Choosing a grant intelligence tool
Six things small nonprofit teams should look for in a grant intelligence tool — and a few to be skeptical of. We built Bespoke Grants because the existing options made the wrong tradeoffs. Here's the checklist we wish someone had handed us.
Public 990 data, not just funder-supplied profiles
Every foundation profile should be built from the IRS Form 990-PF and 990 Schedule I e-file XML — public records the foundation files anyway. Tools that rely on funders to self-submit their own profiles inevitably skew toward foundations that want to be found, which is the opposite of what you need when you're hunting for funders most of your peers don't already know about.
Bespoke Grants 225,000+ foundations profiled directly from public IRS filings, refreshed regularly. You see the same giving history, recipient list, and asset base the IRS has on file. No marketing copy, no curated highlights — just the data.
AI matching that shows its reasoning
An alignment score is not enough. You want the tool to tell you why a funder matched. Did they fund five workforce orgs in your county last year? Is their median grant size in your ask range? Are their focus areas aligned with yours, or is the match driven by a single keyword?
Bespoke Grants every AI match comes with concrete reasons grounded in that funder's actual grant history. If we can't explain why a funder matched, we don't surface them.
Federal RFPs in the same workflow
Most small nonprofits eventually pursue both foundation grants and federal opportunities (Grants.gov, NEA, NEH, state programs). A tool that only shows one and asks you to maintain a separate workflow for the other forces you to track everything in two places, which is how deadlines get missed.
Bespoke Grants Open RFPs aggregates federal, state, and foundation opportunities into one ranked list. Each is scored against your profile the same way. One pipeline, one dashboard.
A pipeline that actually closes
A tool that helps you discover funders is half the job. The other half is tracking what you're working on — which funders you've contacted, what stage each opportunity is in, what the next action is, and which deadlines are coming up. If the tool doesn't have that, you're going to end up back in a spreadsheet.
Bespoke Grants built-in pipeline with six stages (prospect → researching → contacted → applied → won/lost), deadline tracking, next-action prompts, source tracking back to where you found each opportunity, and a weekly digest email that surfaces what's stalled and what's coming due.
Honest pricing that small teams can afford
Many grant-research tools charge $400–$1,000 per year for a directory you operate manually. That's a real budget hit for a small nonprofit, and worse, it's the kind of price point where you have to renew before you've fully evaluated whether the tool paid for itself. Look for monthly pricing and easy cancellation.
Bespoke Grants $0 free tier (3 AI searches/month, unlimited Open RFPs browsing, full pipeline tracking) and $49/month Pro (unlimited AI searches, one-click LOI drafting). 14-day free trial, cancel anytime via Stripe Customer Portal, 30-day no-questions refund policy.
Built by someone who knows the work
There's a difference between a tool built by an engineer who saw a market opportunity and a tool built by someone who's actually written grant proposals. The latter shows up in a hundred small product decisions — what data is surfaced, what language is used, what shortcuts are built in.
Bespoke Grants founded in 2026 by Nate Dorka, a nonprofit veteran with nearly two decades in the sector. Hosted in New Jersey. Built specifically because the existing tools cost too much, took too long, and didn't actually understand mission alignment.
Things to be skeptical of
Tools that promise to "automate grant writing." AI is a powerful drafting assistant, but a fully-automated LOI is a red flag for any grant officer. Look for tools that draft a starting point and let you edit, not tools that promise to ship finished proposals unattended.
Tools that won't show you their pricing. "Contact us for a quote" is a sign that pricing is variable based on how big you look, which is the opposite of how a small nonprofit should be priced.
Tools without a free trial or refund policy. If the vendor isn't willing to let you walk away after a month, ask why.
Tools where the data is "curated" or "premium." Curation can be a euphemism for a small dataset that's been hand-picked to look useful in demos. Public IRS data is exhaustive and verifiable; you can spot-check any claim against the foundation's actual 990.
Try it for yourself
The free tier is enough to see whether Bespoke Grants finds funders the existing tools miss. No credit card, no commitment.
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