Grant Pilot

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: April 27, 2025

At GrantPilot, we are committed to protecting and preserving your privacy. This Privacy Policy describes how GrantPilot ("GrantPilot," "we," "our," or "us") collects, uses, or discloses personal information we receive through our platform, websites that link to this Privacy Policy, together with any related online or offline services provided by GrantPilot (collectively, the "Services"). GrantPilot is a software-as-a-service platform that provides grant matching, AI-assisted grant writing, and award compliance tracking tools. This policy also describes your choices about the collection and use of your information. 

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before you start to use our Services. By using the GrantPilot platform, our website, or other Services, you agree to be bound and abide by our posted terms and this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to our posted terms and Privacy Policy, or if you violate them in any way, your right to access the Services is terminated. 


1. How We Collect Information


We may collect information about you through various means, including:

  • Directly from you, both online (e.g., the GrantPilot platform, website, email) and offline; 
  • Through your use of the GrantPilot platform, websites, or related online services; 
  • Through account registration and organizational profile creation; 
  • Through documents and materials you upload to the platform;
  • Through your interactions with AI-powered features, including the grant matching engine, AI writing assistant, and chat assistant; and
  • From third-party sources, including our service providers and technology partners, to supplement information we already possess.


2. Types of Information We Collect


In order to provide you with our Services or otherwise communicate with you, we may collect the following categories of information:

  • Contact information, such as name, email address, phone number, and the reason for contact;
  • Organizational information, such as organization name, type (e.g., nonprofit, government entity, independent grant writer), mission area, and organizational context;
  • Account information, including the name and contact details of the designated account manager for your organization;
  • Grant-related information, such as grant history, funding interests, project details, award terms, and compliance deadlines;
  • Documents and materials you upload to the platform, including supporting documentation, grant contracts, and other files;
  • Payment and transaction information related to purchases you make through the Services, which is processed by our third-party payment processor, Stripe. We do not directly collect or store your payment card information;
  • Survey information in response to questions we may send you through the Services, including for feedback and research purposes;
  • Communications between you and us, such as via email, the platform, or other channels; and 
  • Online user activity described in the next section. 


3. Online User Activity, Cookies, and Information Collected by Other Automatic Means


GrantPilot uses "cookies," which is a commonly used web technology that allows websites to store and retrieve certain information on a user's system, and track a user's online activities. We, together with the vendors we use, may collect information about your use of our Services by such automated means, including, but not limited to, cookies, pixels, and other similar technologies. 

Cookies and similar technologies can help us automatically identify you when you return to our website or the GrantPilot platform. Cookies help us review traffic patterns, improve the platform, and determine what Services are popular. We can also use such information to deliver customized content to users of the Services whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area. 

When you use the Services, we may collect certain information by automated means, for example:

  • Usage details about your interaction with our Services (such as date, time, and length of visits, specific pages or content accessed during visits, search terms, features used, frequency of visits, and referring website addresses); 
  • Device information, including the IP address and other details of a device that you use to connect with our Services (such as device type and unique device identifier, operating system, browser type, and mobile network information); and 
  • Information about your interactions with AI-powered features, including queries submitted to the grant matching engine, chat assistant conversations, and AI writing assistant usage. 

If a user does not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers allow the visitor to reject cookies, but if you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our Services. We may share non-personal information we obtained via cookies with our affiliates. Because there is not yet a consensus on how companies should respond to browser-based do-not-track ("DNT") mechanisms, we do not respond to web browser-based DNT signals at this time.


4. How We Use Information We Collect


We may use the information we obtain about you for purposes allowed by applicable laws, including to:

  • Provide our Services to you, including grant matching, AI-assisted grant writing, award compliance tracking, and related platform features; 
  • Create and manage your account and organizational profile; 
  • Process and match grant opportunities to your organization based on your organizational context, mission area, and funding interests; 
  • Enable the AI writing assistant and chat assistant to generate grant-related content and recommendations tailored to your needs; 
  • Process uploaded documents, including chunking and embedding them to create a knowledge base that supports your use of the platform's AI features; 
  • Process in-app purchases and manage your subscription; 
  • Monitor the performance of our Services, including metrics such as total number of platform users, traffic, and usage patterns; 
  • Contact you or respond to an inquiry from you in connection with your use of the Services; 
  • Communicate with you about our products or services; 
  • Help diagnose problems with the Services, enhance its security, administer it, and provide technical support; 
  • Generate aggregate statistical studies; 
  • Prevent or detect fraud; 
  • Operate, evaluate, and improve our programs, our websites, and other services we offer, and diagnose or fix technology problems; 
  • Analyze and enhance our communications and strategies (including by identifying when emails sent to you have been received or read); 
  • Inform you about changes to this Privacy Policy and other policies; and 
  • Comply and enforce as needed legal requirements, industry standards, our policies, and our contractual rights. 


5. Artificial Intelligence and Data Processing


The GrantPilot platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to provide its core Services. This section describes how your information interacts with those technologies.

AI Models and Training Data. Our federal grant matching engine is powered by a custom, fine-tuned AI model trained exclusively on publicly available government datasets. No user-uploaded content or personal information is used to train our AI models.

