Director
The AI agent team that lets a single founder run a $5M nonprofit with no back-office staff
Turning under-resourced founders into fundable, operationally tight organizations
directorforgood.org
Problem – Founders Are the Whole Leadership Team
Nonprofit founders are carrying 5 jobs on 1 salary.
They're expected to:
- Lead programs and vision
- Raise money (major gifts, grants, events)
- Run operations and finance
- Own communications and storytelling
- Manage staff, boards, and compliance
When funding tightens and staff are cut, all of this collapses back onto one person. Right now, most of their time and money are trapped in back-office work that should be automated. Promising orgs plateau at $300–600k or quietly shut down — not for lack of impact, but for lack of backbone.
Ideal Customer – Downshifted Orgs (Beachhead)
Our initial focus: orgs that already proved they can raise $400k–$1M.
These orgs:
- Have real donor and community relationships
- Have a history of 7-figure budgets or close
But in the current funding environment:
- They've laid off staff
- The founder is back to doing everything
- Many are considering shutting down despite strong demand
This hits founders of color especially hard, as equity-era funding retrenches.
These leaders don't need another tool. They need a backbone.
Ideal Customer – Foundations as Buyers
Foundations can sponsor multiple orgs at once.
The opportunity:
- Foundations already fund capacity-building for grantees
- They can purchase Director packages for 5–10 orgs
- One contract, multiple organizations transformed
Why this works:
- Foundations get measurable capacity ROI across portfolio
- Orgs get backbone support they couldn't afford alone
- Director gets predictable, larger contracts
A single foundation can unlock Director for an entire cohort of grantees.
Market Opportunity
A massive, underserved market ready for AI-native solutions.
TAM: $164B – Total US Nonprofit Administrative Spending
- 1.8M nonprofits in the US (1.5M are 501(c)(3)s)
- Nonprofit sector contributes $1.4 trillion to GDP
- Administrative overhead averages 11.7% = $164B annually
- This spending is ripe for AI automation
SAM: $3.5B – Small/Mid Nonprofits ($250k–$2M budgets)
- ~108,000 organizations in our target segment
- 92% of nonprofits operate under $1M/year
- Current back-office spend: $32k–$200k per org
- Existing solutions: $5.5B nonprofit software + $6.7B consulting market
SOM: $50M – 5-Year Obtainable Market
- 500 organizations at ~$100k/year
- 30–50 pods at 10–16 orgs each
- Represents <2% of SAM (credible capture rate)
68% of nonprofits now use AI (up from 58% in 2023). The market is ready for an AI-native backbone.
Sources: Independent Sector, Statista, NCCS, Google for Nonprofits Survey 2025, Intent Market Research
Broken Options
Existing solutions don't fit this stage.
DIY SaaS stack
CRMs, grant tools, accounting, email… Founders don't have time to integrate and maintain them.
Consultants & agencies
Project-based, expensive, seen as "overhead." Advice without ongoing responsibility.
Rebuilding staff
- ED: $100–150k
- Ops/Finance: ~$100k
- Development: ~$100k
- Comms/Program ops: $60–100k
There is no integrated, AI-native backbone designed for $400k–$1M orgs that have real relationships but no team.
Director – What We Are
Director is an AI-native backbone and forward-deployed team for nonprofits.
Director OS – a vertical operating system for:
- • Revenue & relationships
- • Runway & finance
- • Ops & compliance
- • Board & funder narratives
Director Pod – shared leadership capacity:
- • Forward-Deployed Director (FDD)
- • Finance/ops leadership
- • Dedicated dev & ops roles as we scale
- • Long term, Director becomes the autopilot for the nonprofit back office, not just a helper
We plug into an existing org and donor base and give them the leadership bench they can't afford to rebuild alone.
Fundraising Philosophy – Relationships First
Director is built around major gifts and real relationships, not grant roulette.
Durable funding comes from:
- • Major donors
- • Anchor institutions
- • Long-term partners
Grants are part of the picture, but:
- • They are downstream of relationships
- • "Open call" grant-chasing is mostly a distraction for this segment
Director's focus:
- • Map and grow the major gifts pipeline
- • Prepare founders for high-stakes meetings
- • Use grants strategically once relationships exist
Director is a relationship and revenue engine, not a shot-in-the-dark grant factory.
The Director Pod – Capacity Ramp
Pods scale from 4 → 8 → 16 orgs as the OS and agents mature.
Year 1 – Proto-Pod Team:
- • Founder/CEO
- • 1 Forward-Deployed Director
- • 1 Finance Director
- • 1 Founding Engineer
Phase 2 – 8 orgs
Mature core agents handle repetitive tasks. Same structure supports more orgs.
Phase 3 – 16 orgs
2+ FDDs. Standardized playbooks. Agents do recurring work.
Phase 4 – 100+ orgs
- • AI-native director team handles 90–95% of recurring work
- • Pod becomes supervisory layer, not execution layer
- • Single founder safely runs $3–5M org with no internal back-office hires
Director OS – Product Overview
One pane of glass for an org's backbone.
Revenue & Relationships
Major gifts map, warm pipeline, next-best actions
Runway & Finance
Live cash forecasts, budget vs actuals visibility
Ops & Compliance
Recurring task engine, checklists, playbooks
Narratives & Reporting
Board decks, funder reports, impact one-pagers
Data flows in from email, calendar, finance systems, docs, and existing CRMs. Over time, Director OS becomes the autopilot layer that runs the nonprofit back office end-to-end.
AI Agents – From 2–4x Today to 90–95% Automation
On the path to automating 90–95% of nonprofit back-office work.
