# OpenGrants A grant search engine and marketplace of independent grant consultants ## Elevator pitch OpenGrants is the easy way to win grants. We provide a grant search engine and marketplace of independent grant consultants. You can find grants on your own, or hire an expert to help you search, apply for, and manage your grants. - Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/opengrantsio - Entity ID: wefunder:company:102476 - Last updated: 2026-06-22T05:03:27Z - Generated at: 2026-06-22T19:16:10Z ## Quick facts - šŸ’° $189K 2021 Revenue - šŸ“ˆ 29% user growth month-over-month with zero paid marketing - ā¤ļø Net Promoter Score is 80 and trending up - šŸ’ø 170% revenue growth YoY - āœ… 480 active users and 5,500 total users - šŸ’ŖBacked by notable funds such as BoostVC, A100x, and Globivest - šŸ§ Team has experience building SaaS for the government, and raising millions in for startups - āœ… Rate of successful submission increased by 35% on average ## Active fundraises - wefunder:fundraise:54511: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) - wefunder:fundraise:54512: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) ## Story Grant funds are unique, they require no-repayment, and are non-dilutive. These funds are typically the first resources deployed to combat everything from natural disasters to tackling deep tech challenges from cancer to climate technology. Unfortunately this critical resource struggles with significant issues around efficiency, transparency, traceability and equity.We must implement solutions that modify how grant funding operates, in ways that do not impact the core tenets of the system. In other words, we must protect and empower all peoplesā€™ abilities to develop new solutions, create value, and make progress.Weā€™ve built a grant search engine and powered it with the most comprehensive database of public and private grant funding. Weā€™re layering on features like recommended grants, custom query search, team collaboration, confidence scores and automated alerts to create the most valuable grant search tool in the industry.The future of grant funding has no applications. The current approach to awarding funding is something that is simply a hold-over from another era. At best, this practice is still around because of a lack of the correct tools. Similar to modern loans generated by lenders with a continuous understanding of your financials, the future of grant funding is based on a trustless ecosystem, where capital partners have all of the data they need to approve and provide funding, while managing their risk.The ultimate goal of this platform is to support awarding of grants via single profiles which are efficiently linked to networking of grant funders. We serve state and federal government agencies, local governments, global NGOs, private foundations, family offices, and any other organization that needs to distribute funding in a streamlined, modern and data-driven manner.Our future roadmap includes a robust web3 strategy, post-award grant management, and a capital holding and distribution product with tools for reporting, auditing and compliance. This serves the needs of both applicants and funders, while enabling new transparency into funding effectiveness, including historical performance and benchmarks for mandated metrics like diversity and team size. Administrators will gain real-world insights on desired impacts, something that is remarkably rare today.We are specifically engaged in a mission to include our ecosystem and community partners as financial partners in this venture. For that reason, contractors on our platform have access to $GRANT and can receive equity in the company. Additionally, we are raising capital using a variety of tools to ensure that taxpayers and citizens around the world can participate in developing this company into the source of public good that it should be.Our focus over the next few years will be to continue to embrace an API-first future, where OpenGrants will efficiently provide ecosystem data and grant matching tools, as well as modern financial infrastructure. We seek to become global, public infrastructure, that is in part, owned by the public. Integrations with our partners will support the quality and capabilities of the ecosystem overall, further enriching our own data products and improving the ML and AI driven matching and evaluation features.Case StudiesChicoStart is a business incubator for startups and a community for entrepreneurs located in rural northern California. With a myriad of activities and companies to support, their main constraint is bandwidth and human capital. They struggled to get the right information about grant funding to the correct people in a timely fashion. They also know that grants are an important source of funding, but lack the time and ability to extend that knowledge and understanding to their portfolio of startups.They engaged OpenGrants in an early BETA of the platform to explore the impacts of the tool on their community of startup founders and stakeholders. As a result of the pilot, seven companies submitted grant applications during that quarter, and a few were recently awarded several million dollars in funding for their projects. ChicoStart was also recently awarded NSF funding for their work in supporting this ecosystem.Eva Nicole, Executive Director at ChicoStart and a Director of The Center for Entrepreneurship at CSU Chico: ā€œWeā€™re grateful that someone took a hard look at the unnecessary complexities of the grants market and decided to fix it. We value OpenGrantsā€™ ability to provide us timely information on grants that we otherwise wouldnā€™t have time to look for. This helps us provide relevant info to our startups, partnerships and Chicostart itself. Weā€™re excited to pursue a partnership that will benefit our ecosystem in the future.