Introducing Instrumentl’s Fall 2023 Release

Brace yourself, because this is the biggest update to Instrumentl yet! 

You’ll be getting new tools that make both pre and post-award grant management easier for you and your team. Now you can collaborate on grants more easily and achieve greater visibility across all phases of the grants lifecycle.

All our developments come from you, our customers, who graciously continue to share what you want to see out of Instrumentl. We appreciate you helping us guide our product roadmap!

Here’s our 6-minute video covering the new features. Details on each feature are also provided below the video.
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Instrumentl’s Fall 2023 release includes the following updates:

Award Tracking (Standard+): It’s happening! Finally, you can easily manage your pre-award and post-award grant work in one place thanks to this dedicated space for your awards.

Tasks View (Standard+): Prioritize what you need to do next by looking at all your upcoming assignments in one place.  Understand your and your team’s workloads in one glance.

External Docs in Document Library (Standard+): Enjoy a centralized place for all your grant docs by adding external links (eg Drive, Sharepoint, etc) to your Document Library.

Customizable, Shareable Calendars (Pro+): Organize your work and stay on top of deadlines by creating a customized calendar link based on filters YOU choose. Track deadlines that are relevant to you and share your calendar with your team members. 

Tracking Only Projects (Basic+): Create a tracker for grants and funders without having to set up a new search

New Grant Overview Tab (Basic+): We’ve made it easier to see all key grant details in one place. See application dates or deadlines, tasks, team members, funder profile snapshots, and your notes – all within a specific opportunity.

Payments Tracking (Pro+): Understand your aggregate cash in-flow for each individual opportunity and across all opportunities, and use that information year over year.

Add Funder Types to Custom Grants (Basic+): Understand where your grant money is coming from by categorizing your funders as state/local, corporate, private or federal.

Available for Standard plans and above.

Introducing Awards Tracking—streamlining your post-award grant management. 

Say goodbye to scattered information and poor tracking. With Awards Tracking, you'll efficiently manage your awarded grants. 

Additionally, in response to valuable customer feedback, we've moved the Awards Tracking from the "Tracker" navigation to the top-level navigation.

Now you have a dedicated space where you can view and manage your awards.

Why this is useful: Before, there was no way to see all awards in one place. Now you can get an at-a-glance summary of your awarded grants with the ability to dig deeper into each awarded grant.

Available on Standard plans and above.

We’ve added a brand new view so that you can see all your tasks are in one place. Whether you’re looking at all your Projects or a specific Project, you can navigate to the tasks view and see your to-do list clearly laid out.

The Tasks View will show a set of summary statistics related to task usage.  When you click on the stats, it filters down the list to only show incomplete tasks of the selected type.

Below, you’ll get more detailed information on each of the tasks:

By default, only incomplete tasks will be shown, and they will be sorted by due date. You can display completed tasks as well, filter the view by task type and assignee, and sort it by funding opportunity name.

Why this is useful: Tasks are a key project management tool and help you stay on track with your deliverables. Now it’s easier to manage your own and your team’s to-do list.

‍Available on Standard plans and above.

If we were to guess, you have documents related to grants in different places (on the computer, in different external tools, etc.) – which means that you and your team don’t have a centralized place to see all your documents.

Downloading documents and re-uploading them to Instrumentl is not very efficient. This is why we are enabling you to add links to documents hosted on external platforms such as Google Drive.

Instrumentl's Document Library now supports external links, allowing you to integrate online documents directly into your grant management workflow. Whether it's Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, or any other platform, you can now link directly to your opportunities, ensuring all relevant materials are at your fingertips.

Once you add your external link, Instrumentl will auto-generate “source” to make it easy to scan which type of link you’ve added.

Why this is useful: Now, you can keep all your docs for each grant opportunity, new or old, in one place for your team to access.

Available for all Professional plans and above.

Have you ever wanted to share your Instrumentl grant calendar with your manager or ED? Now it’s easy to share all your deadlines, tasks, and payments with your team or yourself by linking your Google or Outlook Calendars together. 

You can create a calendar for each of your projects, filter by status, and stay on track with tasks that are relevant to you. 

Why this is useful: Forget about cluttered calendars: effortlessly manage tasks and deadlines with a calendar that’s relevant to you.

Available on Basic plans and above.

In the past, if you wanted to access your tracker, you had to set up matches. Now, you can add projects without setting up matching criteria. 

Include all your projects and past grant opportunities regardless of whether or not you want to start pursuing new opportunities.

Why this is useful: If you want to add grants for tracking purposes only, now you can. You can choose when you want matches.

Available on Basic plans and above.

Tired of hunting for grant information? 

The Grant Overview Tab is your one-stop destination for consolidated grant information.

Now, your key grant details are centralized in an easily accessible location. You can see application dates or deadlines, tasks, team members, funder profile snapshots, and your notes. 

Why this is useful: The Grant Overview tab provides a clean way to see the status of each grant opportunity, past or present.

Available for Professional plans and above.

If you’re like most fundraisers, once your team wins a grant, you use spreadsheets to track when each payment will come in. 

This works, but it’s not ideal. With many grants getting paid out in different payment schedules, it’s hard to ensure your spending aligns with the grant payment schedule. It’s a lot of work—but we’ve made it way easier.  

Now, each opportunity you’re researching has a section in the Dates & Amounts tab called “Payments.”

You can add in the amount you receive, the date, and any notes you want to leave yourself.

With Payments Tracking, you can finally relax, understand aggregate cash flow for each individual opportunity and across all opportunities, and use that information year over year.

It’s also much easier to know when you need to reach out to nudge funders if payments aren't received on time.

Why this is useful: Efficiently oversee grant payments without dealing with messy spreadsheets. Keep track of when payments should arrive directly within Instrumentl.

Our team is launching a lot of new features, but we’re not finished yet. We have several other improvements and features we’ll roll out soon. 

• Raiser’s Edge Integration: Instrumentl will keep your data in sync by auto-populating crucial details about funders and opportunities in Raiser's Edge. Skip the manual input of dates, notes, amounts, and other particulars — soon, it will be automatic.
• Budget & Spenddown Tracking: Build your grant’s budget within Instrumentl, so your team has a single source of information on funder-approved budgets for grants.
• Customizable Fields: You’ll have the ability to create your own fields on opportunities and funders, so tracking is easier. Add fields like, priority status, probability of winning, private notes, renewals, restrictions, or internal ID.

Instrumentl will continue improving — stay tuned for more!

To upgrade your account, log in to Instrumentl and navigate to www.instrumentl.com/pricing.

Still not using Instrumentl yet? Make sure to sign up for a 14-day free trial via this link!

Questions or feedback on our release? Send us a chat when you're logged in, or email us at hello@instrumentl.com.