Discovery is noisy
Federal, state, municipal and foundation sources publish on different schedules in different formats. Keyword search returns thousands of listings and no judgment about which ones a given organization could actually win.
Grant research as a service
Stop writing proposals to funders who were never going to say yes.
Egeria Research runs the funder landscape for your programs, scores every opportunity against your real eligibility, and hands your team a ranked pipeline with deadlines attached. Your writers spend their hours on the applications that can actually close.
No account, no card. A named researcher reviews your submission and returns a written snapshot.
Funder Fit Matrix
Workforce development · 501(c)(3) · CA · prepared week 2
DOL — Apprenticeship Building America
92
EDA — Public Works & Economic Adjustment
78
State workforce board — regional grant
64
Regional family foundation — capacity
41
Sample
Scored on eligibility, program fit, award size, competition and timing.
139,000+
Funding opportunities indexed across the OpenGrants database
43,000+
Grants and contracts open for application right now
12,000+
Grant seekers and funding experts on the platform
Daily
Refresh from federal, state, municipal and private sources
The cost of unresearched applications
Most grant programs do not fail at writing. They fail at selection.
A capable writer produces a strong proposal for the wrong program and loses anyway. Egeria exists to make the selection decision defensible before a single hour of drafting is spent.
Fit is guessed, not scored
Eligibility language, match requirements, prior-award patterns and program officer priorities decide the outcome. Teams rarely have the hours to read all four for every opportunity, so fit becomes a hunch.
Pipelines decay quietly
A funding list built in January is stale by March. Deadlines move, programs are reauthorized, and the opportunities nobody is tracking are the ones that close without an application going in.
The workflow
Four weeks from intake to a pipeline your team can work.
Every engagement runs the same sequence. What changes is the depth of each pass and how long the pipeline is maintained afterwards.
1Days 1–3
Intake and eligibility profile
A structured working session captures what the organization actually is on paper.
- Entity type, registrations, UEI and SAM status
- Programs, geography and populations served
- Prior awards, match capacity, audit posture
2Week 1–2
Landscape scan
The full funding field for those programs is pulled and read, not just searched.
- Federal, state, local and private sources
- Historical award data and typical award size
- Recurring cycles and reauthorization risk
3Week 2–3
Scoring and shortlist
Each candidate is scored on five weighted dimensions and defended in writing.
- Eligibility, program fit, award size
- Competition density and timing
- A written rationale per line — including the rejections
4Week 4 onward
Pipeline handoff
The shortlist becomes a working calendar your team and writers operate from.
- Deadline calendar with internal checkpoints
- Program officer call prep per target
- Refresh cadence for retained engagements
Example deliverables
What actually lands in your inbox.
Research is only useful if someone can act on it on a Monday morning. Every Egeria deliverable is a working document — sourced, dated, and written to be handed to a grant writer without translation.
Funding Landscape Brief
8–14 pages · delivered end of week 2
Addressable funding by sourceFY26 · workforce
- Total addressable funding by source
- Cycle map for the next 18 months
- Competition density per program
- Eligibility gaps to close first
- Named sources with citation links
- Three-year award history where public
Funder Shortlist & Fit Matrix
15–25 scored opportunities · week 3
Scoring dimensionsweighted, 0–100
- Score plus written rationale per line
- Explicit rejections, with reasons
- Match and cost-share requirements
- Application burden estimate in hours
- Direct link to each funder's own listing
- Delivered as CSV and PDF
Pipeline & Deadline Calendar
Living document · maintained on retainer
Next 90 daysauto-refreshed
Oct 09Letter of intent — federal apprenticeshipSubmit
Oct 24Full application — EDA public worksDrafting
Nov 14State workforce board regional cycleDrafting
Dec 01Foundation capacity — invite expectedWatch
- Internal checkpoints, not just funder dates
- Owner assigned to every line
- Status flags your board can read
- Alerting when a deadline moves
- Exports to your own tracker
- Quarterly re-scan of the full landscape
Program Officer Call Prep
One brief per target · before every call
Call brief excerptfederal apprenticeship
Ask: "How has the review panel weighted employer commitments in the last two cycles?"
