Field Notes
Field Notes is where Mavenly's team thinks out loud — about grant funding, AI in nonprofit operations, product decisions, and the people doing this work. Updated regularly. Best read with coffee.
Featured · May 2026
Why discovery is the wrong first problem to solve in grant funding.
Most grant tools begin with the question "how do we help nonprofits find more funders?" That's the wrong starting point. The real problem isn't that nonprofits can't find funders — it's that the funders they find don't match the work they actually do.
The compose problem.
A grant proposal isn't a document. It's a translation problem — converting the work an organization actually does into the language a specific funder uses to evaluate it.
Trevor James · April 24, 2026
What we owe grantmakers .
Nonprofit-tech often treats foundations as adversaries — a friction layer to be optimized around. That framing is wrong on the merits and operationally counterproductive.
Trevor James · April 17, 2026
Notes from 27 design partners .
Before we wrote a line of production code, we sat down with 27 development directors at HBCU-adjacent nonprofits across the Southeast.
Trevor James · April 10, 2026
The three-week draft.
Most foundation grant timelines slip because the early scoping work is invisible. A simple framework — origin, alignment, ask, plan — collapses three months into three weeks.
Trevor James · April 3, 2026
On theory of change .
Most 'theories of change' submitted to funders are descriptions of activities, not theories. The distinction is the difference between asking funders to trust you and asking them to evaluate you.
Trevor James · March 27, 2026
Building in the open .
'Building in public' is overused. For us it means specific things — sharing roadmaps with customers, publishing security posture before we have to.
Trevor James · March 20, 2026
The renewal trap.
Renewal grants have ~3× the conversion rate of new ones. But the same characteristics that make them easier to win also make them seductive.
Trevor James · March 13, 2026
When AI shouldn't draft.
Compose can draft anything. That doesn't mean it should. Some sections — particularly community context and lived-experience narratives — are areas where AI introduces more risk than benefit.
Trevor James · March 6, 2026
Inside the HBCU portfolio.
For 12 months, we shadowed the HBCU Endowment Fund's grant operations. Eighteen funders, $4.2M raised, 73% conversion on submitted applications.
Trevor James · February 27, 2026
The budget narrative .
Most budget narratives describe what the money is for. The good ones explain why each line item is the right shape — why this many staff, this much overhead.
Trevor James · February 20, 2026
On declining grants.
Most nonprofits accept every grant offered. That's how they end up running programs that don't fit their mission. There are good reasons to decline.
Trevor James · February 13, 2026
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