Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

FunderIntelligence ("we," "our," or "us") is a software-as-a-service platform that provides AI-powered grant discovery, funder intelligence, and proposal drafting tools for academic researchers and research institutions. Our service is accessible at funderintelligence.com and associated subdomains.

For purposes of applicable data protection law, FunderIntelligence is the data controller of personal information collected through the platform.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Account & Identity Information

When you create an account, we collect:

• Name and email address (used for authentication and service communications)
• Institutional affiliation (e.g., university or research center)
• Academic role or department (optional, used to personalize grant recommendations)

2.2 Research Profile Information

To match you with relevant funding opportunities, we collect and store:

• Research interests, keywords, and topic tags you provide
• Uploaded documents (CVs, biosketches, prior publications) that you choose to share to improve AI recommendations
• Grant preferences, saved searches, and bookmarked opportunities

2.3 Usage Data

We automatically collect certain technical and behavioral data, including:

• Pages visited, features used, search queries entered, and grant records viewed
• Browser type, operating system, IP address, and device identifiers
• Session timestamps and feature interaction logs

2.4 AI-Generated Content

When you use our proposal drafting or grant-matching AI features, input prompts and generated outputs may be processed by our AI infrastructure providers. We do not use your research content to train AI models without your explicit consent.

2.5 Billing Information

If you purchase a paid subscription, we collect your billing name and the subscription plan you select. Card numbers and other payment details are collected and processed directly by our payment processor, Stripe; FunderIntelligence does not store your full card number on its own systems. We retain a record of your subscription status and transaction history for billing, tax, and accounting purposes.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use collected information for the following purposes:

• Service delivery: Authenticate your account, display personalized grant matches, and generate AI-assisted proposal content.
• Platform improvement: Analyze aggregate usage patterns to improve search relevance, AI accuracy, and feature design. This analysis uses de-identified or anonymized data.
• Communications: Send transactional emails (e.g., account verification, password reset), and — with your consent — product updates or grant deadline notifications.
• Security and compliance: Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access; comply with legal obligations.
• Support: Respond to your inquiries and provide technical assistance.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not use your data for targeted advertising.

4. Third-Party Services and Sub-Processors

We engage the following categories of sub-processors to operate our platform:

• Authentication & Database (Supabase): Stores your account credentials and research profile data in encrypted form on infrastructure hosted in the United States.
• AI Inference (Google Gemini API): Processes prompts you submit for grant matching and proposal drafting. Google's data use is governed by their API Terms of Service and data processing agreements. Your prompts are not used to train Google's foundation models under our enterprise agreement.
• Deployment Infrastructure (Vercel): Hosts and serves the application. Vercel may process request metadata (IP addresses, headers) for routing and DDoS protection.
• Payment Processing (Stripe): Processes subscription payments and stores your payment-method details. Stripe handles billing and payment data and sets strictly necessary cookies for fraud prevention and secure checkout. Stripe is a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified processor; its use of your data is governed by Stripe's privacy policy and our data processing agreement.
• Grant Data Providers: We query public and licensed grant databases (including Grants.gov, SBIR.gov, and Kindora) to retrieve funding opportunity data. These queries do not transmit your personal information to those providers beyond what is necessary for the API call.

We maintain data processing agreements with all sub-processors that handle personal data.

5. Data Retention

We retain your account and profile data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. If you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal data within 30 days, except where retention is required by law or legitimate business interest (e.g., transaction records for tax purposes).

Usage logs are retained for up to 12 months in identifiable form and may be retained longer in anonymized form for analytics.

6. Security

We implement industry-standard security practices, including:

• Encryption of data in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest
• Authentication via Supabase with support for institutional SSO where available
• Role-based access controls limiting internal access to personal data
• Regular security reviews of our codebase and dependencies

No system is perfectly secure. If you believe you have discovered a security vulnerability, please contact us at security@funderintelligence.com.

7. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: Request correction of inaccurate data.
• Deletion: Request deletion of your account and associated personal data.
• Portability: Receive your profile data in a machine-readable format.
• Opt-out of marketing: Unsubscribe from non-transactional emails at any time via the link in any email we send.
• Restriction: Request that we restrict processing of your data in certain circumstances.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@funderintelligence.com. We will respond within 30 days.

8. Cookies and Tracking

We use strictly necessary cookies and similar technologies — including browser local storage — to maintain your authenticated session and remember your preferences. Our payment processor, Stripe, also sets strictly necessary cookies for fraud prevention and secure checkout. We do not use third-party advertising cookies or cross-site tracking technologies.

We may use first-party analytics (e.g., session duration, page-load performance) via privacy-preserving methods that do not build individual user profiles.

9. Children's Privacy

FunderIntelligence is designed for use by academic researchers and is not directed at individuals under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you become aware that a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us immediately.

10. International Transfers

Our infrastructure is primarily hosted in the United States. If you access the service from outside the United States, your personal data may be transferred to and processed in the United States or other countries that may not provide the same level of data protection as your home jurisdiction. By using the platform, you consent to this transfer. Where required, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or other lawful transfer mechanisms.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or via an in-app notice at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continued use of the platform after that date constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.