For the development shop of one
Grants fund the work. Right now you are chasing them blind.
You are the development shop, on top of running the org. And the funders who will fund you next year are choosing their nonprofit partners now, months before the grant ever posts.
Sharke is the grant team you cannot afford to hire. It does the research and verifies which funders actually fund work like yours, so you can stop chasing and start building a pipeline that closes the funding gap. Self-serve, $159 a month.
Start self-serve, $159 a month →No contract. Cancel anytime. Your workspace is live the same day.
Why you're chasing blind
The fit is not in the RFP. It is in the 990.
Whether a funder actually funds work like yours is in their 990 and their giving history, not in the RFP. From the outside every open grant looks worth a shot. The 990 tells you which ones were never going to say yes, and nobody running development on the side has the time to pull it.
1 in 4grants already on your list have no track record of funding an organization like yours. Every one is hours you or your program staff spend courting a funder that was never going to say yes, instead of the grants actually worth pursuing.
Share of pipeline grants with no documented fit in the funder's record: based on grant pipelines reviewed by Sharke.
You should not have to fly blind on the funding your programs run on.
Why waiting is already late
Next year's funding is being decided right now.
By the time a grant is needed, the cycle that funds it has usually already closed.
The funders who will write checks next year are building those relationships this cycle. The programs renewing next year are reviewing who fits now. None of it waits for a free week to open up. By the time the grant is on the list, the cycle is underway and the room is full.
Roughly 70% of foundations do not accept unsolicited proposals. That money goes where a funder already has a relationship. The cultivation that earns it starts months before the grant posts, not the week you apply. Sharke surfaces the invite-only funders worth building toward now, so you are cultivating next year's funding before this year's runs out. And the room is getting more crowded: 87% of foundation leaders report rising demand for the grants they give.
Federal programs freeze and priorities shift, and a grant you won before is no longer a safe bet to renew. When you need to replace that funding fast, there is no fast. The pipeline that catches the loss is the one you started before it happened. Before you commit the 50-plus hours a federal reapplication takes, Sharke verifies whether that program is funding this cycle and whether you still fit it now.
Share of U.S. foundations that do not accept unsolicited proposals: Foundation Center / Candid. Rising demand: Center for Effective Philanthropy, State of Nonprofits 2026.
What you get
Your whole pipeline, and the record behind every verdict.
Illustrative view of the self-serve workspace. Every grant carries a source-cited verdict; the funders and figures shown are examples.
Every verdict is built from the funder's own documented filings.
What self-serve includes
The whole development function, not another grants database.
The grant databases hand you a longer list to sort through, at $179 to $299 a month. Sharke does the opposite of adding to your pile: it does the research, verifies the fit, and drafts the first pass, so your list gets shorter and the hours left go to the grants actually worth writing.
- VerifyThe 25-hour mistakes stop this week. Every grant you are tracking gets a Decision Record: Pursue, Wait, or Move on, source-cited from the funder's own filings. The ones with no path leave the list before the next application starts.
- FindThe grants you never had time to find stop passing you by. Sharke continuously surfaces better-fit grants and funders, each already verified, starting from funders that have funded organizations like yours more than once. This is where the missed revenue lives.
- CultivateNext year's funding starts moving this cycle. Roughly 70% of foundations do not accept unsolicited proposals. Sharke shows who they actually fund, their openness to first-time grantees, and the invite-only doors worth cultivating now, while there is still time to be known before the check is written.
- DraftApplications go out instead of stalling at the blank page. Drafting grounded in your own materials and written against the funder's real requirements, ready for you to review and make yours.
- KeepThe pipeline survives a resignation. Every verdict, funder, and deadline in one place your organization owns: ready for a board meeting, and still there when staff change.
Matching-database pricing: published 2026 plans of the leading grant-discovery tools.
From a team that ran it
"We've always had more grants on our list than we realistically had capacity for, so most of the decisions came down to instinct and urgency. What surprised me was seeing which ones actually had real fit and which ones just sounded promising. A few we were counting on really weren't there once we looked closer."
Director of Development / Housing services nonprofit / $2.4M budgetWho built it
I have spent my career replacing gut calls with data: how the largest financial institutions set their global IT footprint, when mergers and acquisitions create value instead of destroying it, and which grants are worth pursuing, at for-profit and nonprofit organizations from NIH, NSF, and USDA to Meta and Google. I have done that work across the private sector and the White House Office of Management and Budget, and I sign off on every Sharke verdict myself.
