501(c)(FREE)
501(c)(FREE) is a free, open-source back office for small US nonprofits and grantmakers: donations and acknowledgement letters, expenses by Form 990 functional class, a full grantmaking pipeline, program-related investments, and a lightweight CRM (organizations, people, notes, meetings and tickets). Built with Next.js and Supabase. It's designed to be self-hosted by one organization per installation.
Built by SAIF for its nonprofit, SAIFbio, and open-sourced so other organizations can use it.
Status: early release (October 2026). It's adapted from the system SAIFbio uses day to day, but expect rough edges. Bug reports, setup problems and ideas are welcome in GitHub Issues.
Live demo: 501cfree-demo.vercel.app. Fictional sample data and pre-written sample AI results; explore freely, nothing you change is saved.
Try it in one minute: git clone https://github.com/nralston-saif/501cFREE.git && cd 501cFREE && pnpm install && pnpm dev, then open http://localhost:3000. With no database configured, the app runs in demo mode: fictional sample data, no login, and pre-written sample results for the AI features. Changes you make locally last until the server restarts; the hosted demo doesn't save changes.
What it does
Fundraising
- Record contributions: cash, check, wire, card, stock, crypto and in-kind. Each can carry donor restrictions, a quid-pro-quo disclosure, and a gift vehicle (donor-advised fund, IRA qualified charitable distribution, employer match and more).
- Generate and email acknowledgement letters built around IRS Pub 1771 requirements. They include the no-goods-or-services statement, quid-pro-quo estimates and in-kind descriptions without valuation. A frozen snapshot of each sent letter is kept, and a gift can't be edited once its letter is sent.
- Track stock gifts: security, shares, fair-market value and sale proceeds, with optional daily market prices.
- Receive donation inquiries from your website's donate form.
Expenses and reporting
- Categorize expenses by Form 990 functional class (program, management & general, fundraising). Attach receipts and track 1099 vendors.
- Bulk invoice upload: drop in PDFs, Word documents or photos. Claude reads each one and files it as a pending expense for review.
- Reports and CSV exports:
- a 990-style functional expense summary
- donor summaries
- grants paid, shaped like Schedule I
- calendar-year 1099 totals
Grantmaking
- A proposal pipeline. Proposals start as an intake inbox, fed by your website's form or entered by the team.
- Blind review: reviewers score and vote, with recusal for conflicts of interest. Votes stay hidden until everyone has voted. Who reviews is a setting: everyone on the team (default) or admins only.
- A collaborative grant memorandum during diligence. An optional AI research assistant can draft its sections.
- Decision, award, disbursements and grantee reports. Paying a disbursement records the matching expense automatically.
- A drafted decline email when a proposal is turned down.
Program-related investments (PRIs)
- SAFE, note, equity or loan investments in mission-aligned organizations, carried as balance-sheet assets (not as grants).
- Funding requires a completed mission-alignment memo, an attached executed instrument, and board approval above a threshold you set.
CRM
- Organizations and People in one directory, with affiliations between them (founder, executive, staff, board member, advisor, contact) and roles: donor, grantee, funder, vendor, lead. Logos and photos, documents, tags, and each record's giving and funding history.
- Global search (⌘K / Ctrl+K) across people, organizations, notes and meetings.
- Notes with attachments on any organization, person, proposal or PRI. A note can be linked to several records, and it autosaves as you type.
- A notes inbox: drop in documents, handwritten pages or spreadsheets. Claude proposes notes and new contacts, and a person reviews them before anything is saved.
- Meetings with optional live co-editing, plus team tickets with tags and assignment emails.
Integrations (all optional)
- QuickBooks Online two-way sync. Your bank feeds stay the source of truth; see docs/quickbooks.md.
- Claude (Anthropic) for invoice extraction, the notes inbox, research memos and decline emails.
- Resend for email.
- Liveblocks for real-time meeting notes.
- Financial Modeling Prep for stock prices.
Getting started
You need Node.js 20.11 or newer and pnpm.
- Create a free project at supabase.com.
- Get the code:
git clone https://github.com/nralston-saif/501cFREE.git && cd 501cFREE && pnpm install
- In Supabase, open SQL Editor, paste the whole of
supabase/setup.sql, and click Run.