ā€Case Study 2Vesto was founded in 2019 with the goal of creating a simple and easy-to-use digital banking platform powered by cryptocurrency. Theyā€™re now focused on banking-as-a-service to help financial institutions take advantage of blockchain and digital currencies.Aaron Brown, Co-founder and COO:"Thereā€™s a lot of compliance that a financial institution needs to do, and blockchain provides a much higher level of security than typical databases. Being able to have financial products on the blockchain-based on smart contracts is the next generation of the financial institution. We have collateralized interest income and loans based on the digital wallet holderā€™s balance. Blockchain really makes finance consumer-centric rather than institution-centric.We have IP that we think is very unique. Regulators around the world are trying to figure out how to audit to make sure transactions are real. The grant that we just worked on with the help of a consultant we found on OpenGrants will be used to establish a technology that we patented, that allows for those regulators to successfully audit transactions.To me, as a small business person, whether itā€™s grants or any other sort of bureaucratic regulatory issues, itā€™s difficult to become an expert. Youā€™re the chef, cook and bottle washer in a small business. Partnering with a company like OpenGrants means you donā€™t have to understand all the nuances of how grants work, and you donā€™t have to go find the grants.What Iā€™ve learned is that itā€™s not just about having a grant writer, itā€™s also having someone whoā€™s knowledgeable in the space and has connections and relationships with the state and federal governments that are providing the grants. Also, things move around and budgets change. Having an expert partner to be that resource, rather than having to learn and do it all yourself, is so useful.OpenGrants helps to cut through the bureaucracy. It doesnā€™t feel like youā€™re working with a government entity. Those were nightmares for me going back 10 or 15 years. My goodness, the applications are ridiculous. OpenGrants cuts through all that.The fact that OpenGrants help small businesses with this stuff was music to my ears because Iā€™m a third generation small business owner, and if you can learn how to take advantage of free non-dilutive money, that can make all the difference. Especially because thereā€™s a lot of money that people donā€™t even know theyā€™re eligible for." ## FAQ 1. **I like your idea. What will it take to be part of your founding grant team?** - We have an amazing founding team! As we look to scale up, we are always interested in working with motivated individuals who are looking to make a difference in the world with their skills. If you are interested in working with us, please visit jobs.opengrants.io drop us a line anytime :) 2. **Such a great idea -- but is the subscription plan the only way you plan to make money? Do you earn a percentage of any grants funded through your platform? Is there any data you can glean from users of your platform?** - Hey Justin! We have a few ways we monetize our platform. We do take 20% of whatever is paid to grant consultants in the marketplace. We also use the data collected in aggregate (we dont sell any sort of PII) to allow governments to understand trends and design better grant programs. Our plan for the future is to move grant funding over our network and collect a small percentage of all grant funds as our primary revenue driver. Happy to discuss more, we will be sending access to our discord so... 3. **How far does $500 in credits towards enterprise product (API or custom portal build) take a company? What is the API or custom portal build? Thanks!** - Hey Karen! It really depends on the level of customization you require. OpenGrants provides our API to partners which allows them to integrate OpenGrants functionality into their platforms. The cost of an API call itself is incredibly cheap, so $500 in credits could conceivably get you well past MVP in terms of development of a solution. However, if you are not a developer, the base cost of a custom portal build is about 25k/year USD. Our custom portal build includes hosting and technical sup... 4. **Hi OG Team, Congrats on the success so far. I like that you're helping non-profits get more of that sweet cash money. One of my readers passed along your deal to me and asked for my thoughts. Iā€™ve written a first pass of a deal memo (https://muhanzhang.com/opengrants/) for mys...