Hi, I’m Ben.
The truth
I’m a former ED, finance director, and grant writer. Let me guess — you need more funding, but don’t want to hire more. You're competitive and trying to keep up with technology, while juggling transitions in your funding and team.
I started building GrantLoop for my own needs, and somehow rallied some of the most brilliant minds in AI today to build the first AI model specific to nonprofit grant writing.
GrantLoop empowers your team to write grants with hallucination rates 10x lower than ChatGPT, and discover and research opportunities in minutes, not months.
I'm one person with a laptop, and a couple of my brilliant best friends. I know this sounds iffy. Can we really sustain GrantLoop’s position as the most intelligent AI grant writing model? Honestly, it remains to be seen.
You might want to work with me if:
You have a grants program that wins at least 5+ grants per year. This gives AI sufficient reference material to write compelling applications.
You know there are more grant opportunities than your current capacity allows you to pursue. This means there is opportunity for growth.
You are going through a staffing transition. Many successful customers lose a member of their grants team, and use AI to fill the gap.
You probably shouldn’t work with me if:
You don’t have the budget to pay $850/mo, even if success is guaranteed.
Your nonprofit has never written a grant before. (AI will do 75% of the work, but an expert must finish the remaining 25%).
Benjamin Yao, ben@grantloop.com
Founder & CEO
Team
(Basically all of my closest, nerdy friends)
Benjamin Yao
Founder + CEO
Former ED, nonprofit consultant, and grant writer. Dork about cooking and avid about the outdoors.
Siddharth Parambi
Data Science Advisor
Ex-Harvard, software engineer & data scientist. Passionate about education. Loves rock climbing.
Elena Grajales
Design Advisor
Ex-UPenn. Life-long vinyl enthusiast and proud member of the Film Society.
Srikar Pamidimukkala
Data Science Advisor
Ex-Georgia Tech. Loves a good game of D&D. Practitioner of loving-kindness meditation.
Erik Zhang
Software Advisor
Ex-UPenn M&T, software engineer. Lover of technology and AI systems.
Jason Zhang
Algorithms Advisor
Stanford machine learning researcher. Nonprofit-founder. Loves a good game of tennis.
Integrity first
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Dream big
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Build fast
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Integrity first 〰️ Dream big 〰️ Build fast 〰️
Build the future with us:
Follow passion
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Deliver brilliance
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Follow passion 〰️ Deliver brilliance 〰️
Tenets
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We're taking a gamble on honesty—the radical belief that business can be done differently. When other companies hire more salespeople, we hire more engineers.
We refuse to hold clients hostage with annual contracts—instead, we offer a 6-month money-back guarantee. Not because we're nice, but because we're confident. Our customers are smart enough to recognize value without the high-pressure tactics.
Think about it: if a company won't let you walk away, they're probably afraid you will.
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Sales pitches are short-lived; trusted relationships endure. We build momentum through consistent results, not persistent pitches. When nonprofits secure doubled funding and immediately tell their networks, that's our marketing department in action. When organizations succeed beyond their expectations and stake their reputation on referrals, that's true momentum.
Building trust isn't just ethical—it's efficient. To hell with sales and marketing. Customer love is our growth strategy.
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Complex software isn't a badge of honor—it's a failure of design. The hardest part of creating great software isn't adding features—it's knowing what to leave out. While others build "comprehensive solutions" littered with half-baked features, we create tools nonprofits can master without endless training. Our tech isn't just impressive because of what it offers, but because of what it omits: confusion, complexity, and wasted time.
We build only what matters: tools that maximize grants while minimizing effort, and nothing else. After all, the most powerful tool is the kind your team actually uses.
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We're probably more paranoid about privacy than our users are. By rejecting outside investment and its demands for growth at all costs, we've maintained our independence to choose the right path over the most profitable one. We don't sell information or use it to target ads.
We see privacy as an obsession, not an obligation—right down to constructing a new, separate database for each nonprofit we partner with.
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We build what nonprofits with small-to-midsize teams ($1-20M budgets) actually need: AI that wins more grants with less effort. Not because AI is the next big thing, but because we've been in their shoes.
We’re former ED’s and development directors, and keep our part-time roles as grant writers and board members to stay close to our roots.