Grant Guardian
Leveraging AI For Better Diligence
In the philanthropic sector, limited time and resources can make it challenging to thoroughly assess a nonprofit’s financial position. Grant Guardian transforms hours of manual financial analysis into AI-enabled strategic insight–creating space for deep, meaningful engagement with partners while maintaining high grantmaking standards.
Introducing Grant Guardian
Grant Guardian uses AI to streamline the financial review process for both grantmakers and nonprofits. Grantmakers receive customizable analyses of their grantees’ financial position, while nonprofits simply submit their existing financial documents without having to enter their data into multiple funder-specific forms. This approach helps both parties focus on what matters most: their shared mission of creating impact.
Join us on this exciting journey and discover how Grant Guardian can help you deepen your connection with your partners. Watch this video to learn more about Grant Guardian and how it can benefit your grantmaking workflow.
For more information about Grant Guardian, view our walkthrough videos here.
How Does It Work?
Advanced AI Analyses: Grant Guardian harnesses the power of AI to extract numerical values from documents like 990s, balance sheets, and income statements (both audited and unaudited), and input those values into customizable ratios that, taken together, offer a targeted view of a nonprofit’s financial position.
Customized Financial Reports: Grant Guardian’s financial reports and dashboards are customizable, allowing you to tailor metrics, thresholds, and weights specifically to your organization’s funding priorities. This flexibility enables you to present clear, relevant data to stakeholders while maintaining a transparent audit trail for compliance.
Automated Data Extraction: As an enterprise-grade solution, Grant Guardian automates the extraction and analysis of data from financial reports, standardizes assessments, and minimizes user error and bias.
Social Responsibility and Transparency
The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation’s five core social responsibility principles (Human-Centeredness; Transparency; Fairness & Bias Mitigation; Data Privacy & Security; Accessibility) were central inputs to both the underlying purpose and specific features of Grant Guardian. Examples of our principles in action include:
- Grant Guardian keeps a human-in-the-loop at all times and does not make funding decisions or recommendations. The tool uses AI to synthesize and standardize information, gives users the ability to override AI-extracted data as needed, and leaves all recommendations and decision-making to the individual grantmakers who understand the full context of a nonprofit’s past and future work.
- Every AI-generated qualitative summary includes citations linking to relevant financial documents, making it easier to understand how conclusions were reached.
- For AI-powered calculations, users can hover over any ratio to see how it was calculated, enhancing clarity and accountability.
Is There A Cost To Using Grant Guardian?
Grant Guardian is 100% free to use for verified philanthropic institutions!
Who Built Grant Guardian?
Grant Guardian was built by the Products and Services (P&S) team at the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, a group of data scientists and engineers dedicated to building data and AI products for the public good. You can learn more about P&S on our website.
Is Our Data Secure And Private?
Grant Guardian was developed with robust data security and privacy best practices.
Grant Guardian utilizes Amazon’s AWS Cognito, an industry-standard identity and access management service that ensures secure authentication with Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
All data uploaded to Grant Guardian is private to the foundation that uploaded it, and no other foundation has access to it. Data stored in Grant Guardian is not accessible by PJMF staff. If a foundation chooses to no longer use Grant Guardian, all data uploaded by the foundation can be bulk downloaded, and will otherwise be deleted/removed when the account is deactivated.
What AI Model Was Used?
Grant Guardian uses Claude 3.7 and 4.0, a Large Language Model (LLM) built by Anthropic, and prompt engineering techniques developed by PJMF. When prompted to query the financial documents, the LLM extracts the relevant information and uses it to calculate a set of indicators that are defined by the grantmaker.
I’m a nonprofit—what specifically is Grant Guardian looking for in my financial data?
Grant Guardian supports grantmakers in their already established practices of incorporating a review of a nonprofit’s financial position into a broader funding decision. Below are several financial indicators that grantmakers may choose to use within Grant Guardian, along with how they are calculated and why they are relevant to analyses of nonprofits’ financial position:
- Current Ratio
- Measures an organization’s ability to meet short-term obligations such as payroll, debt obligations, and other expenses when they become due.
- Formula: Current Assets ÷ Current Liabilities
- Source: Statement of Financial Position
- Cash Reserve Ratio
- Assesses how many months of liquid, unrestricted funds the organization has on hand to manage fluctuations in cash flow or respond to unplanned opportunities or crises without accessing lines of credit.
- Formula: (Unrestricted Cash + Liquid Investments) ÷ Average Monthly Expenses
- Source: Statement of Financial Position (for assets) and Statement of Activity (for expenses)
- Donor-restricted Net Assets to Total Net Assets Ratio
- Indicates the proportion of net assets that are donor-restricted versus available for flexible use at the nonprofit’s discretion.
- Formula: Donor-Restricted Net Assets ÷ (Total Assets – Total Liabilities)
- Source: Statement of Financial Position
All financial ratios and indicators on Grant Guardian are fully customizable, allowing funders to set review thresholds based on the specific characteristics of the nonprofits they support. For example, a funder working primarily with larger, more established organizations may choose to set a Current Ratio review threshold of 1.0 (where anything less than 1.0 is highlighted for review), while a funder focused on early-stage or smaller nonprofits may set the threshold at 0.5 to account for different liquidity norms and less predictable income.