Overview:
Think of it like Google Alerts meets a super-curated Craigslist for funding: you tell it your niche (ceramics in the Midwest, climate social science in the EU, documentary film in Latin America), and it keeps a clean, searchable list of micro-grants, residencies, and fellowships you actually qualify for—then pings you before deadlines. You can save opportunities, plug the calendar into your phone, and get a weekly digest so you don’t miss the one gem hidden on page 7 of some cultural council’s site. A weekend MVP is realistic: a handful of scrapers, a normalized database, a simple search UI, plus email/calendar alerts. The magic later is better tagging, eligibility filters, templates, and integrations that make applying faster.
The Trends:
Micro-grants and short-term residencies are proliferating as organisations and local governments fund many small, rapid awards to support experimentation and community-led projects. (1, 2, 3)
Dedicated discovery platforms and curated databases (e.g., ProFellow, Funding Findr, niche grant services) are scaling to aggregate fellowships, micro-grants and residencies and push tailored matches to users. (4, 5, 6)
Deadline alerts, personalized newsletters, and pipeline/CRM-style grant-management tools are becoming standard features—users expect automated deadline tracking, fit-scoring and calendar integration. (7, 8)
Demand for hyper-local and niche funding discovery is rising: creators want region-specific, identity-focused, and discipline-narrow opportunities that big generalist databases often miss. (9, 10)
Technical and legal barriers to scraping public listings are driving product choices—while many services rely on scraping/automation for aggregation, court rulings and ToS risks mean platforms increasingly combine partnerships, APIs, and careful legal review. (11, 12, 13)
Your Answer:
A searchable match engine that surfaces small grants, residencies and fellowships by niche and region so creators and researchers stop missing opportunities buried across websites and mailing lists.
Solves fragmented discovery and deadline fatigue with scraped listings, tag-based matching (discipline, region, budget, duration) and push/email/ calendar deadline alerts so users never miss an application window.
Weekend MVP: build simple scrapers + normalized DB, a lightweight web UI for search and saved lists, and an alerts scheduler — launchable in days to validate demand.
Delights users with funnel features that increase application success: personalized matches, eligibility filters, one-click save/subscribe, application templates, and calendar + Slack integrations.
Monetization and growth: freemium alerts and premium curated lists, sponsor listings from funders, affiliate placement for admin-heavy residencies, and a paid API/CSV export for institutions.
Go-to-market: target creator communities, research labs and local arts orgs with curated weekly lists, partner with regional cultural councils, and seed credibility via case-study micro-grants that show ROI.
Your Roadmap:
No-code directory + alerts: build a searchable Airtable base of grants/residencies (fields: niche, region, deadline, stipend, link).
Frontend with Softr/Glide to let users filter by niche/region and sign up for deadline alerts.
Use Zapier/Make to wire Airtable -> email (Mailchimp/SendGrid) for automated deadline reminders and new listings.
Validate demand by offering a 30-day free trial and collecting feedback via Typeform; iterate on most-requested niches.