Across the giving lifecycle
Every stage, in one connected flow.
Custodian is a grants management system for UK charitable foundations and family offices: one live record, with AI that shows its reasoning.
Grant management and AI due diligence
Inbound applications arrive in one clean, readable view.
Each application is assessed by AI against your funding priorities, with its reasoning shown.
First-pass due diligence runs as applications land, drawing on integrated UK data sources including Charity Commission, Companies House, OSCR and 360Giving.
Human review and commentary sit alongside the automated assessment, and your team makes every decision.
Assess
AI score with its reasoning shown, due diligence and area deprivation.
Review
Grants officers review each application, add comments and see how the round is tracking against budget.
Shortlist
Trustees view, comment and vote upon proposals, with AI summaries and scoring shown.
Decide
Award and decline letters are sent from Custodian on your behalf, with grantees receiving full reporting and compliance guidance, as set by your foundation.
Expressions of interest follow the same path. Every correction a team member makes is recorded.
Every application carries its AI assessment and score breakdown, eligibility flags, budget split, due diligence checks and the team's commentary in one record.
Strategic alignment
How closely the work fits your giving strategy and the programme.
Community need
The evidence of need in the place and people served.
Track record
What the organisation has delivered before.
Budget quality
Whether the costs are clear, realistic and proportionate.
Delivery risk
What could stop the work happening as planned.
Additionality
What your grant makes possible that would not happen otherwise.
Proactive grantmaking and sourced partnerships
Not all giving begins with an application. Sourced partners are logged and carried through the same eligibility, due diligence and scoring as inbound applications, so proactive funding meets the same standard.
Find the organisations you haven't met yet
Search registered charities and CICs from inside Custodian to find partners aligned to your giving strategy and priorities.
Log a prospective partner
Log a prospective partner and Custodian screens and assesses it in the same way as inbound applications.
Partners suggested for you
Custodian suggests partners for you to review and consider, based on your funding patterns and priorities.
Trustee voting and board papers
Board papers are shown in one place, with AI summaries, scoring, team commentary and due diligence findings.
Trustees read, comment and vote in a single view, with no inboxes and no paperwork. Every question, answer and decision is recorded against each trustee's record and held in the audit trail.
A trustee does not need a login to take part. Add them by name and an admin can record their vote for them, so every trustee counts toward the majority.
Your funding ledger
Every award in one register with its round, programme, amount, payments made and status. Open any award for its payment schedule, reporting and scores.
Award letters are sent from Custodian with your conditions built in, and finance and admins can be alerted as each award is made.
Your grant data can also be published to 360Giving automatically, straight from the register, with nothing to upload.
Grant payments
Grant award notifications and compliance guidance are issued to grantees directly through Custodian. Payment schedules are tracked, and overdue instalments are flagged. Bank details are checked for errors automatically, and balances are reconciled against budgets, with cash flows generated. Every approval and regulatory step is logged for best-practice governance.
Also covers budget against plan, month-by-month cash flow, year-end grant creditors for your accountants, and multi-year grants counted in full when decided.
Grant reporting and monitoring
Every grant's reporting schedule is tracked in one place, with overdue submissions highlighted automatically.
As each report arrives, AI surfaces how the grant's delivery has aligned to the original intentions of the application, and the overall programme's objectives. Chase everything outstanding in one click, and finance and admins can receive a Monday digest of what is due.
See your giving whole, for the first time.
Most foundations struggle to see their giving as a whole. When it is time to report to the board or publish an annual review, teams piece information together from many sources, and the result rarely reflects the depth of the work.
Custodian keeps a live, consolidated view of the entire portfolio.
Ask Custodian any question about your funding portfolio, patterns and trends, and get an intelligent answer back. It goes beyond the facts of what you have funded, with insight into how you could strengthen your approach and advance your giving priorities.
“Using our portfolio, outcomes and deprivation data, identify our biggest strategic weaknesses. For each, recommend what to change going forward and why. Draw on wider sector practice and landscape of need if possible.”
The result is not just better reporting. It is a clearer, more confident understanding of where giving is going and what it is achieving.
See where your giving goes, and the need of the areas it reaches.
Board-ready PDF
Export the Insights view as a PDF for the board, with the written summary included.
Drill into the map
Move from region to county to district to see exactly where your giving lands.
Need across the UK
Deprivation measured for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, each against its own national index.
Figures you can trust
Every figure in the AI summary is checked against your data, and a summary quoting a number it cannot match is discarded.
AI you can scrutinise.
Custodian's AI is a starting point for your team, never the decision. It reads each application against your foundation's own giving strategy, shows its reasoning and score breakdown, and leaves shortlisting, voting and awards to people.
