About
A grants database, built by the people using it.
Humane System is the parent organization. SDG Grants is one of its programs. The thread between them is software the social sector actually owns.
Mission
We're building the tools the social sector should have already had.
SDG Grants is one of the programs inside Humane System, a parent organization that builds member-supported software for the people working on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The premise is simple. Foundations publish funding opportunities. Grant writers spend weeks finding them. Africa-based NGOs get priced out of the tools that should make this easier. We thought a curated database, refreshed quarterly, priced for the organizations using it, would do more good than another search engine subscription.
We're self-hosted, self-funded, and we own our code and our data. No ads, no investor exit, no quarterly growth pressure pushing us to gate the database behind a sales call.
Who it's for
Three audiences. One database.
NGO leaders
Executive directors and program managers running thinly-resourced teams. They need to know what funding exists without burning a week of staff time per cycle.
Grant writers
Independent writers and in-house specialists who live in the search. They want filters that match how they actually think about a brief: SDG, region, language, purpose.
Global South organizations
NGOs across Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia priced out of $100-a-month Western grant tools. The $6 tier exists because $5 was already a stretch.
How we work
Curation first, automation second.
We'd rather ship a database you can trust than one that grows fast and silently drifts.
A curated database, not a crawl
Every grant in the platform was reviewed by a human before it landed there. We do not surface dead links, expired programs, or duplicates wearing different names.
Refreshed quarterly, sometimes sooner
Every three months the full database is re-checked against the source: open or closed, criteria changes, deadline changes, copyright. Member-flagged grants jump the queue.
AI-assisted discovery is coming
Phase two adds AI for categorization and for pointing the system at a source: a foundation page, a LinkedIn post, an article. Drafts go in, a human approves, the grant lands in the database.
Manifesto
Software for the social sector should be owned by the people using it.
We're building on Postgres, open formats, and code we ship ourselves. If we ever go away, the data goes with you. That's the only model that holds up over the timescales the SDGs actually run on.