Follow-up (May 13, 2026): my nonprofit 990/grant search tool feels like a real workflow
Hey IH. I posted here on April 7, 2026 about 501(see) (501see.app), the nonprofit financial and grants search tool I’ve been building to replace the expensive data products everyone complains about.
I wanted to do a quick follow-up because the product has changed a lot in the past month. Not in a “we redesigned the logo” way. More in a “oh, this is starting to feel like something a grant person could actually use day to day” way.
What’s different since April 7
1. I stopped paywalling the stuff that’s already basically free elsewhere.
This was a mindset shift for me. The data is public. If I blur too much of it, it doesn’t feel premium, it just feels petty. So the free experience is meant to be genuinely useful, and the paid tiers are about the workflows that take real product work.
2. Pricing is simpler now.
Free: $0
Grow: $49/mo
Pro: $99/mo
Paid plans include a 30-day trial (card upfront). Month to month, cancel anytime. No per-seat, no per-record nonsense.
3. CSV exports are now real (and async).
This was one of those “if you don’t have exports, you don’t have a product” features.
You can export filtered results for orgs, grants, and officers. Exports run in the background, show up in an exports page, and can email you a link when they’re ready. Grow is capped, Pro is bulk.
4. I added a Prospects feature to track the whole grant process - from research to application to award to compliance reporting.
The goal is: discover a foundation, save it, keep your notes, and not immediately fall back to a spreadsheet. There’s now a much better add-flow, less duplication, campaign assignment, and a per-prospect research brief style worksheet.
5. Foundation pages are getting an “intelligence” layer.
A big chunk of grant research is answering boring but important questions quickly: what do they fund, do they fund orgs like mine, what’s their pattern. I added a generated foundation summary at the top of the profile to make that first 30 seconds less painful.
6. The developer surface matured.
The REST API is still there, but I also have an MCP server that’s actually designed around how agents want to work. The main tool is essentially “give me the full funder intelligence report for this EIN” so you don’t have to chain a bunch of calls.
I plugged the API into a custom GPT using an API key, and it was fun to use. I wish the ICP were as into those tools as I am, but the sector is quite far behind the curve. They are probably going to want traditional UI for quite some time.
What I’m seeing (qualitatively)
The best signal I’ve gotten recently is from people who used to rely on Candid’s foundation discovery before it got more expensive and (in their words) worse. The workflow they describe is consistent:
Geography restrictions
Mission alignment / focus areas
Prior recipients and how often they show up
Then, only then, application complexity and readiness
That’s the shape I’m trying to build toward.
What I’m looking for
If you’ve sold into grant writers, development directors, or grant consultants, what channels actually worked (besides “wait for SEO to kick in”)?
Does $49 / $99 read “accessible” or “too cheap to be trusted” for this market?
If anyone wants to poke at it, I’d love feedback on where the workflow breaks: find a funder, sanity-check fit, save as a prospect, export something you could share with a team.