The same criteria apply to every application, so your team can see why one scored higher than another and challenge it. Every correction a team member makes is recorded in the audit trail.
Reasoning shown
Every score comes with its reasoning and a breakdown by criterion, so no decision rests on a number alone.
People decide
AI never shortlists, votes or awards. Your team and trustees make every decision.
Figures checked
Every figure in an AI summary is checked against your data. A summary quoting a number it cannot match is discarded.
Never used for training
Custodian never uses customer data to train AI models.
Grant data is stored in the UK, with limited supplier processing abroad under approved frameworks. Custodian is built for UK GDPR and registered with the ICO.
Ask your own AI assistant about your grants.
Connect your favourite AI assistant, like ChatGPT or Claude, to Custodian and ask about your applications, payments, reports and portfolio, from your desk or your phone.
Read-only
An assistant can look but never change anything, and it never sees bank details.
Only what you can already see
An assistant acts as the person who connected it, so it can never see more than they can.
Your foundation decides
Switched off until an admin turns it on, and an admin can disconnect anyone at any time.
Built for foundations, not adapted for them.
Corporate foundations
Scale giving with a clear audit trail
Family offices and family foundations
Professional governance for private giving
Companies with a CSR policy
Evidence-led community investment
Built for the standards foundations answer to.
Development and build were led by a leading cyber security engineer from the beginning.
A permanent audit trail records every decision, vote, payment and edit, with who made it and when. It is searchable and exportable, so board scrutiny, compliance checks and regulator requests are answered from one source of truth.
Residency
Grant data is stored in the UK.
Processing
Registered with the ICO, number ZC282516.
Model training
Customer data is never used to train AI models.
Audit trail
Every decision recorded with who made it and when.
Nightly encrypted backups
Every foundation's data is backed up each night and encrypted.
Tested isolation
Each foundation's data is kept apart from every other, and tested automatically.
Yours to take with you
On leaving, your data is returned and deleted within 30 days.
Bank details protected
Visible only to finance and admins, and never passed to an AI assistant.
Frequently asked questions.
What is grant management software?
The system funders use to run grantmaking from application to impact, instead of managing it across spreadsheets, documents and email.
Who is Custodian grant management software for?
UK charitable foundations and family offices that make grants. It is built for the whole team: the staff who run grant rounds, the trustees who decide and the finance team who pay.
How is Custodian different from general grants or CRM software?
Custodian is built specifically for foundations: strategy-led assessment, trustee decision-making and portfolio oversight, rather than a general tool adapted for funders.
Can we use our current application form, whatever it is?
Yes. Custodian works with whichever form service you already use, including Typeform, Formstack and Gravity Forms, so applicants see no change.
Can we move our existing grants and funding history into Custodian?
Yes. Custodian supports you through onboarding at no cost, and your active and completed grants come across with their payments, reporting, grant purpose and impact measurement, so your whole funding history is live from day one.
How much does grant management software cost?
Custodian pricing starts at £350 a month. Every licence includes all features, and pricing is tiered by the foundation's annual grant value. There is no charge per user, and the number of applications you receive does not change your price.
How does AI grant assessment work?
Custodian's AI reads every application against your foundation's own giving strategy and gives your team an assessment with its reasoning shown. It is a starting point, not a decision: shortlisting, voting and awards are always made by people.
How does Custodian do due diligence on grant applicants?
Every applicant gets due diligence as their application arrives, including checks against official registers such as the Charity Commission and Companies House. Custodian also shows any previous funding relationships published on 360Giving. Anything that needs a closer look is flagged for your team.
How do trustees review and vote on grant applications?
Trustees have their own view of everything shortlisted, where they read, discuss and vote in one place, with every decision kept on record.
Is our grant data used to train AI models?
No. Custodian never uses customer data to train AI models. If your foundation switches on the optional AI assistant connection, what a member's assistant reads is governed by that member's agreement with the assistant's provider, not by Custodian.
Where is our grant data stored, and is Custodian built for UK GDPR?
Grant data is stored in the UK, with limited supplier processing abroad under approved frameworks. Custodian is built for UK GDPR and Custodian Philanthropy Ltd is registered with the ICO, number ZC282516.
Can we ask about our grants from Claude or ChatGPT?
Yes. Custodian connects to any AI chatbot that supports connectors, including Claude and ChatGPT, once your foundation's admin switches it on, and the admin can disconnect anyone at any time. Ask about your portfolio, including how your giving could be improved against the need in the areas you serve. The connection is read-only, follows each person's role, and never shares bank details. Suggestions come from the assistant, working from what Custodian shares with it. What an assistant reads is governed by that person's agreement with the assistant's provider, not by Custodian.
Better decisions. Fairer funding. Greater impact.
Grant management software for foundations that want to be better funders, not just faster ones.