Grant applications and trustee scoring for small foundations
Grant applications and trustee scoring for small foundations is a SaaS idea for administrators of family foundations, community funds and small grant-making trusts, priced to test at $99 a month per foundation. Applications arrive by email in every format, and the administrator merges them into one pack for trustees. With it, small foundations take applications through one online form, and trustees read, score and decide in one place.
. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build.
What problem does it solve?
Applications arrive by email in every format, and the administrator merges them into one pack for trustees. Scores sit in separate spreadsheets, and nobody can later show why a grant was refused.
Why now: Trustees now expect to read and score papers online, and small trusts can’t justify the price of a large grants system.
What do they use today?
Most small foundations rely on documents sent by post or email, since big grants systems are built for large funders. Decisions end up in meeting minutes, and the reasons are hard to find later.
How does it work?
The administrator opens a funding round with an online form that includes eligibility questions, and applicants save drafts, upload documents and submit when ready. Trustees read each application and add their scores and comments online, and the administrator sends decision emails from templates, with the reasons recorded. Funded groups get a report deadline, with reminders as it nears.
What goes in the first version?
- An application form per funding round, with eligibility questions
- Applicants save drafts and upload documents
- Trustee scores and comments on each application
- Decision emails from templates, with reasons recorded
- Report deadlines for funded groups, with reminders
Who pays, and how much?
- Who pays
- Administrators of family foundations, community funds and small grant-making trusts
- Price to test
- $99 a month per foundation
Trustees are often volunteers who change over time, and applicants arrive in waves, so a flat monthly price per foundation means no counting of seats or applications. The administrator can budget one line for the year.
How to test it in 7 days
- 1Ask five trust administrators how they collect applications and run trustee scoring today.
- 2Ask accountants and solicitors who run family trusts what slows each grant round.
- 3Offer one foundation a free round on a mock-up in return for feedback.
Where to find the first customers
- National associations of grant-making foundations
- Accountants and solicitors who run family trusts
- Community foundation networks
What are the risks?
- Grants systems exist for big funders, so stay simple and priced for small trusts.
- Applications hold personal and financial details, so data protection must be solid.
How to build it on shipanysaas
5 of the parts it needs are already in the kit. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.
- Already in the kit
- Sign-in
- Teams and roles
- Billing
- Emails
- In-app notifications
- You build
- Application form builder with document uploads
- Trustee scoring and decision records
- Report requests and reminders
See the starting prompt
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase. Help me build the first version of Grant applications and trustee scoring for small foundations. Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it. ## The product - What it does: Small foundations take applications through one online form, and trustees read, score and decide in one place. - Who pays: Administrators of family foundations, community funds and small grant-making trusts - Their problem: Applications arrive by email in every format, and the administrator merges them into one pack for trustees. Scores sit in separate spreadsheets, and nobody can later show why a grant was refused. - Price to test: $99 a month per foundation (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts) ## Build only this first version 1. An application form per funding round, with eligibility questions 2. Applicants save drafts and upload documents 3. Trustee scores and comments on each application 4. Decision emails from templates, with reasons recorded 5. Report deadlines for funded groups, with reminders ## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it - Sign-in: email and password or Google, plus magic links and passkeys you can switch on - Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations - Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments - Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer - In-app notifications: a notifications bell in the web app ## New code it needs - Application form builder with document uploads - Trustee scoring and decision records - Report requests and reminders ## How to work 1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK. 2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files. 3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next. ## Rules - Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel. - Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are. Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
Guides for the parts it uses
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