AI Agents for Funder Research · Works inClaude & ChatGPT
Stop hunting for funders.
Ask an agent.
AI agents that find the right foundations and funders for your mission, grounded in every IRS 990 on record. Ask in plain English, get a cited prospect list. Use it here, or take the agent with you to Claude or ChatGPT.
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TRY AN EXAMPLE
01 — THE SHIFT
Agents handle the research.
You handle the relationships.
Finding the right funders is hours of database wrangling, 990 archaeology, and spreadsheet upkeep. All of it before you write a single line of outreach. That's grunt work an agent should be doing for you, so your team can spend its hours on the work only you can do.
01
Your team is not being replaced.
You still build the relationships. You still tell the story. You still close the grants. The agents just do the funder research and prep so you can show up ready.
02
Talk to it, don't configure it.
No filters, no dropdowns, no boolean gymnastics. Ask “who funded our peers last year?” and the agent figures the rest out.
03
Lives where you already work.
Use it inside Claude or ChatGPT. No 13th tool to log into. No new interface to learn.
04
Grounded in real filings.
Every funder, every grant, every dollar figure links back to the actual 990-PF. Nothing hallucinated.
02 — YOUR AGENT TEAM
Two agents live today.
Four more shipping soon.
Each agent owns one part of the funder-research lifecycle, namely the grunt-work parts. They run inside Claude, ChatGPT, or right here. We're shipping in the open: live means you can use it today.
// PROSPECTING AGENT01
LIVEFind funders who actually fund what you do.
Built on every IRS 990-PF filing on record. Ask in plain English — by cause area, geography, check size, peer-funder networks — and get a ranked, cited prospect list in seconds. Skip the database wrangling.
Family foundations under $50M that funded youth literacy in the Midwest
Foundations that funded our peers in the climate justice space last year
Build a tiered prospect list for a $2M capital campaign
// CLAUDE · prospecting agent activeLIVE
Who funds literacy programs in Ohio under $10M in assets?
→funders.search({geo: "OH", cause: "literacy", assets_lt: 10_000_000})
Found 23 foundations. Top three by recent giving: Cleveland Foundation ($842k, 2024), George Gund Foundation ($640k, 2023), and Nord Family Foundation ($480k, 2024). Each figure links to its 990-PF. Want me to draft outreach for the top five?
// RESEARCH AGENT02
LIVEDeep-dive any foundation in seconds.
Pull a funder's giving history, officers, peer co-funders, and historical priorities from the 990 record. Skip the PDF scavenger hunt before your first call.
Summarize the Hewlett Foundation's last 5 years of climate giving
Who sits on the board of the Mott Foundation and what else do they fund?
// GRANTS AGENT03
COMING SOONFind open RFPs and grant opportunities.
Surfaces live grant opportunities aligned to your cause area, geography, and stage. Not just funders, but the actual RFPs they have open right now.
Open RFPs for youth education in California closing in the next 60 days
Bridge funding opportunities for nonprofits under $1M budget
// WATCHER AGENT04
COMING SOONGet pinged the moment a fit appears.
Stand a watch for new 990 filings, funder priority shifts, and fresh RFPs. The agent surfaces only the ones that match your work, the moment they land.
Ping me when funders open climate RFPs in the Bay Area
Alert me on new local family foundations under $50M
// PEOPLE AGENT05
COMING SOONFind the right human at every foundation.
Program officers, trustees, and grants managers tied to your cause area, with their giving signal, recent moves, and who in your network already knows them.
Who is the climate program officer at the Kresge Foundation?
Trustees of Bay Area family foundations active in housing
// OUTREACH AGENT06
COMING SOONWarm intros and first-touch emails, drafted.
Hand the agent a short list and it drafts the first email to each funder, cited to their priorities, in your voice, ready for you to review and send.
Draft an intro email to the Walton Family Foundation for our literacy program
Rewrite this LOI to match the Surdna Foundation's funding lens
03 — HOW IT WORKS
Three steps to
get an agent working for you.
No new dashboard to learn. The agents live inside the AI tools you already use — so the workflow is just a chat.
→ STEP 01 / CONNECT
SCREENSHOT
Claude → Settings → Connectors → Add Karma Find Funders
Add the connector. One time.
In Claude or ChatGPT: paste the MCP URL into Connectors and sign in once. The agent shows up in every chat from then on.
→ STEP 02 / ASK
you “Find funders for our youth literacy program in Ohio”
you “Filter to under $10M assets and recent giving in this space”
you “Pull the program officer and last 3 years of giving for the top 5”
no forms · no filters · no dropdowns
Talk like you would to a colleague.
The agent understands fundraising vocabulary. “Small foundations” means <$10M. “Recent” means last 24 months. Edit any assumption inline.
→ STEP 03 / DONE
prospect_list.csv · 23 funders, ranked & cited
funder_briefs.md · top 5, with officers & giving history
peer_overlap · who else funds your space
every figure cited · every source linked
The agent does the research, you make the call.
Ranked lists, funder briefs, and peer overlap, delivered in the chat. Take them straight into your outreach with a clear picture of who's worth pursuing.
04 — NO NEW LOGIN
You already have 12 tools.
We're not the 13th.
