How NYU Langone Wastes No Time Finding Only The Best-Fit Funders For Their Research

NYU Langone, based in New York City, is one of the nation's premier academic medical centers. 

They’re devoted to patient care, education, and research.

Unsurprisingly, their research takes a lot of funding. Making sure that researchers have the funding they need sits Charlisa Garg, Director of Foundation Relations, and her team.

“I am one of a team of five at NYU Langone focusing on foundation relations. We have a senior director as our team leader, three director-level frontline fundraisers, including myself, two assistant director frontline fundraisers, and then a coordinator.”

Struggling To Stay “In The Loop” With Funding Opportunities

As you might expect, with so many different researchers, things get messy. 

• Some researchers manage relations with funders themselves
• Other researchers rely on the foundation relations team 

Charlisa admits that in such a large institution, 

“You don't know what you don't know.”

That’s why it’s so important for Charlisa and her team to be dialled into new funding opportunities. 

Before discovering Instrumentl, the process of identifying potential funders was cumbersome, involving manual searches through countless websites, RFP databases, and newsletters. 

“If you don't know a particular funder or if you aren’t on any email chain where an RFP comes up, you don't know what you're missing.”

What Charlisa needed was an automatic system that did the work for her. 

She needed the equivalent of an always-on assistant who scoured the web, surfacing relevant grant opportunities for her.

If she could find this, she’d save HOURS…

Always-On Prospecting With Instrumentl

Charlisa first encountered Instrumentl during one of our Instrumentl webinars and decided to start a free trial. 

She quickly realized Instrumentl’s potential to transform their grant-seeking approach. A few days after creating projects for her different research streams, she started getting automated emails. 

The emails shared upcoming grants relevant to her research. 

Instrumentl was doing the prospecting for her. And she immediately saw the value.

“The information I get using Instrumentl gets me to what I need quicker.”

Chalisa’s team adopted Instrumentl to scale their prospecting process. 

The continuous updates immediately saved them time.

"Instrumentl has been a game-changer. It continuously feeds us relevant project alerts.”

No More Endless Searching; Instead, Prioritizing

With more time, Charlisa and her team spent less time finding grants and more time digging into their funders, prioritizing them. 

They wanted detailed information on each funder’s goals and giving history. With this information, they could…

• Write more competitive applications and 
• Have insights on existing funders to help them cultivate relationships.

Using the funder insights in Instrumentl,  Charlisa and her team are now more selective, targeting grants that best match their research goals.

“We spend a lot of time really digging into each foundation to see what their level of viability is."

Managing (Well-Meaning, But Distracting) Funding Requests

Interestingly, with these easy-to-understand insights, Charlisa has started managing expectations with researchers.

Often, a researcher will share a grant opportunity they come across. 

They want Charlisa to drop everything and go win that grant for them. But, when Charlisa opens Instrumentl, she quickly sees they’re actually not a great fit.

“A researcher might be really excited about a funder, but when we look at their profile [On Instrumentl] and see that they barely ever take new grantees— meaning all of their funding goes to previous grantees— it helps me manage their expectations. I can point researchers in a direction that’s a better use of their time. 

The ability to search for a funder and learn about them without needing to dig through their website or previous 990 filings makes Charlisa much more efficient. 

Prioritizing best-fit opportunities takes a fraction of the time.

“Researchers may have heard about a foundation. I can pull them up [on Instrumentl] and say, ‘Oh, well if you look, most of their grants are only $50,00, and you need $500,000. So, this is not something that's really worth moving forward with.’ I really like that— it’s very intuitive and provides a lot of information very quickly.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Grant Management at NYU Langone

Charlisa and her team have set a new standard for efficiency at NYU Langone. They’re securing harder-to-find funding faster and uncovering the insights they need to be competitive.

For this reason, Charlisa is optimistic about the future of grant management at NYU Langone. Moving forward, they’re adopting Instrumentl as their core grant prospecting platform, moving away from older grant tools.

“I’m a huge advocate for Instrumentl. I've been doing this work since 2008, and Foundation Directory Online used to be the standard. They had the most information. That was until Instrumentl because you do everything they do but more— like the ability to have these continually feeding projects.”