New startup ideas · Direct giving, without the middlemen · After the federal money
startup concept
Hearthhost
Fiscal sponsorship software so community foundations can host groups at cost
Hearthhost gives community foundations a hosting stack for small unincorporated groups: fund accounting per collective, expense approval, 1099 and receipt automation, organizer identity verification, and state registration tracking.
- Software subscription
- Enterprise
- Rides 'Graveyard
9
similar startups, last 2 years (36 all-time)
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$900 · 6 weeks · 15 prospects
For $900 and 6 weeks, prove that mid-size community foundations decline hosting requests over back-office cost and that two of them will pay $2,500 up front for a design-partner pilot.
Riskiest assumption · Mid-size community foundations decline fiscal sponsorship requests because the back-office labor costs more than a 1-2% fee recovers, and the executive who owns that decision can sign a $2,500 pilot without waiting a board cycle - if the real blocker is board risk appetite, software changes nothing.
1Focus group: who and where
The CFO or VP of philanthropic services at a community foundation with $50M-500M in assets that fielded fiscal sponsorship requests from local mutual aid groups and small collectives in the past year and declined some of them, now watching local services lose federal money while sitting on record DAF assets.
where to find 15 · The Community Foundations National Standards accredited-foundation list and the Council on Foundations Community Foundation Locator for the target-size list; CFLeads, the community foundation practice network, for warm paths to the right executive; the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors directory and gathering as the channel where sponsorship practice questions already live; the Council on Foundations community foundations conference circuit for in-person follow-ups.
2Sell first, build later
A 90-day design-partner pilot starting October 2026: the founders run the hosting back office for up to 5 of the foundation's hosted or waitlisted funds - fund-level accounting, expense approval, 1099 and receipt handling - under a written scope, so the foundation can offer sponsorship at 1-2% instead of declining. A founder-operated pilot is the right instrument here because a foundation cannot adopt unbuilt software, but it can buy the outcome and spec the product while doing so.
the ask · $2,500 per 90-day pilot, invoiced up front; launch pricing locked at $1,200 per hosted fund per year for pilot foundations.
a real yes · A real yes is a signed pilot agreement with a dated October start and the $2,500 invoice paid. Not a yes: enthusiasm from program staff, an offer of an unpaid pilot, or 'we'll bring it to the board' without a meeting date.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Declined-request discovery calls
$250 · 14 days
Build a list of 25 accredited community foundations in the $50M-500M range from the National Standards list and the CoF Locator, then book 15 calls with the CFO or VP of philanthropic services through CFLeads contacts and warm introductions. Ask two countable questions: how many hosting requests they received in the last 12 months, and how many they declined for capacity rather than mission or liability.
keep going if · 8 of 15 declined 3 or more requests in the past year and name back-office labor, not board risk policy, as the reason.
2. Pilot offer memo
$150 · 14 days
Send interested foundations a one-page offer: a $2,500, 90-day design-partner pilot starting October 2026, with the founders operating the back office for up to 5 hosted or waitlisted funds under a written scope. Present it live on a second call and ask directly whether $2,500 sits inside staff signing authority or requires a board vote.
keep going if · 4 of 15 request the pilot agreement and confirm the amount needs no board vote.
3. Close two paid pilots
$500 · 14 days
Finalize the pilot agreement with one attorney hour, send it with the up-front invoice and a named October start date, and follow up twice a week. Count only signed agreements with money received, not verbal commitments.
keep going if · 2 of the 4 agreement recipients sign and pay $2,500 within 14 days.
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 on signing of a one-page scope, priced at $2,500 deliberately under typical staff signing authority so the CFO or VP can approve it without waiting for a board cycle; the foundation executive signs the scope, the founders countersign. set up: Stripe Invoicing ↗
what it reserves · One of 3 pilot slots with an October 2026 start, a written 90-day scope covering up to 5 funds, and the $1,200 per fund per year launch price locked for year one.
refund · Refunded in full on request any time before the first fund is onboarded; no refund once onboarding begins.
target · 2 paid $2,500 pilots from 15 foundation conversations within 42 days.
before taking money · The foundation, not the team, is the sponsor of record, so during the pilot never receive, hold, or disburse charitable funds yourselves and route every dollar through the foundation's own accounts.
Go: build it if
2 signed pilot agreements with $2,500 paid and start dates inside 60 days, plus 8 of 15 foundations confirming they declined hosting requests for capacity reasons in the past year.
Kill: stop if
0 paid pilots after 15 conversations, or fewer than 5 of 15 foundations report ever declining a hosting request, or every interested foundation says the decision needs a board vote more than 90 days out.
5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open
outreach message
You are probably turning away fiscal sponsorship requests from local mutual aid groups and small collectives - not because your board objects, but because each hosted fund eats staff hours a 1-2% fee never covers. I'm building the back office that makes hosting cost-neutral: fund accounting, expense approval, 1099s, receipts. Before writing code I'm running 90-day paid pilots with 3 foundations at $2,500, my team doing the work for up to 5 funds. Can I get 20 minutes to hear how you handle these requests today?
landing page
Fiscal sponsorship your foundation can offer at 2%, not 5% $2,500 buys a 90-day pilot: we run the back office for up to 5 hosted funds under a written scope. Reserve one of 3 design-partner slots starting October 2026.
deposit terms
The pilot fee is $2,500, invoiced on signing and payable net 15 by ACH or check. It reserves one of 3 design-partner slots, a written 90-day scope covering up to 5 hosted funds starting October 2026, and a locked $1,200 per fund per year price at launch. Refundable in full any time before your first fund is onboarded.
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.
58
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 35.3 x 1.64
Active
competition: more crowded than 76% of ideas · headwind x0.62
+4.6
government priorities, secondary (91 matching grants)
Trend
57
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)86
- 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, sponsorship, community, foundations, host, groups, hosting, stack.
The concept in full
- What
- Hearthhost gives community foundations a hosting stack for small unincorporated groups: fund accounting per collective, expense approval, 1099 and receipt automation, organizer identity verification, and state registration tracking. The foundation becomes the sponsor of record; the software does the work that made a 5% fee necessary.
- Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
- 'The fiscal sponsor behind 600 collectives froze them on October 1, 2024 and dissolved on December 31, 2024: its 5% host fee could not cover compliance and operations.' 'One in three community-serving nonprofits lost government funding in early 2025.' '1,512 sponsors, 803 of them community foundations' (Annual DAF Report 2025).
- What it rides
- Rides 'Graveyard: Open Collective Foundation dissolved' as proof the old cost structure failed, and 'Federal money left the sector in 2025' as the reason informal community groups are now filling defunded services and need a tax-deductible home.
- Why now
- The 2025 Annual DAF Report counts 803 community foundations among 1,512 DAF sponsors sitting on record assets while local services lose federal money; they are the natural hosts for the 600 orphaned collectives and their successors, but only if compliance costs less than the 5% that killed Open Collective Foundation.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One mid-size community foundation that already fields hosting requests it declines for capacity reasons. Charge the foundation flat SaaS per hosted fund so it can offer sponsorship at 1 to 2% instead of 5%; the skipped cost is the sponsor fee.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- none tracked
- Main risk
- Community foundations move at board speed, and a two-person team may run out of runway before the third pilot signs.
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Public money in this direction
US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase I · $305K
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase I · $305K
NIH / NHLBI · SBIR phase I · $550K
NIH / NEI · STTR phase I · $397K
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- KindsigScreens volunteer and goods appeals before your congregation responds
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.