- Run
pnpm onboard. It asks for your Supabase keys, writes .env.local, checks your database and sign-in settings, and creates your admin login.
- Run
pnpm dev, open http://localhost:3000 and sign in.
Then open Settings to enter your organization's legal name, EIN, address and mission, and invite your team from Settings → Team. docs/setup.md has the details, deploying, optional integrations and troubleshooting.
Setting up with a coding agent
You don't need to be a developer to install 501(c)(FREE). A coding agent such as Claude Code can do most of the work. The repository includes AGENTS.md (and CLAUDE.md, which loads it), so the agent starts out knowing the project's setup steps, conventions and checks.
-
Install a coding agent and open it in an empty folder.
-
Paste a prompt like this:
Set up 501(c)(FREE) for our nonprofit from https://github.com/nralston-saif/501cFREE. Clone it, read AGENTS.md and docs/setup.md, and install the dependencies. Walk me through creating the Supabase project and running supabase/setup.sql. When it's time for pnpm onboard, tell me to run it myself. Then start the app and confirm I can sign in. After that, help me deploy to Vercel and set up any optional integrations I choose (Claude, Resend, QuickBooks). Explain each step in plain language and ask before you do anything that costs money or can't be undone.
-
Do the steps the agent hands back to you: creating accounts, copying keys from the Supabase and Vercel dashboards, and running pnpm onboard. Running pnpm onboard yourself keeps your database keys and admin password out of the agent's conversation.
Once you're set up, the same agent can change the app for you, for example adding a field, a report or a new letter template. Ask it to follow AGENTS.md and to run pnpm typecheck, pnpm lint and pnpm test before you rely on a change. Have someone check money, tax and access-control changes before you use them.
Who can see what
Only people on your team list can sign in. There are no public sign-ups. There are two roles:
- Admin: everything, including expenses, banking and QuickBooks, reports and exports, team management, settings, making grant awards and paying them.
- Staff: everything else, including organizations, people, notes, meetings, tickets, donations, proposals, awards paperwork and PRIs.
Voting on, advancing and deciding grant proposals is for everyone on the team by default; Settings → Organization → Grant review can limit it to admins.
These rules are enforced in the database with row-level security and triggers, not only in the app: blind voting, admin-only payments, locked letters and the PRI funding checks hold even for someone calling the Supabase API directly.
Development
pnpm install
pnpm dev # demo mode unless .env.local configures Supabase
pnpm typecheck
pnpm lint
pnpm test # unit tests + database tests
pnpm build
pnpm db:bundle # regenerate supabase/setup.sql after changing a migration
pnpm test includes supabase/tests. Those tests apply every migration to an embedded Postgres (PGlite) and check sign-up restrictions, row-level security, storage policies and the database's business rules, so schema changes are tested without a Supabase project.
Using a coding agent? Point it at AGENTS.md first.
Documentation
| Doc | What's in it |
|---|
| AGENTS.md | Conventions, gotchas and checklists for contributors and coding agents |
| docs/setup.md | Installing, environment variables, deploying, website forms |
| docs/architecture.md | How the code is organized: data flow, auth, data model, database rules, storage, AI, demo mode, tests |
| docs/features.md | Every feature area: routes, components, actions, tables and rules |
| docs/glossary.md | Nonprofit and tax terms (Pub 1771, Form 990, PRI, DAF...) and where they appear |
| docs/README.md | Index of the docs folder |
| docs/quickbooks.md | The optional QuickBooks Online integration |
| CONTRIBUTING.md | How to contribute |
| CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md | How we treat each other |
| CHANGELOG.md | Releases and the database migrations each one adds |
| SECURITY.md |
Important notes
- US-specific. Letters, 990 categories, 1099 rules and PRI treatment follow US tax rules for 501(c)(3) public charities. The software isn't tax or legal advice. The acknowledgement-letter wording (
lib/pdf/letter-data.ts) is a starting point based on IRS publications (Pub 1771, 526, 590-B); have your own accountant or counsel review it, and your setup, before use.
- One organization per installation. There's no multi-tenancy. Each organization runs its own Supabase project and deployment.
License
MIT
