About
A house of sources.
Fonte House is named for the Portuguese word for source. It's a fundraising research instrument for nonprofits, built entirely on public-record data.
The name
Where Fonte comes from.
Fonte is Portuguese for "spring" or "source": a place where fresh water begins. The word carries a quiet authority in Portuguese. A fonte is not just where water comes out, it's the original wellspring, the place upstream.
That register matched the brand we wanted: a research instrument that lets fundraisers work upstream, closer to the source, instead of chasing donations after the fact. The Cape Verdean roots in the name are deliberate.
Why we built it
Born from real fundraising work.
Fonte House started as an internal research tool, built and sharpened against live major-donor research, prospect cultivation, and campaign strategy for small and mid-size nonprofits across Rhode Island.
It was the research instrument we wished existed but couldn't find at a price point a small shop could afford. After eighteen months of running real engagements on it, we decided to open it up.
What we built it for
A tool that lives between research and the ask.
The fundraising tools market is split. On one end: iWave, DonorSearch, Blackbaud, $4K to $50K per year, designed for enterprise development shops with full-time researchers. On the other end: a Google Doc, a spreadsheet, and a lot of unbillable hours.
Fonte House sits in the middle. Curated regional density across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, with more states coming. Modern interface. Funder, donor, and match in one workspace. Priced for the small consultancy and the in-house development team of three.
What it's built on
Public record, end to end.
Every signal in Fonte House comes from public sources: IRS 990-PF foundation filings, public donor recognition pages, and news mentions. Nothing is scraped from behind a login and nothing is inferred about private wealth.
The product is designed and shaped by working fundraisers, so every feature answers a real research question: who gives to organizations like yours, what their filings show, and whether they've surfaced in the news this week.
A fonte is not just where water comes out. It is the original wellspring, the place upstream.