FundMesa

Help & getting started

Quick answers for the questions that come up most. Stuck on something not covered here? Email support@fundmesa.com — real humans, one-business-day reply.

Tracking your first grant

  1. Click + Grant from the dashboard or New grant on /grants.
  2. At minimum you need a name and a status. Everything else can be filled in later as the grant moves through your pipeline.
  3. Link a funder if you have one. If not, you can add a new funder inline from + Funder.
  4. Once saved, the detail page has spots for deadlines, attachments, custom fields, metrics, and an activity log — fill them in as the cycle progresses.

Deadlines & reminders

Every grant has its own list of deadlines (application due, interim report, final report, site visit…). Each one can have reminder rules — by default we use the cadence from your org settings (typically 30 / 14 / 7 / 1 days before).

/deadlines shows every open deadline across all grants. Switch to the Calendar view for a monthly grid; red is overdue, amber is within 7 days, yellow is within 30.

You can mark a deadline complete from any list (dashboard, /deadlines, the grant detail page). Completed deadlines stay around for historical view and won't trigger reminders.

Importing from a spreadsheet

Have grants tracked in Excel, Google Sheets, or GrantHub? Use the CSV import wizards: /grants/import or /funders/import.

  • From GrantHub: export to CSV, drop it into the importer — column names are auto-mapped, including status translations (GrantHub's "Won" → our "Awarded", etc.).
  • From your own sheet: the wizard lets you map each column manually, then preview the first few rows before committing.

Imports are not idempotent yet — re-importing the same file creates duplicates. We're adding a "skip if name matches" option in a future update.

Calendar feed (Google / Apple)

Every account has a private ICS feed URL on the dashboard (Settings & integrations → Calendar feed). Add it to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook and your deadlines show up alongside everything else you live in.

The URL contains a token — anyone with the URL can read your deadlines, so don't share it. If you ever leak it, hit Regenerate and re-subscribe in your calendar app.

Archive vs. delete

On any grant's detail page you'll see Archive and Delete buttons.

  • Archive hides the grant from the default list, dashboard, search, reminders, and the calendar feed — but it stays in the database. Use this for "not interested" prospects so they stop cluttering your views. Recover from /grants?archived=1.
  • Delete is for true removal. Right now it soft-deletes (deleted_at timestamp), so a developer can recover it from the database if needed.

Tip: prefer archive over delete for anything you might revisit. Grant cycles often return years later.

Custom fields

Every org tracks slightly different things. Settings → Custom fields lets you add your own columns to grants, funders, deadlines, and expenses — text, numbers, dates, checkboxes, dropdowns. They show up on the create/edit forms and on detail pages.

Custom fields are per-org, not per-grant. Adding "Program area code" once means every grant and funder in your org now has that field.

Reporting metrics

On any grant's detail page, the Reporting metrics section lets you define the outcomes your funder wants to see — "seniors served," "% on-time discharge," "trainings delivered." Set a target value and reporting frequency.

Click into a metric to log entries each reporting period. The detail page shows progress toward the target as a percentage and a bar.

Inviting teammates

Owners can mint invite links from Settings → Members. Pick a role, click Create invite link, copy the URL, send it to your teammate. They sign up (or log in), accept, and they're in.

Links expire after 14 days and are single-use. Revoke pending invites any time from the same page.

When we wire email (soon), invites will be sent directly to the address you enter.

What each role can do

Owner
Full access plus billing and member management. There must always be at least one.
Coordinator
Full read/write on grants, funders, deadlines, metrics, attachments, and custom fields. Cannot manage members.
Program staff
Read-only for now. (Limited write access on assigned grants is coming.)
Viewer
Read-only across the whole org.

Audit log and compliance export

Every meaningful action — create, edit, delete, status change, comment, approval — writes a row to the activity log. Owners can export this log as a CSV for board reporting, funder due diligence, or internal audits.

What's captured:

  • Timestamp (UTC, ISO 8601)
  • User who acted (denormalized so deleted users still appear)
  • Action and entity (grant or funder, with name)
  • Field-level before/after changes (captured on supported edit actions)
  • IP address and user-agent (captured from request headers when available)

Retention: permanent. Activity log rows are never deleted (org-level deletion via the danger zone wipes everything, including the log, in one shot).

Common uses:

  • Board reports — annual or quarterly summary at /settings/compliance-report
  • Funder due diligence — many funders ask vendors how they track changes
  • Internal audits — see what changed, when, by whom
  • Incident response — trace what happened if something looks off

Go to Settings → Audit export to generate a CSV with date-range and event-kind filters, or Settings → Compliance for the summary dashboard (print-friendly).

Two-factor authentication

Add a second factor (a 6-digit code from your phone) on top of your password. Go to Settings → Security to enable.

You'll need a TOTP app — Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, or your password manager's built-in TOTP works. Setup takes about a minute: scan a QR code, type a confirmation code, save the 10 backup codes somewhere safe (you'll need one if you lose your phone).

Lost both your phone and your backup codes? Email support@fundmesa.com. Recovery requires identity verification.

Need something this page doesn't cover? Email support@fundmesa.com. If it comes up for you, it'll come up for someone else — we add to this page as we hear what's missing.

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