“I stumbled into grant writing and learned I wasn’t too shabby at it,” says Jan Spackman, Director of Grants at Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP), a nation-wide nonprofit that builds beds for children.

Not too shabby is right. 

• In her time at SHP, Jan has built a team of grant managers, scaling up their impact to over 20% of their $20M budget. 
• She’s also doubled grant revenue from $1M to $2M in 2023.
• If you want to scale your grant impact, learn from Jan’s story.

Buying Into The Mission

While living in Spokane, Washington, Jan Spackman learned of SHP and was taken by their mission, "No kid sleeps on the floor in our town." 

"I was dumbfounded when I learned that children out there don't have beds. That's something that I had taken for granted."​​

Inspired, she quickly became involved, establishing the seventh chapter. 

“In the role of chapter president, fundraising is first and foremost. You have to raise the funds yourself — to build and deliver the beds.”

Jan saw that most chapter presidents relied primarily on donations. But she knew grants were another option. But her leadership didn’t put a lot of stock into grants. 

“I just don't think they had any idea how much potential there is in grant funding.”

Despite the skepticism, Jan pursued grants as a way to grow and quickly found success.

After getting into a process, finding and applying for grants, more and more award letters started coming in the mail. 

Securing these grants made it easier to scale faster and get the supplies her chapter needed for “Build Days.” Build days were community events where supporters would come together to build dozens of bunk beds. 

Other chapters quickly caught wind and sought her help in doing the same for their chapters.

Updating Their Grant Management System

Unsurprisingly, she was soon promoted to Director of Grants and tasked with scaling the impact of grants across all 300 chapters. 

When taking over grant management from their Director of Development, Jan saw that the systems in place were disjointed and inefficient. Prospecting and grant management were separate tasks with separate tools. 

“When I came on board, our Director of Development had found a platform for us to use for grant tracking and grant management. It wasn't great for prospecting. We had a separate platform for that. So we'd find grants in one platform and then do a lot of copy and paste between the two. The whole process was cumbersome.”

All this redundant work hampered productivity. 

Jan knew there needed to be a better way. When at a Grants Professionals Association event, Jan learned of Instrumentl and it was recommended to her as a platform to combine both prospecting and grant management. 

Jan was stunned. It was as if Instrumentl was built to solve her exact problem.

Thrilled by the ability to manage and prospect grants in a single tool, she went to her board with a proposal to purchase a Pro plan. 

She outlined out a clear cost benefit analysis: the robustness of the database and the time savings associated with having everything in one place made it a “no brainer,” in Jan’s words. 

So they cancelled their other grant tools and went all in on Instrumentl.

Doubling Grant Revenue In A Year

They kicked off in early 2023. And it was a turning point. 

Using Instrumentl, Jan and her team streamlined grant management so much that they doubled grant revenue from $1 million to $2 million within a year. 

Their managed grants also ballooned to over 2,000 grants.

It would have been unimaginable to wrangle these grants with their previous platforms— copy and pasting data would have sucked up days.

Instead, their grant tracker is clear, the responsibilities are distributed, and chapter presidents are singing Jan's team praise. They’re having a real impact on SHP’s ability to scale their operations and make it possible for more kids to call a bed their own.

Jan and her now four-member team centrally manage grants across all chapters within Instrumentl. As they continue to learn, they’re finding ways to optimize their process. 

One thing they’re doing now is integrating Instrumentl with Salesforce. Doing so will allow chapter presidents to view their grant pipeline without needing to login into Instrumentl.

 "They can look but not touch," Jan explains, which maintains the integrity of their grant management while keeping chapter leaders informed.

Looking forward, Jan has the aim to double SHP’s grant revenue again to $4 million in 2024. With robust systems like Instrumentl in place and a clear strategy for grant management, Jan is confident in her team’s ability to reach this ambitious target. 

Her story is an inspiring one: with the right systems in place, you can transform your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy and expand your capacity to serve your communities more effectively.