New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · Mutual aid, congregations and employer hardship funds
startup concept
Commonhearth
Fiscal host software so community foundations can shelter mutual aid groups profitably
A back office that lets a community foundation host informal mutual-aid groups as charitable-class programs.
- Software subscription
- Enterprise
- 'Universal charitable deduction from 2026'
3
similar startups, last 2 years (14 all-time)
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$500 · 5 weeks · 25 prospects
For $500 and 5 weeks, prove that community foundations will pay $2,500 up front to pilot hosting the mutual aid groups stranded by Open Collective Foundation's shutdown.
Riskiest assumption · A community foundation executive who watched Open Collective Foundation die will still pay to host informal mutual aid groups once the back office is automated, rather than concluding that hosting is a liability no software can offset.
1Focus group: who and where
The VP of community investment or CFO at a community foundation with $50M-500M in assets that already runs a fiscal sponsorship or donor-services program, in a metro where Open Collective Foundation's 2024 shutdown stranded local mutual aid groups, and who is fielding hosting requests they currently decline because the back office costs more than the 5% fee brings in
where to find 25 · The Council on Foundations' National Standards accredited community foundations list (the 803 foundations the card cites), the Fiscal Sponsor Directory at fiscalsponsordirectory.org filtered to community foundations, the regional philanthropy associations under United Philanthropy Forum (Philanthropy California, Philanthropy Ohio and peers, which will forward a member ask), and the Council on Foundations' annual community foundations conference for in-person follow-up
2Sell first, build later
A 90-day design-partner pilot starting October 15, 2026: Commonhearth works alongside the foundation's staff to onboard its first five hosted mutual aid groups, running organizer identity checks, expense policy enforcement, receipts, state registration tracking and the 990 rollup worksheet, and leaves the foundation with a written hosting playbook it keeps either way.
the ask · $2,500 per pilot, credited in full against the $12,000 per year subscription if the foundation continues
a real yes · A real yes is a signed pilot agreement with the October 15 start date and the $2,500 invoice paid by ACH; 'our board would love this', an unpaid pilot, or an intro to another foundation counts for nothing
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Fifteen stranded-host discovery calls
$300 · 14 days
Build a list of 25 foundations from the National Standards list and the Fiscal Sponsor Directory, prioritizing metros with documented OCF-hosted groups. Email the program VP or CFO directly with the outreach script and book 15 calls. On each call, ask what happened when stranded groups came to them, what it costs to host one group today, and whether a flat per-group fee model would change the answer.
keep going if · 8 of 15 say stranded groups approached them or that back-office cost is why they decline hosting, and 5 agree to review a priced pilot
2. Program design memo test
$100 · 10 days
Write a 2-page 'Hosted Mutual Aid Program' memo: flat $50 per group per month fee model versus the 5% cut, the compliance checklist mapped to organizer identity checks, expense policy, state registration and the 990 rollup, and the 90-day onboarding plan for five groups. Send it to the 15 calls plus 10 more foundations and ask for a scoping session.
keep going if · 6 scoping sessions booked from 25 memos sent
3. Paid design-partner pilot close
$100 · 21 days
In each scoping session, present the pilot agreement: $2,500, 90 days starting October 15, 2026, Commonhearth runs the compliance workflows manually with the foundation's staff and onboards its first five hosted groups. Send the agreement and ACH invoice the same day and ask for a signature within 10 business days.
keep going if · 2 foundations sign and pay the $2,500 invoice with an October start date
4Collect a deposit up front
Tesla took $1,000 refundable reservations for the Model 3 and $100 for the Cybertruck before building either: the deposit is the measurement, not the revenue.
$2,500
per prospect, refundable
how · A paid design-partner pilot invoiced up front, the standard instrument for an institutional buyer at this contract size: the ED or CFO signs the two-page pilot agreement and pays the $2,500 invoice by ACH before the start date, which is about 20% of year-one subscription and well within executive discretion at most community foundations set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of three design-partner slots in the October cohort, the 90-day onboarding of five named groups, and the $12,000 first-year price locked through 2027
refund · Refunded in full within 14 days if fewer than five groups are onboarded by the end of the 90-day pilot.
target · 2 paid pilots from 15 conversations within 35 days
before taking money · During the pilot the foundation remains the fiscal sponsor of record and its counsel signs off on the hosting agreement; Commonhearth must not hold charitable funds or issue tax receipts in its own name.
