With Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches), you can now get intelligently matched to good-fit funders that may be invite-only or don’t even have a website!

Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches) will allow you to:

Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches) is available on our Standard Plan and above.

Select one of your projects on the left-hand side, and then navigate to the Matches tab at the top of your screen:

Next, select Funder Matches located next to Opportunity Matches:

Each Funder Match will have the name of the foundation as well as the city and state of its location. If the funder or its opportunities have been saved to or hidden from other projects, you will see the corresponding "badges" and respective number of projects. Hover your cursor over the Saved and Hidden "badges" to identify the projects in question.

Funder Matches will have different columns than Opportunity Matches. You will be able to see the Giving Rate to New Grantees and Median Grant Amount:

Just like with Opportunity Matches, your project's Funder Matches will be sorted by Best Match as a default. However, you can choose to sort your Funder Matches by the two aforementioned columns above as well as New, Total Giving and Total Assets

You will find there are similar filters for Funder Matches as there are with Opportunity Matches with some differences.

Note: The Gives to Peers filter to only include funders that have given to your peers is available on the Pro Plan and above.

The most significant unique filter for Funder Matches is whether or not to Include invite-only funders:

In such cases, the Funder Match will display something like this:

Familiarity and rapport are key to going after any foundation, especially invite-only funders. Foundation Discovery gives you the insights and clues to completing that first outreach by providing you with the funder’s Contact Information and Key People. You'll also see an Application Information section indicating whether the funder accepts unsolicited proposals or is invite-only. In some cases, you will find instructions on how to apply / where to send applications and deadline info.

Within each Funder Match, you can access the Basic and Advanced funder 990 insights. These include Grant Amounts, Past Grantees (All-time and New vs Repeat), Openness to New Grantees, Giving by NTEE Code and more - all in one place!

Once you've reviewed a Funder Match, you'll either want to save or hide it.

After deciding to move forward with researching and possibly taking the next step with a matched foundation, select Save. This will move the Funder Match to your Tracker.

The Tracker, however, houses only opportunities - not stand-alone funders. So when you save funders to projects, the system automatically creates a "custom opportunity" for each funder. You can treat this as an actual grant you plan to pursue (invite-only, e.g.) or as a "placeholder" to keep the funder on your radar (leaving it as Researching will keep the opportunity in your Tracker year after year).

In the example below, a Funder Match - JM McDonald Foundation Inc. - is saved.

This foundation is no longer among Funder Matches because it's been "moved" to the project Tracker as a custom opportunity under No Submission Goal or Date Entered (scroll down below all dates to locate). By default, there will be no deadline and the Status will be Researching.

The name of this custom opportunity will default to the name of the foundation. Open up the opportunity from your Tracker, go to the Funding Opportunity tab, and select Edit Opportunity.

Here you can change the name and add a website (click Save when done!).

Adding a Deadline or Submission goal will reorder this opportunity out of the No Submission Goal or Date Entered section of the Tracker to a specific Month and Year.

To add a Deadline or mark it as a "Rolling deadline", you can do so under the same Funding Opportunity tab.

Change the Status from Researching for other fields to populate under the Overview tab, such as a Submission goal.

Note: Saving a Funder Match will result in a custom opportunity even when the funder has active funding opportunities in our database.

Lastly, if you feel a Funder Match is a fit for another project of yours, you can choose to Save to another project (select the vertical three-dot button to the right of 'Save').

You can still save that foundation to the project whose matches you're reviewing. Just toggle on Include previously saved foundations, and it will appear as a Funder Match again.

After evaluating a Funder Match, you may determined it is not a good fit for the project or your organization. In this scenario, you can choose to Hide from this project or Hide from all projects (see both options by clicking the vertical three-dot button as shown below).

Note: If you hide a Funder Match and later decide to un-hide it, or if you simply want to view Funder Matches you've hidden, read our guide here.

Foundation Discovery (Funder Matches) will surface foundations that may not be so visible, and Instrumentl's 990 funder insights will help you quickly determine the good-fit funders for your organization. Interested in another competitive prospecting feature? Check out Peer Prospecting.

Reach out to our friendly support team if you have any questions about using this feature. Message us via the chat bubble when you're logged in, or email us at hello@instrumentl.com.