Why it matters — the last two award classes both favored applicants with signed employer MOUs at submission. You have four verbal, none signed.
Ask: "Is the regional set-aside expected to continue in this cycle?"
Why it matters — the set-aside is the single largest factor in your score. It is not mentioned in this year's NOFO text.
- Officer's public statements and priorities
- Who they funded last cycle, and why
- Five questions worth their time
- The two weaknesses to get ahead of
- A one-paragraph positioning line
- Post-call follow-up template
Figures shown are illustrative samples. Every brief is built on your own eligibility profile and cited to primary sources.
Engagement models
Three ways to work with Egeria.
Engagements start at $2,500 per month and run month to month. Scope is set on a call before anything begins — pricing for a one-off sprint depends on program count and geography.
Research Sprint
One-off[YOUR SPRINT PRICE]Fixed fee · 4 weeks
A single pass through the full workflow for one program area. You end with a landscape brief, a scored shortlist and a calendar — then run it yourself.
- Funding Landscape Brief
- Shortlist and fit matrix
- 90-day deadline calendar
- One handoff session with your team
Strategy Retainer
Most commonFrom $2,500Per month · month to month, cancel any time
A named strategist works your funding plan with your team every week, and the pipeline stays current instead of aging out between cycles.
- One-page funding plan and relationship map in the first two weeks
- Introductions where the strategist's network genuinely fits
- Program officer call prep, draft and budget review
- Email and Slack access between sessions
- OpenGrants platform seats for the whole team
Professional Services
ScopedFrom $2,500Per month · scoped engagement
Where research is not enough and the work itself needs hands: capital campaigns, SBIR/STTR strategy and writing, and grants management for agencies.
- Nonprofit capital campaigns and grant writing
- SBIR/STTR strategy and proposal development
- Grants management software for agencies
- Security posture scan for grant-funded systems
Data, sourcing and handling
Research you can put in front of a board.
Egeria runs on the same funding infrastructure that powers OpenGrants — and every figure in a deliverable traces back to a primary source you can open yourself.
Primary sources only
Grants.gov, SAM.gov, SBIR/STTR, state and municipal portals, and IRS 990 filings. Every claim carries a citation and a read date.
Your documents stay yours
Org materials are held only for the engagement term, never used to train models, and returned or destroyed on request at close-out.
Named accountability
One researcher owns your account and signs the work. No anonymous queue, no rotating handoffs mid-engagement.
No award guarantees
Nobody can promise a grant award, and Egeria does not. What is committed to is the research, the cadence and the deadlines.
Questions
Before you send the form.
What do I actually get from the free assessment?
A written snapshot, usually two to three pages, covering the funding sources that plausibly fit your work, roughly how much is open in that field right now, and the two or three eligibility gaps most likely to block you. It is prepared by a person, not generated, and it is yours whether or not you go further.
Is this grant writing?
Research and strategy are the core of the work — deciding what to pursue and in what order. Writing is available through Professional Services, and many clients keep their own writers and use Egeria only to point them at the right programs.
How is this different from searching OpenGrants myself?
Searching the OpenGrants index is free and open to anyone. The database tells you what exists; Egeria tells you what you can win, reads the eligibility and award history behind each listing, and keeps the shortlist current as cycles move. If your team has the hours to do that, the platform alone may be all you need.
Who owns the research?
You do. Deliverables are yours to reuse, share with your board, or hand to another consultant. Underlying data comes from public sources and stays public.
What does it cost, and how long am I committed?
Retained engagements start at $2,500 per month, month to month, cancel any time. One-off sprints are a fixed fee scoped on the call. The assessment itself costs nothing and does not require a card.
How fast does work start?
Assessments are returned within [YOUR TURNAROUND, e.g. three business days]. Retained engagements begin within five business days of agreement, starting with the intake session.
Free funding assessment
Find out what you are eligible for before you spend another hour writing.
Tell us what you are trying to fund. A researcher reads it, runs a first pass against the index, and sends back a written snapshot of the funding field around your work.
- Prepared by a named person, not an automated report
- No account, no card, no obligation to continue
- Yours to keep and share internally