Using PowerGrant inside Claude

If you already work in Claude, you can connect PowerGrant to it and ask questions about your own data in plain conversation, without switching tabs.

“Which Iowa foundations fund general operating support, and which of them look closest to the funders we’ve already won?”

Claude answers that by reading your PowerGrant knowledge base and grant history alongside the Form 990 foundation data, then reasoning across both.

What Claude can see

Claude gets read-only access to three things:

• Foundation data. Search roughly 29,000 U.S. private foundations, built from their IRS 990-PF filings.
• Your grants. List your applications, and open any one of them in full. The list matches your Submission Library, so archived applications are left out — an archived one is still reachable if you ask Claude for it directly.
• Your knowledge base. Search your saved facts, mission text, bios, and past proposals.

It cannot create, edit, or delete anything, it cannot act on your behalf inside PowerGrant, and it can never reach another organization’s data. Scoping is automatic: your organization is not something Claude passes in, so there is no question it can ask that returns someone else’s account.

The reasoning happens in your Claude account and counts against your Claude plan’s usage, not against your PowerGrant plan.

Before you start

The connector depends on a few things on Claude’s side that are worth knowing before you sit down to set it up.

• You need a Claude account and you must be signed in.
• On Claude’s free tier you can run only one custom connector at a time. Adding PowerGrant will displace another one if you already have it. Paid Claude plans allow several.
• On a Claude Team or Enterprise account, setup is not self-service. An Owner has to enable connectors for the whole workspace first. Only then can members add PowerGrant individually. If you are on a university or large nonprofit workspace, this is usually the step that holds things up, so it is worth asking your Claude administrator early.
• Use claude.ai in a browser, or the Claude desktop app. Custom connector setup on Claude mobile is still in beta.

Connect it

1. In Claude, open Settings → Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector.
3. Enter the PowerGrant server address: https://app.powergrant.ai/api/mcp
4. Claude sends you to PowerGrant to sign in and approve the connection. Review what you are granting, then confirm.
5. You land back in Claude with PowerGrant connected. There is no token to copy or paste.

Ask something you already know the answer to the first time, such as “summarize my organization’s past grants,” so you can confirm it is reading the right account.

If you work in Claude Code

Claude Code connects with a personal access token instead of the browser flow. Ask us for a token and add it with:

claude mcp add --transport http powergrant \
  https://app.powergrant.ai/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer pg_mcp_<your-token>"

Add --scope user to make it available across all your projects. Run /mcp to confirm it connected.

Good to know

• The connector is available on paid plans, including during your free trial.
• It is read-only by design. Nothing Claude does through the connector can change your PowerGrant data, so it is safe to explore.
• Foundation answers come from filed IRS data, which the IRS publishes on a delay of roughly 18–24 months. Treat them as research, not live intelligence.
• Disconnecting is immediate. Remove the connector in Claude’s settings, or ask us to revoke access, and the next request stops working.
• If Claude says it cannot reach PowerGrant, check that your subscription is active. Access is re-checked on every request, so a lapsed plan cuts the connector off straight away.