Go: build it if
8 of 15 foundations confirm stranded-group demand and 2 sign and pay $2,500 pilots with dated starts
Kill: stop if
Fewer than 5 of 15 foundations report any hosting demand since the OCF shutdown, or zero paid pilots after 25 conversations and 6 scoping sessions
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
When Open Collective Foundation shut down in 2024, hundreds of mutual aid groups lost their fiscal host, and some of them almost certainly landed in your inbox. I'm building Commonhearth, back-office software that lets a community foundation host those groups as charitable-class programs - identity checks, expense policy, receipts, state registration tracking and the 990 rollup - so you can charge a flat per-group fee instead of a 5 percent cut. If you fielded those calls and said no, I want to hear why. Could I get 20 minutes this week?
landing page
Host your county's mutual aid groups without hiring compliance staff $2,500 design-partner pilot: we onboard your first five groups in 90 days, credited against your $12,000 first-year subscription Book a scoping call
deposit terms
Your $2,500 pilot fee reserves one of three design-partner slots for the 90-day pilot starting October 15, 2026, and is credited in full against your first-year subscription if you continue. If we have not onboarded five of your groups by the end of the pilot, we refund the full amount within 14 days. The invoice is payable by ACH before the start date.
Would you run this test?
One tap. The yes-share feeds the Demand pillar of this idea's score; nobody sees who answered.
Budgets are out-of-pocket estimates for a team of one to three, US market. Size the deposit to the deal, and check the terms before taking money in a regulated line.
Scorecard
Ranked against every idea in the catalog: trend, demand and 100x potential from the corpus, competition relative to the other ideas. A generated concept has no judges or swipes yet, so its pillars use the data signals only.
65
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 39.3 x 1.64
Warm
competition: more crowded than 52% of ideas · headwind x0.74
+4.2
government priorities, secondary (44 matching grants)
Trend
50
Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.
- Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)65
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector33
- Sector direction (live batch)50
Demand
65
Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.
- YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
100x potential
33
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Neighbours still alive33
Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 382 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were fiscal, host, community, foundations, shelter, mutual, back, office.
The concept in full
- What
- A back office that lets a community foundation host informal mutual-aid groups as charitable-class programs. It automates what Open Collective Foundation paid humans to do: organizer identity checks, expense policy enforcement, receipts, state registration tracking and the 990 rollup. The foundation charges groups a flat per-group fee instead of a 5% cut, and Commonhearth charges the foundation a subscription.
- Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
- Open Collective Foundation freezing 600 collectives on October 1, 2024 and dissolving December 31, 2024 because its 5% fee could not cover compliance; the 2025 Annual DAF Report counting 803 community foundations among 1,512 DAF sponsors; the deduction starting tax year 2026 under the act signed July 4, 2025.
- What it rides
- 'Universal charitable deduction from 2026': tax-deductible receipts are about to matter to every small donor, so informal groups need a compliant host again, and the 'Graveyard: Open Collective Foundation dissolved' entry proves the host role must be software-cost, not headcount-cost, to survive.
- Why now
- The 2025 Annual DAF Report shows 803 community foundations already run compliant charitable infrastructure, and from tax year 2026 the $1,000 non-itemizer deduction gives every small donor a reason to demand a deductible receipt that an unhosted Venmo-based mutual aid group cannot issue.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One community foundation that watched local groups get stranded by the Open Collective Foundation shutdown; onboard its first five hosted groups and use the resulting playbook as the sales asset.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- none tracked
- Main risk
- Community foundations conclude from Open Collective Foundation's death that hosting informal groups is a liability no software discount can offset.
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Fictional concept generated 2026-08-26 by claude-fable-5 from the collection's brief and MarkosWeb data. Treat it as a research prompt, not a plan.