** - Great question Muhan! There are two really important points to consider here: One is that we do intend to capture a percentage of grant funding moved over platform in the future, and we are currently experimenting with different ways to message and manage that. We also see this as a massive path to revenue. Something important to consider is that for some programs (typically larger federal/government grants) a traditional success fee is prohibited, so we are carefully navigating that issue, a... 5. **Hi Sedale, I'm interested in investing, but I have a few questions. Have you recently raised any money outside of equity crowdfunding? If so, how much? What are your current cash and cash equivalents as of March 2022? Lastly, what were operating expenses in 2021? Thanks!** - Hey Annali! We have raised just over 1M from Boost VC, Globivest, FYC Labs, a100x and a small group of angels/super angels via SAFE notes. Current cash and cash equivalents are 179k. Operating expenses in 2021 were $593,189.52. Let me know if you have any other questions! ## Team - Sedale Turbovsky (CEO & Founder) - Hunter Petersen (CTO & Co-Founder) - Pachia Cha (Co-Founder, Lead Developer UX/UI) - Cody Hanson (COO & Co-Founder) ## Recent posts - Just Seven Days Left To Invest! (2022-04-05T20:33:23Z) - Pay It Forward Day! OpenGrants Resources & Education (2022-03-29T22:56:43Z) - Come Learn With Us! (2022-03-22T23:12:55Z) - The End Is Near :) (2022-03-16T03:02:03Z) - OpenGrants Announces Partnership With The Fourth Floor! (2022-03-08T23:09:25Z) - Curated Grant Resources and More! (2022-03-01T21:51:52Z) - New Podcast! (2022-02-24T19:11:30Z) - OpenGrants News! (2022-02-16T23:05:24Z) - New Features!! (2022-02-08T21:52:59Z) - Funding The Future! (2022-02-01T22:58:57Z) - OpenGrants In The News! (2022-01-25T19:48:53Z) - Important Product & Partner Updates! (2022-01-18T22:05:04Z) - OpenGrants Has A New Look! (2022-01-12T19:41:41Z) ## Q&A - Q: Hi Sedale, I'm interested in investing, but I have a few questions. Have you recently raised any money outside of equity crowdfunding? If so, how much? What are your current cash and cash equivalents as of March 2022? Lastly, what were operating expenses in 2021? Thanks! - A: Hey Annali! We have raised just over 1M from Boost VC, Globivest, FYC Labs, a100x and a small group of angels/super angels via SAFE notes. Current cash and cash equivalents are 179k. Operating expenses in 2021 were $593,189.52. Let me know if you have any other questions! - Q: How far does $500 in credits towards enterprise product (API or custom portal build) take a company? What is the API or custom portal build? Thanks! - A: Hey Karen! It really depends on the level of customization you require. OpenGrants provides our API to partners which allows them to integrate OpenGrants functionality into their platforms. The cost of an API call itself is incredibly cheap, so $500 in credits could conceivably get you well past MVP in terms of development of a solution. However, if you are not a developer, the base cost of a custom portal build is about 25k/year USD. Our custom portal build includes hosting and technical support from our integrators. The will use our API to build you a branded and customized version of OpenGrants to support your stakeholder community. - Q: Such a great idea -- but is the subscription plan the only way you plan to make money? Do you earn a percentage of any grants funded through your platform? Is there any data you can glean from users of your platform? - A: Hey Justin! We have a few ways we monetize our platform. We do take 20% of whatever is paid to grant consultants in the marketplace. We also use the data collected in aggregate (we dont sell any sort of PII) to allow governments to understand trends and design better grant programs. Our plan for the future is to move grant funding over our network and collect a small percentage of all grant funds as our primary revenue driver. Happy to discuss more, we will be sending access to our discord soon and setting up an AMA. Stay tuned for that event! :) - Q: I like your idea. What will it take to be part of your founding grant team? - A: We have an amazing founding team! As we look to scale up, we are always interested in working with motivated individuals who are looking to make a difference in the world with their skills. If you are interested in working with us, please visit jobs.opengrants.io drop us a line anytime :) - Q: How do I apply for a grant - Q: Hi OG Team, Congrats on the success so far. I like that you're helping non-profits get more of that sweet cash money. One of my readers passed along your deal to me and asked for my thoughts. Iā€™ve written a first pass of a deal memo (https://muhanzhang.com/opengrants/) for myself and other investors. My primary question is: would you ever take a commission of grant money received through your platform? At that level, it seems like you'd have the advantage of landing more whales, while also delivering clearer value to non-profits that genuinely get previously inaccessible capital without you. Thanks in advance for your responses. Bests, Muhan https://muhanzhang.com/opengrants/ - A: Great question Muhan! There are two really important points to consider here: One is that we do intend to capture a percentage of grant funding moved over platform in the future, and we are currently experimenting with different ways to message and manage that. We also see this as a massive path to revenue. Something important to consider is that for some programs (typically larger federal/government grants) a traditional success fee is prohibited, so we are carefully navigating that issue, as government grant funding makes up a significant amount of the market.