Collin Brown / Wharton MBA / Founder, Sharke.ai
Where to start
Run grants like you finally have help.
Every month this stays on your spare hours, the same three things happen: time goes to grants that were never going to fund you, deadlines you would have hit pass unnoticed, and the funder relationships behind next year's grants never get started. Sharke turns all three around, from the day you sign up.
You keep the work in-house, with Sharke doing the finding and verifying before any hours go in. No onboarding, no new system to learn. You verify grants before a tool would have finished installing, and you stop pouring hours into grants that were never going to fund you.
- → A source-cited verdict on every grant, before the hours go in
- → Better-fit grants and funders surfaced continuously, each verified
- → Drafting grounded in your organization's own materials
- → The whole pipeline in one place, board-ready, not in one person's head
✓ No contract, cancel anytime✓ Secure checkout by Stripe✓ Every verdict built from public filings✓ Workspace live the same day
Not ready for a subscription yet? The $79 Grant Funding Viability Assessment is a one-time, board-ready read in 48 hours: where your funding stands, and the funders already funding work like yours.
Want it fully run for you instead? See your grant office: the same verified pipeline, done for you, from $249 a month.
Grant work has two costs, and the one on your books is the smaller one.
The first is the hours, and the market prices them plainly: freelance grant writers run $35 to $60 an hour, flat-fee proposals $1,000 to $8,000 each, a matching database that only finds grants $179 to $299 a month.
The second cost never shows up anywhere: the grants with real fit that pass every cycle because no one had the hours to find them, verify them, and get an application in. The median institutional grant in the public record is about $20,000.
Miss one a year where the fit was documented and no one applied, and doing nothing has already cost more than ten times what Sharke does.
Self-serve is $159 a month: the finding, the verifying, the drafting support, and the pipeline. Priced like a tool, doing the job of the hours you cannot hire.
Freelance rates and flat-fee ranges: Upwork grant-writer rate data and 2026 market guides. Database pricing: published 2026 plans. Median institutional grant: public grant record (IRS Schedule I), Sharke analysis.
Self-serve is $159 a month. The Grant Funding Viability Assessment is $79, one-time. Done for you, on its own page, starts at $249 a month, priced to how much of your mission rides on grants.
Questions
Before you decide
When can we start?
Today. Sign up and your workspace is live the same day: Sharke starts finding, verifying, and prioritizing your pipeline from the first login, with drafting support and deadline tracking included.
We already track grants in a spreadsheet. Is this one more system to learn?
No. The pipeline, the verdicts, and the drafts live in one place that replaces the spreadsheet, not another tool that feeds it. Most teams are reviewing their first verified grants the same day they sign up.
What happens when our development person moves on?
That is exactly what Sharke protects against. The average development professional stays around 16 to 18 months, and the median vacancy runs six months (CompassPoint and the Haas, Jr. Fund, UnderDeveloped). A pipeline that lives in one person's head leaves with them. One that lives in Sharke is inherited by the next person on day one: verdicts, funders, deadlines and all.
Is this AI, or is a person involved?
Both. Sharke does the research and drafting, and every verdict is built from documented funder filings, 990s, award history, and eligibility, not AI guesses. And a person stands behind it: the founder signs off on every verdict.
Are there even grants for an organization our size?
Yes. Many funders give specifically to organizations in your range, and some prefer first-time and smaller grantees. Sharke reads each funder's giving history and shows you the ones whose record fits your size, so you are not chasing funders who only write large checks to large organizations.
Who sees the financials and materials we upload?
Only Sharke, and only to find, verify, and draft grants for your organization. Your materials are never shared or sold, and they are not used to train anything. Your organization owns its data.
If we cancel, do we keep our pipeline?
It is month to month, and the work is yours. You can export your verdicts, funders, and deadlines at any time, so what you build in Sharke stays with your organization whether you continue or not.
Do we have to sign a contract?
No. It is month to month, and you can cancel anytime.
You should not have to pass a budget and then hope the grants show up.
Sharke shows you where you stand and helps you build the pipeline that closes the funding gap, starting today.