching system curates a list of good-fit grants for you in seconds.
Simply fill in what type of funding you are looking for, where you are located, your area of focus, etc., and Instrumentl will do the rest!
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New opportunities that align with your search criteria will be automatically delivered to your inbox every week—saving you countless research hours.
Foundation Profiles and Advanced Funder Insights
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Detailed Foundation Profiles make it easy to evaluate funder-fit.
Both Grant Holster and Instrumentl offer funder information within their databases. However, Instrumentl’s funder profiles are much more robust.
With Instrumentl, you get access to easy-to-read 990 snapshots to help you quickly evaluate funder fit at a glance. These snapshots will show you a funder’s:
Average and median grant sizes
Past grantees
Key contacts
Giving by location
Openness to new grantees
Giving by NTEE codes
And more.
Best of all, all of these advanced funder insights are centrally located, so you don’t have to research various sites to find the information you need.
Recipient Profiles/Reverse Search
Another way to find relevant grant opportunities with Instrumentl is through its reverse search tool.
If you know of an organization that has a similar mission to yours or is located in your area, you can simply look them up and see who funds them. This is an easy way to find good-fit funders that have a proven track record of awarding grants to organizations just like yours!
Grant Tracking and Submissions
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Instrumentl’s Grant Tracker organizes your entire workflow in one place.
Instrumentl also has robust features for managing all of your grants—from researching all the way to post-award.
Instrumentl’s dedicated Grant Tracker will organize all of your saved grants, includingtheir:
Status (i.e. “Planned” vs. “Researching”)
Funding amount
Next task
Deadline
The great thing is that when you save a grant from your matches, it automatically gets added to your Tracker. You don’t have to manually add it.
Instrumentl also provides a Calendar View and an Awards Dashboard so that you can quickly scan and identify what you have coming up, what stages your projects are in, who is assigned to a task, and more.
Check out what Eloise Casdorph, Nonprofit Strategist at Nonprofit Navigators, shared with us about these features: ‍
“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.”‍–Eloise Casdorph
CRM and Calendar Integrations
Unlike Grant Holster, Instrumentl seamlessly integrates with popular CRM software, including Salesforce, Raiser's Edge NXT, and Virtuous. Why does this matter? All changes that are made are synced across all connected platforms. This saves time from manual data entry and reduces the risk for errors.
You can also integrate Instrumentl with your Apple, Outlook, or Google Calendars, making it even easier to keep on top of deadlines and stay organized. Instrumentl truly is the best option for end-to-end grant management with robust features you can’t get anywhere else.
Wrapping Up: Which Plan Is Best for You?
We recognize that Instrumentl is an investment, but it is an investment in your success as a nonprofit. And, even better, with Instrumentl, you won’t need to invest in separate tools; the entire grant lifecycle is covered in one end-to-end platform. The same cannot be said about Grant Holster.