Granted MCP Server

Provider-hosted MCP server that lets AI assistants search 87,000+ grants and 133,000+ funder profiles from the Granted database, with no API key required.

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Overview

Granted is a provider-hosted MCP server that exposes the same grant and funder database that powers grantedai.com. It gives MCP-compatible clients like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf direct, structured access to over 87,000 grants and 133,000 foundation profiles sourced from IRS 990 filings and federal award records. Queries return scored, ranked results using full-text search, embedding similarity, and a multi-feature scoring algorithm.

The server is aimed at nonprofits, researchers, founders, and grant writers who want to use conversational AI to discover funding opportunities, vet funders, and surface upcoming deadlines without leaving their assistant. It exposes tools for keyword and topic search, a specialized AI-grants search, deadline lookup, funder profile retrieval, and a past-winners query for competitive intelligence on federal awards.

Granted is notable for being completely free and unauthenticated: there is no account, API key, or rate limit on cached queries. The server is read-only, supports streamable HTTP and SSE transports, and is reached at a single URL, making setup a one-line addition to an MCP client config.

Tools

Tool	Description
`search_grants`	Primary grant discovery tool. Uses full-text search, embedding similarity, and a multi-feature scoring algorithm to rank results.
`search_ai_grants`	Specialized search variant pre-filtered for artificial intelligence and machine learning funding opportunities.
`get_grant`	Retrieve a complete grant detail page using its slug identifier.
`search_upcoming_deadlines`	Find grants whose application deadlines fall within a specified timeframe.
`search_funders`	Query the 133,000+ foundation database by name, state, or giving focus, sourced from IRS 990 filings.
`get_funder`	Return a full foundation profile including financial data, giving patterns, and grant history.
`get_past_winners`	Access federal grant recipient data for competitive analysis and historical award intelligence.

Setup Guide

Granted is provider-hosted, so there is nothing to install or self-host. You only need to point your MCP client at the public server URL.

Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf config

Add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json (or equivalent MCP client config) and restart the app:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "granted": {
      "type": "url",
      "url": "https://grantedai.com/api/mcp/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Prerequisites

No account, API key, or credit card required.
An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, or any client implementing the MCP spec).
The transport supports streamable HTTP and SSE.

After restart, Granted will appear as an available MCP server and tools like search_grants, get_funder, and search_upcoming_deadlines will be callable from your assistant.

Use Cases

Discover grants matching a nonprofit's mission by asking the assistant to run search_grants with topic and eligibility criteria, then pull full details with get_grant.
Build a rolling list of upcoming deadlines for a development team using search_upcoming_deadlines filtered by category or org type.
Vet a prospective funder before outreach by fetching their foundation profile, 990-derived financial data, and giving history via get_funder.
Find AI and ML research funding for a startup or lab using the pre-filtered search_ai_grants tool.
Run competitive intelligence on federal programs by looking up past awardees with get_past_winners to inform proposal strategy.

Example Prompts

"Find open grants for early childhood education nonprofits in Texas with deadlines in the next 60 days."
"Pull the full profile for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and summarize their recent giving focus."
"Search for AI safety research grants my university lab could apply to and rank them by fit."
"Who has previously won NSF SBIR Phase I awards in climate tech? Give me a short list."
"List grants closing this month for environmental conservation work in California."

Pros

Completely free with no API key, account, or rate limits on cached queries.
Provider-hosted at a single URL, so setup is one config block with no install or auth flow.
Broad data coverage: 87,000+ grants, 133,000+ foundation profiles, and federal award history in one place.
Includes specialized tools (deadline search, past winners, AI-grants filter) rather than only generic search.

Limitations

Read-only: cannot manage applications, submit proposals, or write back to a CRM.
Coverage is centered on US grants and US foundations, so international funding sources are limited.
As a hosted remote service, availability and data freshness depend entirely on Granted's infrastructure with no self-hosting option.

Alternatives

Tar-ive/grants-mcp: community open-source MCP server focused on grant search.
US Federal Grant Scraper MCP on Apify: an Apify-hosted MCP server that scrapes Grants.gov for federal opportunities.
Nonprofit Due Diligence & Grant Intelligence MCP on Apify: community MCP for nonprofit research and grant intelligence workflows.