PII Sanitization. Before your data is processed by any AI feature, we use automated tools (AWS Comprehend) to detect and scrub personally identifiable information such as names, social security numbers, and financial account details from the data.

Third-Party AI Services. Certain features of the platform use third-party AI services for state and foundation grant discovery. These third-party services are used solely to search and aggregate publicly available information from the web. No client data or user-uploaded content is transmitted to these third-party AI providers.

Chat Assistant. The platform includes a chat assistant powered by a third-party AI model. The chat assistant may reference your uploaded documents and organizational context to provide relevant responses. Your data is not used by any third-party AI provider to train their models.

Document Processing. Documents you upload to the platform are stored securely and may be chunked and embedded to create a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) knowledge base that supports the AI features of your account. This knowledge base is private to your account and is not shared with other users.

User Responsibility. AI-generated outputs, including grant recommendations, draft language, and chat responses, are provided as tools to assist you. You are solely responsible for reviewing, verifying, and editing all AI-generated content before use or submission to any funding agency.


6. How We Share Your Information


We will not disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent, except in the following circumstances:

  • Limited information (e.g., IP addresses, page views, etc.) may be collected through third-party online tools such as cookies, as described above. As explained above, you can opt out of certain cookies or take other steps to prevent such collection. 
  • We may share your personal information with our affiliates in our collective operation of business activities. 
  • We may share your personal information with service providers that we believe need the information to perform a technology, business, or other professional function for us. Our key service providers include: Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud hosting, data storage, and data processing; Stripe for payment processing; and AI service providers used for grant discovery and platform features. We only provide such vendors with information so they can perform their required functions on our behalf. 
  • We may disclose information about you (i) if we are required to do so by law or legal process, (ii) when we believe disclosure is necessary to prevent harm or financial loss, (iii) in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual fraudulent or illegal activity, or (iv) under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of our staff, users, or the public. 

We reserve the right to transfer information we maintain in the event we sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets. If we engage in such sale or transfer, we will make reasonable efforts to direct the recipient to use your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. 


7. Your Privacy Choices


We offer you certain choices about what information we collect from you, how we use and disclose the information, and how we communicate with you. 

  • Marketing Emails: From time to time, we may contact you via email for the purpose of providing announcements, promotional offers, alerts, confirmations, surveys, and/or other general communication. You may choose not to receive marketing emails from us by clicking the unsubscribe link in the marketing emails you receive from us, or by sending an email to contact@grantpilot.org. Even if you opt out of receiving such communications, we will continue sending you non-marketing email communications, such as administrative or transaction alerts, or information about changes to our Privacy Policy, when necessary.
  • Cookies: Web browsers may offer users the ability to disable certain types of cookies; however, if cookies are disabled, some features or functionality of our Services may not function correctly. 


8. State-Specific Rights


Certain privacy laws may provide additional rights with respect to our collection and use of personal information. Due to our size, operations, and the nature of our business, we may not be subject to any particular state's privacy laws, but you can submit such requests to us via the contact information provided below and we will endeavor to fulfill any obligations that are legally required; otherwise, we will respond to such requests in our discretion.

Such states may provide rights such as to: (i) disclose personal information maintained about the individual; (ii) correct or delete personal information maintained about the individual (subject to certain exceptions); (iii) not sell personal information about the individual to a third party (excluding qualified service providers); and (iv) not engage in third-party targeted advertising. 

We do not sell personal information to third parties. We do not engage in impactful profiling activities with respect to a user's personal information, use sensitive personal information except for the reasons provided, and do not generally provide a financial incentive in return for the collection or use of personal information (except where disclosed with relevant terms at the time of collection). We do not share personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. It can be unlawful to discriminate against an individual for exercising such rights. 


9. How We Protect Information


We endeavor to maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we maintain against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure, or use. Our security measures include:

However, we cannot ensure the security of any information you transmit to us, or guarantee that this information will not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. We will make any legally required disclosures in the event of any compromise of personal information. To the extent the law allows us to provide such notification via email or conspicuous posting on the Services, you agree to accept notice in that form.

We will only retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for any business, legal, account, or reporting requirements. Certain users, including government entities, may have specific data retention obligations under applicable law or grant award terms; we will work with such users to accommodate reasonable retention requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of the information, the purposes for which we process the information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, as well as all applicable legal requirements. 


10. Children's Privacy


We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children under 16. The Services are intended for use by organizations and professionals, not individual minors. If you believe that we have collected personal information about a child under 16, please inform us by contacting us using the contact information provided below.


11. Updates to Our Privacy Policy


We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, in our sole discretion. When we make changes we deem material, we will provide you with prominent notice as appropriate under the circumstances, e.g., on the Services or by sending you an email. In some cases, we will notify you in advance of the changes taking effect. Your continued use of the Services after the changes have been made will constitute your acceptance of those changes. Please therefore make sure you read any such notice carefully. 


12. Contact Us


If you have any questions about this policy or our privacy practices, please contact us by email at: contact@grantpilot.org.