New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · Direct rails: donor to need with nothing skimmed
startup concept
Fundament
White-label DAF software that lets community foundations drop the 0.60% admin fee
Back-office software for community foundation DAF programs: account opening, grant due diligence against IRS and state charity data, statements, and Form 990 schedules, priced flat per account instead of basis points on assets.
- Software subscription
- Enterprise
- GoFundMe Giving Funds
4
similar startups, last 2 years (13 all-time)
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$1,100 · 6 weeks · 15 prospects
For $1,100 and 6 weeks, prove that community foundation CEOs will pay $2,500 up front for a design-partner pilot that replaces their 0.60% DAF admin fee with a flat per-account price.
Riskiest assumption · A community foundation CEO will give up the 0.60%-1.00% admin fee that funds their own payroll in exchange for a flat per-account software cost, rather than keep the fee and lose accounts slowly to $0-fee national sponsors.
1Focus group: who and where
CEO or VP of philanthropic services at a US community foundation with $75M-$500M in assets and 150-1,000 DAF accounts, who has watched accounts close and move to Fidelity Charitable, Daffy or GoFundMe's $0-fee DAF in the past year and answers to a board about it.
where to find 15 · The Council on Foundations community foundation member directory to build the target list of 803 sponsors filtered by asset size; regional grantmaker associations such as Indiana Philanthropy Alliance and Philanthropy Ohio, whose community foundation programs make warm introductions; the Foundant CommunitySuite user community, since foundations running Foundant are exactly the mid-size back offices this replaces and its forums surface the ones complaining about statement and due-diligence workload.
2Sell first, build later
A design-partner pilot: we run grant due diligence and produce one full quarter of donor statements for 50 of your live DAF accounts by a named date 90 days out, and you get the flat $250-per-account price locked for 3 years if you convert.
the ask · $2,500 for the pilot, invoiced on signature; $250 per account per year after conversion
a real yes · A real yes is a signed pilot agreement with a start date and the $2,500 paid or a purchase order in hand; board interest, 'send materials for our retreat', and unpaid data-sharing offers are not yes
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Fee-defense pitch calls
$200 · 21 days
Build a two-page migration model: their account count times the $550-900 average annual admin fee, side by side with a flat $250 per account and the donor-facing comparison against Daffy and GoFundMe's $0-fee DAF. Book 15 calls with CEOs and CFOs through the Council on Foundations directory and introductions from the regional associations, and put the price on the table in the first call.
keep going if · 5 of 15 confirm they lost accounts to a national or $0-fee sponsor in the past year, name grant due diligence and quarterly statements as their two biggest admin costs, and ask for pilot terms
2. Clickable due-diligence demo
$600 · 14 days
Build a Figma prototype of the two tasks the fee pays for: grant vetting against IRS Publication 78 and Business Master File data plus state charity registries, and auto-generated quarterly statements. Walk it with every prospect who asked for terms and ask them to put it in front of their CFO or board with a dated decision meeting.
keep going if · 3 of 5 interested foundations schedule a dated CFO or board review of the pilot proposal
3. Paid design-partner pilot close
$300 · 21 days
Send a two-page pilot agreement: automate grant due diligence and one quarter of statements for 50 live accounts, delivered by a named date 90 days out, $2,500 invoiced on signature. The founder walks each CFO through the agreement on a call and asks for signature and payment, not feedback.
keep going if · 2 signed pilot agreements with the $2,500 invoice paid or a purchase order issued
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: $2,500 invoiced up front on a two-page agreement signed by the CEO or CFO - about 3% of the ~$75k first-year contract a 300-account foundation represents, small enough to sit inside a CEO's discretionary budget and skip a board vote set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of 3 design-partner slots, the named 90-day delivery date, the $250-per-account price locked for 3 years, and direct say over the due-diligence workflow design
refund · Refunded in full if the pilot has not started by the dated start in the agreement or if the quarter's deliverables miss the named date.
target · 2 paid $2,500 pilots from 15 CEO conversations within 45 days
Go: build it if
2 paid pilots signed with start dates AND 5+ of 15 CEOs confirming account losses and asking for terms - build the due-diligence and statements modules first.
Kill: stop if
0 paid pilots and fewer than 3 of 15 CEOs willing to discuss dropping the basis-point fee - the stated risk holds: they would rather lose accounts slowly than give up the operating revenue.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
Since GoFundMe launched its $0-fee DAF last July, foundations your size tell me they are losing two or three accounts a quarter to national sponsors, and the 0.60% admin fee is the reason donors give on the way out. I'm building flat-priced back-office software - due diligence and statements at $250 per account instead of basis points - and I'm choosing 3 design partners before writing production code. Could I get 20 minutes to run your account count through the migration math?
landing page
Drop the 0.60% DAF fee before your donors drop you $250 per account per year, flat - due diligence, statements, 990 schedules; pilot 50 accounts for $2,500 Request the pilot agreement
deposit terms
The $2,500 pilot fee, invoiced on signature, reserves one of 3 design-partner slots: grant due diligence and a full quarter of statements for 50 of your live accounts, delivered by the date named in the agreement. It locks the $250-per-account price for 3 years if you convert. It is refunded in full if the pilot has not started by the agreed date or the deliverables miss it.
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.
59
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 35.7 x 1.64
Active
competition: more crowded than 57% of ideas · headwind x0.71
+5.0
government priorities, secondary (375 matching grants)
Trend
52
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)74
- 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
23
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Neighbours still alive23
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 white-label, daf, community, foundations, drop, admin, back-office, foundation.
The concept in full
- What
- Back-office software for community foundation DAF programs: account opening, grant due diligence against IRS and state charity data, statements, and Form 990 schedules, priced flat per account instead of basis points on assets. Takes cost out: replaces the 0.60% to 1.00% annual DAF admin fee with a per-account SaaS price the foundation can pass through near zero.
- Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
- In July 2025 GoFundMe launched Giving Funds with $0 to open and no admin fees against the 0.60% to 1.00% that Fidelity, Schwab and National Philanthropic Trust charge. The 2025 Annual DAF Report counts $327.87 billion across 3.59 million accounts and 1,512 sponsors, 803 of them community foundations, average account $91,300.
- What it rides
- GoFundMe Giving Funds: a no-fee DAF for everyone, which reset the donor's price expectation to zero and left every bps-charging sponsor exposed
- Why now
- Since July 2025 the largest crowdfunding platform offers donors a $0-fee DAF, while the average community foundation account of $91,300 pays roughly $550 to $900 a year in admin fees; the 803 community foundation sponsors either cut their cost of compliance and grant vetting or watch accounts migrate.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One mid-size community foundation losing accounts to national sponsors; automate its grant due diligence and quarterly statements first, the two tasks its admin fee actually pays for.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- GoFundMe competes with community foundations by holding donor balances itself; Fundament arms the foundations against it. Fidelity, Schwab and National Philanthropic Trust are sponsors, not software vendors to other sponsors.
- Main risk
- Community foundations depend on the admin fee as operating revenue and would rather lose accounts slowly than give it up.
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Public money in this direction
US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.
National Science Foundation · STTR Phase I · $305K
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K
NIH / NHLBI · SBIR phase I · $550K
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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.