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New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · Fraud caught before the money moves

startup concept

Grantsieve

Grantee screening for DAF sponsors that goes beyond the IRS determination letter

Screening software for DAF sponsors and community foundations that scores every grantee before a grant is approved: state good standing and filing history, age and consistency of the organization's web presence, officer identity across filings, and overlap with known scam patterns from disaster fraud alerts.

0

similar startups, last 2 years (0 all-time)

yes

4 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$500 · 5 weeks · 20 prospects

For $500 and five weeks, prove that community foundation grants leads will pay $1,500 for grantee screening beyond the Pub78 check, measured by three paid pilot deposits.

Riskiest assumption · A community foundation's grants or compliance lead will pay a per-file fee to screen grantees even though they currently believe fraud losses are too rare to justify anything beyond the free Pub78 and OFAC check.

1Focus group: who and where

The grants manager or compliance-and-due-diligence lead at a community foundation sponsoring DAFs ($50M-$2B in assets, 2-10 person grants team), currently clearing hundreds of grants a month with a manual Pub78 and OFAC check and newly worried by the volume of small grants the GoFundMe DAF is pushing their way.

where to find 20 · PEAK Grantmaking's CONNECT community and regional chapters (community); the Council on Foundations community foundation locator and the CF Insights Columbus Survey list covering the 803 DAF-sponsoring community foundations, with staff emails on foundation websites (list); the Technology Association of Grantmakers listserv and its fall conference, plus Foundant's user community reached through warm intros from foundations already interviewed (channel and event).

2Sell first, build later

A batch screen of the foundation's last 12 months of grantees: every grantee scored on state good standing, filing history, web presence age and officer identity, delivered as a scored file plus a flagged-grantee memo within 10 business days of receiving the list, first cohort delivered in October 2026.

the ask · $1,500 per pilot batch screen, half up front; per-grant subscription pricing quoted only after the pilot

a real yes · A real yes is the $750 deposit invoice paid or a countersigned pilot scope with a start date; 'send us more information', an unpaid trial of the memo format, or an intro to their grants committee is not a yes

3Small experiments

The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.

  1. 1. Screening gap interviews

    $100 · 10 days

    Book 15 calls with grants managers sourced from the Columbus Survey list and PEAK CONNECT. Walk their current approval flow step by step and ask what, beyond Pub78 and OFAC, they check today, who does it, and what a screening miss cost them or a peer. Founder runs all calls in week one and two.

    keep going if · 8 of 15 confirm their screen is Pub78 plus OFAC only, and 5 of 15 name a fraud loss or near-miss in the last two years

  2. 2. Free 10-grantee sample screen

    $150 · 12 days

    For each interviewee who bites, hand-screen 10 of their recent grantees using state secretary-of-state standing, filing history, WHOIS domain age and officer cross-checks, and send a two-page findings memo before a second call. No software, just the founders and public registries plus a WHOIS API.

    keep going if · 5 of 8 memo recipients book the second call and ask what a full-file screen costs

  3. 3. Paid pilot close

    $250 · 14 days

    On the second call, present the $1,500 batch pilot: their last 12 months of grantees screened and scored, delivered in 10 business days, half invoiced up front. Send the one-page scope and invoice the same day.

    keep going if · 3 of the prospects presented pay the $750 up-front invoice within two weeks of the ask

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.

$750

per prospect, refundable

how · An invoiced paid design-partner pilot: the foundation's authorized signer countersigns a one-page scope and pays a $750 deposit invoice (half of the $1,500 pilot) by ACH or check, the payment rails a foundation's finance office already uses; a pilot invoice fits this buyer because a director can approve $1,500 without a procurement cycle set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗

what it reserves · One of five October pilot slots, the $1,500 pilot price locked, and first position on the grants-management-system integration list

refund · Refunded in full on written request any time before the screen begins, and in full if the scored file is not delivered within 10 business days of receiving the grantee list.

target · 3 paid deposits from 20 conversations within 35 days

Go: build it if

3 or more of 20 foundations pay the $750 deposit within 35 days and at least 8 of 15 interviewees confirm they screen with Pub78 plus OFAC only

Kill: stop if

Zero deposits after 20 completed conversations, or fewer than 5 of 15 interviewees can name a fraud loss or near-miss they actually care about - that is the stated risk confirmed: losses too rare to budget for

5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open

outreach message

You approve DAF grants against a Pub78 and OFAC check, and TIGTA showed a determination letter can be had for a fictitious charity four times out of five via Form 1023-EZ. I screen what the letter cannot: state standing, filing history, domain age, officer identity. I will hand-screen 10 of your recent grantees free and send you a two-page memo of what turns up. Open to a 20-minute call this week?

landing page

Grantee screening that catches what the determination letter cannot $1,500 pilot: your last 12 months of grantees screened and scored in 10 business days Reserve one of five October pilot slots with a $750 deposit

deposit terms

Your $750 deposit reserves one of five October pilot slots and covers the first half of the $1,500 batch screen; the balance is invoiced when we deliver your scored grantee file, within 10 business days of receiving your list. The deposit is refundable in full, in writing, any time before the screen begins.

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.

49

Idea Score, 0-100 (partial) · raw 30.1 x 1.64

Open

competition: more crowded than 12% of ideas · headwind x0.94

+2.3

government priorities, secondary (4 matching grants)

Trend

35

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)21
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector33
  • Sector direction (live batch)50

Demand

15

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)0

100x potential

50

Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.

  • no signal yet, taken as 50

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 grantee, screening, daf, sponsors, goes, beyond, irs, determination.

The concept in full

What
Screening software for DAF sponsors and community foundations that scores every grantee before a grant is approved: state good standing and filing history, age and consistency of the organization's web presence, officer identity across filings, and overlap with known scam patterns from disaster fraud alerts. Replaces the manual OFAC-and-Pub78 check that treats a 501(c)(3) letter as sufficient. This stops fraud before money moves; the signals are regulatory standing, filing history, domain age and officer identity, not the exemption letter TIGTA showed can be obtained for fictitious organizations four times out of five via Form 1023-EZ.
Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
The 2025 Annual DAF Report counts 3.59 million accounts, $327.87 billion in assets (+27.9%), $64.60 billion in grants (+17.9%) across 1,512 sponsors, 803 of them community foundations. GoFundMe's July 2025 launch of Giving Funds, a no-fee DAF with $5 minimums, pushes DAF grantmaking toward small sponsor teams and mass volume.
What it rides
Donor-advised funds hold $327.87 billion: $64.60 billion in grants flowed out of 1,512 sponsors in fiscal 2024, and each grant is a screening decision the sponsor is on the hook for.
Why now
Grants grew 17.9% to $64.60 billion in the fiscal 2024 data published in 2025, and GoFundMe's July 2025 no-fee DAF means millions of small grants will be screened by sponsors that cannot staff manual review.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
One of the 803 community foundations sponsoring DAFs: a batch screen of its existing grantee file as a paid pilot, then per-grant scoring wired into its grants management system.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
None tracked. Generation Environment (techstars TS 2025) touches philanthropy but on the donor experience side, not sponsor-side screening.
Main risk
Sponsors decide their fraud losses are too rare to justify a per-grant fee and keep the Pub78 check.

Similar startups in the directory

Companies whose pitch matches most of the concept's terms (grantee, screening, daf, sponsors, goes, beyond, irs, determination).

Nothing in the directory matches this concept's terms.

Public money in this direction

US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.

Other concepts in this collection

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.