Done for you, for teams with no grant staff
Your team is at capacity. Sharke becomes the grant office you cannot afford to hire.
Right now, grants with real fit are slipping past unworked while your team is heads-down elsewhere, and the deadlines pass quietly. Sharke becomes your funding arm: it finds the funders that actually fund work like yours, verifies them against their own record, drafts the applications worth pursuing, and tracks every deadline. The whole grant function, run for you.
Start your grant office →What your team cannot see yet
You cannot tell which of these grants were ever a real fit.
Even with the hours, every grant on that list would go out on a guess about whether the funder was ever a real fit. Some of them are not long shots. The funder's own record shows no documented fit at all, and right now there is no way to tell which ones.
In the grant pipelines Sharke has reviewed, about 1 in 4 had no documented fit. Staff time went into them anyway, and it was never coming back.
- Hours spent on grants that were never a fit.
- Grants pursued on a guess, not documented fit.
- Deadlines that passed before anyone looked.
- Good funders you never found.
Share of pipeline grants with no documented fit in the funder's record: based on grant pipelines reviewed by Sharke.
Why waiting is already late
Next year's funding is being decided right now.
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 the moment you decide you need the money. By then 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 knows the organization. The relationship that puts you in that group forms months before the grant exists, not the week you apply. Sharke surfaces the invite-only funders worth building toward now, so the door is open before you need it. 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 win again. 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. Sharke verifies whether a program is funding this cycle and whether you still fit what it funds now, before anyone spends the 50-plus hours a federal application takes.
If you wait until the grant is needed, you are already late.
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 Sharke does
Sharke becomes your grant office.
Sharke builds and manages a verified pipeline for you: the grant office function itself, run for you, from finding the grants with verified fit to a finished draft. Not one more thing for your team to learn and run.
- Step 1 Verifies fit before any hours go in. Eligibility, funder history, your size and geography, where you sit in the funding cycle. Every grant comes back with one verdict and the sources behind it, not a score or a percentage. Pursue Wait Move on
- Step 2 Surfaces the grants and funders worth your time. Sharke watches the funders whose record fits your mission and surfaces better-fit grants you are not tracking, each one carrying its own verdict, plus the funder relationships worth building toward now. You add only what has verified fit, never a longer list to triage.
- Step 3 Drafts the ones you choose to pursue. Written against the funder's real requirements and grounded in your organization's own materials, not a generic template.
- Step 4 Tracks every deadline and handles submission. We prepare the full package and submit it with your approval. Where a funder's portal requires your organization's own account (many federal and state systems do), we set it up with you and you click submit with everything ready. Nothing slips while you run the rest of the organization.
The pipeline, run for you
Your whole pipeline, and the record behind every call.
Illustrative view of the pipeline Sharke runs for you. Open any grant for the verdict up close:
Verdicts cover every kind of funder: private and community foundations, corporate giving programs, and state and federal agencies.
Illustrative examples. Your verdicts are built from each funder's own documented record.
What you get
A verified pipeline that de-risks your mission's funding.
You get the output of a grant office: a pipeline where every grant has been checked for a real path, decisions you can defend to your board, and drafts ready for you to review. The funding behind your programs stops resting on grants no one verified.
You do not get another hire to manage, another salary to cover, or another system to keep running.
What this changes
Before
Grants happen when someone has a free afternoon. You find out a funder was wrong after the time is already gone.
After
Grants run on a schedule someone else keeps. You see the verdict before the work starts, and review drafts instead of writing them.
Once you have seen a pipeline run on a schedule someone else keeps, going back to grants as everyone's spare-afternoon job stops feeling like a plan.
Who 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
See the deliverable
The packet that lands on your board's desk.
Every month, your grant office sends one board-ready packet: where your funding goal stands, the pipeline with the funders new to you this cycle, the verdicts up close, and exactly what was done and what is next. Here is a full sample, the same format and rigor you receive.
See a sample monthly packetIllustrative organization and figures. The format, the method, and the sources are what you receive.
Questions
Before you decide
When can we start?
Today. Start below, complete the ten-minute intake, and your office starts the same business day. Your first grants come back verified within the first week. Prefer to run it yourself? Self-serve is open on its own page: the full workspace that finds, verifies, drafts, and tracks, for $159 a month.
How do we pick the right tier?
By how much of your mission income comes from grants: about half is $249, three-quarters is $369, essentially all is $459. Pick the one nearest to what you think. If the first month reads differently, we show you the evidence and you decide.
What if we already have a grant writer?
Keep them. Sharke becomes the research and verification layer underneath: they receive verdicts with sources and drafts to shape, and their hours move from research to voice and relationships. And before anything goes out, we will still red-team the application against the funder's own record.
How much of our time does it take?
Plan on about an hour a month: reviewing verdicts and drafts, sharing your core materials in week one, taking an introduction when a funder asks for one, and clicking submit where a funder's portal requires your organization's own account. Those are the only parts we cannot do for you.
Do we need a call before starting?
No. The intake covers what the setup call used to, and a 15-minute kickoff is included in your first week if you want one. If you have a scope question first, book the call: the same 15 minutes, before instead of after.
What if we have not identified any grants yet?
That is the common starting point. Sharke finds and qualifies the funders that back organizations like yours, so you begin from a verified shortlist instead of a blank page.