Major Gifts Agent
- • Scans email, calendar, CRM
- • Maintains relationship maps
- • Drafts donor emails & briefs
Finance & Runway Agent
- • Pulls accounting data
- • Proposes categorizations
- • Raises runway alerts
Ops & Compliance Agent
- • Runs recurring checklists
- • Generates reminders
- • Manages task lists
Board & Reporting Agent
- • Assembles board decks
- • Creates funder reports
- • Keeps board-ready view
Today: Agents draft, humans decide. Future: Agents execute end-to-end; humans supervise and handle exceptions.
Economics – Why This Makes Sense
Director makes a serious backbone affordable and scalable.
Traditional backbone costs (small org):
- • ED: $100–150k
- • Ops/Finance: ~$100k
- • Dev: ~$100k
- • Comms/Program ops: $60–100k
- • Total: $360–450k/year
With Director:
- • ED/founder: $100–150k
- • Director Pod: ~$80–120k/year
- • Total backbone: $180–270k/year
- • Long term, as a Pod supervises 100+ orgs, backbone costs can drop by ~80%, shifting dollars from administration back into programs
As Pods scale, pod-level gross margins expand while keeping human leadership involvement high.
Why Now – AI Agents + Nonprofit Pressure
Two timing curves are intersecting.
Agentic AI is production-ready:
- • "AI coworkers" already shipping in engineering, finance, and customer ops
- • Small human teams can manage far more complexity with agents
Nonprofits are under structural pressure:
- • Orgs with $1M+ budgets are losing staff
- • Funders want grantees with credible backbones and visibility
The opportunity:
- • For the first time, it's realistic to imagine automating 90–95% of nonprofit back-office work and letting a single founder safely run a $3–5M org with almost no internal ops staff
Director sits at this intersection: an AI-native backbone delivered by a lean, forward-deployed team to orgs that cannot justify rebuilding full in-house leadership.
Go-to-Market
We start where we already have pull.
Existing relationships
First 2–4 orgs from founders you're already effectively "directing."
Downshifted $1M orgs
Target leaders who proved they can raise $400k–$1M but had to cut staff.
Funder collaborations
Position Director as capacity-building that makes grantees more investable.
Sales motion:
- • Short diagnostic: map "today vs with Director"
- • Demo Director OS + agents
- • Show what gets taken off the founder's plate
- • Close annual retainers
- • Expand scope over time
Business Model & QSBS-Friendly Structure
AI-native vertical SaaS with embedded forward-deployed team.
Revenue model
- • Annual retainers per org
- • Tied to budget band and complexity
- • Goal: multiple Pods, each supporting up to 16 orgs
- • At scale, Director can redirect billions of dollars of nonprofit overhead back into direct programs and community work
Cost structure
- • Lean Pods (FDD + Finance Director)
- • Supported by agents and product
- • Engineering compounds across all clients
QSBS-aware design
- • U.S. C-corp
- • Product-centric operating business
- • Software & data model assets
Strategic Partners & Structure
HiiiWAV is our 501(c)(3) partner for philanthropic capacity-building.
HiiiWAV (501c3)
- Founded by Bosko Kante, focused on arts and social impact
- Serves as philanthropic conduit for capacity-building grants to orgs Director serves
- Enables foundations and donors to fund nonprofit backbone capacity tax-deductibly
How it works:
- Foundations grant to HiiiWAV for capacity-building programs
- HiiiWAV funds nonprofits' access to Director services
- Director provides backbone support; philanthropic dollars stay with nonprofits
Governance & Conflict Management:
- Independent HiiiWAV board approves all Director-related arrangements
- Bosko recuses from any HiiiWAV decisions involving Director
- Arms-length pricing; written conflict of interest policy on file
This structure lets philanthropic dollars flow to under-resourced nonprofits while Director operates as a sustainable, investor-backed business.
Team – Lean Year-1 Plan
Small, high-leverage founding team with 12 months of runway.
Bosko Kante
CEO & Founder
Software developer and technical founder. Vision, sales, fundraising, relationships. Founder of HiiiWAV, with deep experience building and supporting nonprofits in the arts and social impact space.
Open Roles
Founding Engineer (hire #1)
Director OS + first wave of agents
Forward-Deployed Director (hire #2)
Nonprofit ops + fundraising, embedded across first ~4 orgs
Finance Director (hire #3)
Finance + ops across pod, designs playbooks
Target raise: ~$1M for 12 months runway. Early org retainers reduce net burn.
Roadmap & Ask
Roadmap
0–12 months (this raise):
- • Hire FDD, Finance Director, Founding Engineer
- • Onboard 2–4 orgs
- • Ship v1 Director OS and core agents
- • Prove: 4-org pod delivers revenue and stability lift
12–24 months:
- • Scale pod to 8 orgs
- • Harden agents and playbooks
- • Add additional FDD/finance/ops capacity
24–36 months:
- • 16-org pods on mature OS
- • Multiple pods focused on key verticals
36+ months:
- • 100+ org pods with 90–95% agent-driven operations
- • A single founder can safely run a $3–5M organization with no internal back-office hires
- • Director redirects billions in nonprofit overhead back into direct programs
Ask
$1.0M
- • Fund 12+ months of lean team and product development
- • Prove the 4 → 8 → 16 org capacity story with real customers
- • Build Director into the AI-native backbone for the orgs that can least afford to lose theirs
- • At scale, redirect billions of dollars of nonprofit overhead back into direct programs and community work
Ready to Build Your Backbone?
Let's talk about how Director can help your organization scale.