Most fundraising software wants to be the place you live. We don't. Karma Find Funders lives inside Claude and ChatGPT — the AI tool already open in your browser. No new tab, no new interface, no migration.
×Yet another dashboard with filters and exports→Just chat in Claude or ChatGPT
×A login your team will forget→Connect once, agent is always there
×Training sessions and onboarding decks→If you can text, you can use it
×Copy-pasting between tabs→Search, brief, compare in one chat
05 — ADD THE AGENT
One connector,
and the agents are yours.
Add Karma Find Funders to Claude or ChatGPT in under a minute. From then on, every funder question you ask in any chat goes through the agents.
CLAUDE DESKTOP CLAUDE.AI CHATGPT CURSOR REST / SDK
~60s
To set up
0
New logins
100%
Cited answers
// CHATGPT · karma find funders agent activeLIVE
Find foundations that funded our peers in climate justice last year, then brief me on the top three.
→funders.search → funder.brief
Pulled 14 peer-funded foundations. Briefs on the top three include last three years of climate giving, program officers, and check-size patterns. Each figure cited back to the 990 it came from.
01
Open Claude →
Settings → Customize → Connectors → + → Add custom connector.02
Name it
Karma Find Funders, paste the MCP server URL below, and click Add. Sign in with your Karma account to authorize.https://gapapi.karmahq.xyz/mcp
03
In a new chat, click
+ in the composer, open Connectors, and toggle Karma Find Funders on.Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans · Streamable HTTP · OAuth 2.1 · BetaOpen full Claude setup guide
06 — THE DATA
Every 990-PF.
Every foundation. Every grant.
Every U.S. private foundation files a 990-PF each year. We've indexed all of them — and we keep it current. Every answer the agent gives is grounded in a real filing you can open and verify.
2M+
990 filings indexed
$1.2T
In philanthropic assets tracked
7yrs
Of historical giving
100%
Cited back to source
07 — BUILT FOR
For the people who
need this most.
Lean teams and solo operators benefit the most from delegating grunt work. If you're three people doing the work of ten, this is for you.
// EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS01
EDs running small to mid-size nonprofits
You wear five hats. Fundraising is one of them. Hand the prospecting and drafting grunt work to an agent and put your hours back into program, board, and team.
Find funders we should be talking to this quarter
Draft a board memo on our top three prospects
// DEVELOPMENT OFFICERS02
Development officers and grant writers
More throughput, same headcount. Run prospect research overnight, get drafts to review in the morning, spend your day on the relationships only you can build.
Build a prospect list for the youth program in Q2
Draft an LOI to the Hewlett Foundation in our voice
// SOLO NONPROFITS03
Founders and one-person fundraising shops
You don't have a development team. The agents are it. Start with prospecting and drafting today; let the rest of the team show up as they ship.
What funders should I approach for a $250k operating grant?
Help me write a compelling LOI in 30 minutes
08 — FAQ
Common questions,
answered straight.
- How does a small nonprofit start finding funders?
- Start from the public record: every U.S. private foundation files a Form 990-PF each year listing the grants it actually paid. Tell Karma Find Funders what you need, by cause area, geography, or check size, and it turns those filings into a ranked list of funders already giving to work like yours.
- Does Karma show a foundation's past grants and giving history before I apply?
- Yes. Ask about a foundation before you apply and the research agent assembles its giving history from the 990 record: past grantees, officers, peer co-funders, and how its priorities have shifted over time, each cited to the source filing.
- How can I estimate a funder's typical grant size from its past grants?
- A foundation's 990-PF lists each grant it paid and the amount, so recent filings show the range it typically gives. Ask the agent for a funder's recent grants and typical amounts, or start from a constraint (say, funders of refugee resettlement giving over $250k since 2024), and it answers from the filed amounts, cited back to the source filings.
- Can I use ChatGPT or Claude to find foundations that fund my nonprofit?
- Yes. Karma Find Funders is available as a connector for Claude and ChatGPT: add gapapi.karmahq.xyz/mcp as a custom connector (MCP), sign in to Karma once, and funder questions in your chats run against the indexed 990 data. Step-by-step setup guides live at karmahq.xyz/nonprofits/find-funders/connect.
- Is Karma Find Funders free for nonprofits?
- Connecting and asking questions is free. A paid tier may be added later for high-volume usage, but the core prospecting agent stays free for nonprofits.
- What data does Karma Find Funders search?
- IRS 990 and 990-PF filings for U.S. private foundations and public charities that file annually: over 2 million filings covering $1.2T in philanthropic assets and seven years of giving history, kept current as new filings are published. Every answer cites the filing it came from.
- How do we screen out funders whose geographic or budget limits rule us out?
- Put the constraints in the question (geography, foundation asset size, check size, cause area) and the agent filters against what the filings show, for example foundations under $50M that funded food security work in the Midwest. Funders whose actual giving does not match your profile drop off the list before you spend time on an application.
- How is Karma Find Funders different from a grant research database?
- Conventional grant research tools are typically filter-and-export databases operated through their own dashboards. Karma Find Funders is conversational: you describe what you need, on this page or inside Claude or ChatGPT, and the agent searches the indexed 990 filings and answers with a shortlist you can check against the filings behind it.
09 — START