What happens when staff turn over?
Nothing stops. The average development professional stays around 16 to 18 months, and the median vacancy runs six months (CompassPoint and the Haas, Jr. Fund, UnderDeveloped). With the grant office plan, the pipeline, the verdicts, and the funder relationships live with Sharke, so a departure does not take next year's funding with it.
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. With the grant office plan, the Sharke team manages the work for you.
Why not just hire someone to do this?
A grant hire is a full salary, months of recruiting, and, on average, a departure inside two years that takes the pipeline with it. Sharke is the whole grant function for a fraction of a salary, always on, and the pipeline stays with your organization no matter who comes or goes. You also get verified fit on every grant, a measurement layer a single generalist hire cannot bring.
Who sees the financials and documents we share?
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. Everything Sharke builds, the pipeline, the verdicts, and the drafts, stays yours.
Do we have to sign a contract?
No. It is month to month, and you can cancel anytime. To cancel, reply to any Sharke email; it takes effect at the end of the current period.
From the beta
"We had grants in a spreadsheet, but it was not really a pipeline. It was a list I was trying to keep alive between deadlines, reports, and everything else on my plate. During the beta, Sharke found funders and grant opportunities I had not found, ruled out some that looked better than they really were, and started organizing the work around what we actually needed to raise. I still make the final decisions, but I am no longer responsible for finding every opportunity, checking every funder, and keeping the whole pipeline moving by myself."
Development Director · Workforce-development nonprofit · Texas · Sharke beta participant"We did not need another grant list. We needed someone to build the pipeline, keep it moving, and make sure it was tied to what our programs actually needed. Before Sharke, grant work happened when somebody had time, so we were always reacting to deadlines and wondering what we had missed. Now Sharke finds the funders, surfaces the grants, checks whether they are real opportunities for an organization like ours, and manages the pipeline around the funding the mission needs. I am not trying to run a grant office on the side anymore."
Executive Director · Rural community-development nonprofit · North Carolina · Sharke beta participantGet the grant office you cannot afford to hire.
Somewhere on your list right now is a deadline that closes this cycle, and a funder who will not hear from you before it does. Nothing moves until someone owns it. The median institutional grant in the public record is about $20,000: the expensive thing is not the office, it is the grants with real fit passing while no one owns them. Foundation, corporate, state, and federal funding are all in scope.
Sharke does the grant work. You approve every draft, and nothing goes out under your name until you say so. You do not hire a department, you get one.
Priced to how much of your mission rides on grants: $249 at about half, $369 at three-quarters, $459 at essentially all. More of your mission on grants means a bigger office to run: more funders verified, more deadlines tracked, more applications in motion.
The Funding Goal Guarantee. While your account is active, if Sharke cannot identify enough verified opportunities and funder relationships to support your funding goal, we continue working at no charge until we do.
No contract. Cancel anytime.
Consultant cost: $50 to $100 an hour, mid-level (2025 to 2026), for the work an organization with about half its funding from grants takes on, roughly 1.3 to 1.5 applications a month at 30 hours each. Median institutional grant: public grant record (IRS Schedule I), Sharke analysis.
See a sample monthly packet, the exact board-ready format you receive each month.
Not sure which one? Read it off your last 990: grant revenue divided by total revenue. Pick the one nearest to that. If the first month's work reads a different tier, we show you the evidence and the choice stays yours. You are never billed retroactively.
Pick the tier closest to your mix to continue.
Secure checkout by Stripe
Month to month. Cancel anytime. The Funding Goal Guarantee applies.
Next: a ten-minute intake. Your first funders come back verified within a week.
- TodayA ten-minute intake. Your EIN, your funding goal, and the grants already in motion. Your office starts when it is complete.
- Week oneYour first 3 to 5 funders come back verified, each with a Pursue, Wait, or Move on call and the sources behind it. We will ask for your core materials this week (your most recent 990, a few program descriptions, and your current budget). A 15-minute kickoff call is included if you want one; the work does not wait for it.
- Every monthA board-ready pipeline report. Every verdict delivered with its sources, what Sharke surfaced and why, the invite-only funders worth building toward, every deadline in the next 30 days, drafts in motion, and where your pipeline stands against your funding goal.
- If you leaveIt is month to month, cancel anytime. The pipeline, the verdicts, and every Decision Record stay yours.
One more thing to know before you start: if the verified record says grants cannot carry the share of your mission you hoped, your first monthly report says so plainly, with the sources. If that happens, we work with you to set a goal the record supports, and the Funding Goal Guarantee holds against it. You are buying a reliable read on the path, not a promise that every funder fits.
Questions about scope first? Book a 15-minute call. If you are ready, starting is faster: the same conversation happens at your kickoff, included.
Not ready for the full office?
Start with the Grant Funding Viability Assessment: your Funding Viability Index (one public-record number for how the funding behind your whole mission looks today, distinct from the categorical grant verdicts above), the months of runway leadership actually has, the grant pipeline your funding goal would take, and named funders that already back organizations like yours. Board-ready, before staff time goes in.
Grant Funding Viability Assessment: $79A board-ready answer in 48 hours.
Get the Grant Funding Viability Assessment →You do not need to find more grants to chase.
You need an office that runs them. That is what Sharke is.