Discovered
52 plus
National disability-focused foundations a federally recognized CIL with a disability-majority board can credibly apply to.
FEDERAL FUNDING IS AT RISK
AccessAbility must supplement those funds after Dec 2026
I've extensively researched everything — the programs, the team, the community you have built, and the funding landscape you are navigating in 2026.
I recommend: One website featuring the Thrift Store with online payments and donations powered by Stripe. I also suggest filing for a Google Ad Grant worth up to $10k per month, $120K per year, and a loaded grant pipeline.
- Build window
- 30 days
- Phase 1 investment
- $6,000
- National grant pool
- ~$1.2M/yr
- Ad Grant at full use
- $120K/yr
- Shared DNA
- 1 document
SECTION 01
What this plan is based on.
AI research over 1333 sources including both the AbilitySC and AbilityThrift websites, social media, press releases, affiliate mentions, foundation filings, Ad Grant compliance guides, SC philanthropy cycles, Lowcountry employer rolls, and platform pricing. Everything on this page has been sourced and double-checked by agents of my training, taught to be precise.
The short version: the grants, tools, and audiences AccessAbility needs are already out there. We just need to connect them to the work you are already doing.
Unclaimed
$120K per year
Google Ad Grant advertising, fully available to verified 501(c)(3)s, that AccessAbility has not yet applied for.
Invisible
30 to 60 percent
Share of local disability-services search traffic that currently lands on terms AccessAbility ethically avoids and therefore does not rank for.
Launchpad
1,419 followers
Twenty-five years of genuine community trust with zero algorithmic amplification. Not a failure. An unclaimed launchpad.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) rolls out December 2026 and HCBS waivers are exposed. Luckily, the tools needed to supplement those federal grants are finally cheaper and easier to use than ever before.
SECTION 02
A proven track record of foundational, grassroots, community activism.
Twenty-five years across five counties. A federally recognized CIL. A board and staff that is 51 percent people with disabilities by design. Programs that actually hold up — Scotties Place, Building Me, HireMeSC, ILA, AbilityThrift. The work is already there. The internet just has not caught up.
Nothing in this plan changes your voice or your team. I want AI handling the paperwork and the 2 a.m. grant edits so you can stay with consumers, where you belong.
The people carrying five counties from Suite 5
- Julia Barrett-Martinelli — Executive Director
- Kurtis Whitehead — Assistant Director
- Jason and Kelly Torres
- Brentney Simon
- Elizabeth Blume
- John Bryant
A fact worth bragging about
51 percent of your board and staff are people with disabilities. That is a real grant differentiator, and could make the company more donations.
2001
Serving the Lowcountry since
5 counties
Berkeley, Charleston, Dorchester, Orangeburg, Williamsburg
7944 Dorchester Rd, Suite 5
One office, big footprint
SECTION 03
The only thing missing is plumbing.
Programs, mission, team — all solid. What is missing is digital plumbing: a real donation page, recurring giving, thrift on the same domain as the rest of the site, a filed Ad Grant, a tracked grant pipeline. Every gap below is a few weeks of work. None of it is a quarter-long project.
Today
20 plus menu items
Buries the five actions a donor, consumer, or funder actually needs.
Today
No recurring giving
Every donor is a one-time donor, which is the fragile kind.
Today
Two disconnected brands
AbilityThrift runs on Shopify at a separate URL. Shoppers never see the mission. Donors never see the store.
Today
Zero Ad Grant utilization
Up to ten thousand dollars per month in free Google search ads, unclaimed.
Today
WordPress maintenance tax
Every update is a developer ticket. Julia and Kurtis should not be filing tickets to fix a typo.
Today
No donor pipeline
Grant deadlines are not calendared. Prospects are not tracked. Outreach is not measured.
SECTION 04
Your ethics are costing you traffic. Here is the fix.
Talking with one of your ambassadors, something clicked. You refuse to use words like disabled, handicapped, or special needs in your own voice. I respect that — it is the right call.
It is also why Google cannot find you. Grandparents and teachers searching for help do not know the preferred language yet. Google only serves results for what people actually type.
You do not have to abandon the principle. We turn it into a public lesson — one page, respectfully written, that teaches the better language while Google finally indexes the rest of the site.
What thousands of Lowcountry searchers actually type
handicap services charleston sc
disabled adult programs near me
help for my handicapped son
special needs resources north charleston
disabled person housing sc
section 504 help charleston
crippled veteran services
What AccessAbility prefers — and teaches
people with disabilities
consumers
independent living
community-based supports
accessibility
One anchor page — I am calling it Words that matter. It names the terms people search, teaches why you use different ones, and routes every visitor to the right program. FAQ schema tells Google to surface it. Ad Grant keywords target the searched terms; the landing page does the translation.
Discoverability
The site finally answers the searches that are being made every day.
Advocacy
Every well-meaning searcher gets a gentle lesson in better language.
Public stance
The ethical position becomes a taught principle, not a hidden one.
My conservative take: capture half of the 30 to 60 percent of tri-county disability-services search volume that currently flows past you, and that is several thousand new relevant visitors a year — before we even turn on the Ad Grant.
SECTION 05
Core Values and Branding Principles — one document, shared by humans and AI.
You already have a voice. I can hear it in how Julia greets a new consumer and how Kurtis signs an email to a funder. The problem is that voice lives in your heads. It does not transfer to a new hire, a volunteer, a contractor, or AI. Twenty-five years of voice deserves to live somewhere you can point to.
What it is
A living document. We write it together in Phase 1 — you two plus an ambassador or three. It lives in Sanity, loads into every Claude Project, and becomes the source of truth for everything AccessAbility publishes. One reference, every time.
What it contains
- Origin story and mission — the real version, not the grant-summary version
- Who AccessAbility serves and how you name them
- Voice and tone — grassroots, solution-oriented, dignity-first, never pity
- Language guide — say, do not say, and why
- Program elevator pitches — Scotties Place, Building Me, HireMeSC, ILA, AbilityThrift
- Visual identity — colors, type, photography, iconography rules
- Money and fundraising voice — honest asks, zero guilt leverage
- AI usage guardrails — what AI drafts, what AI never sends
- Approval matrix — who signs off on what before it reaches the public
Excerpt — voice and tone
How AccessAbility sounds.
"We write the way a trusted neighbor talks. Plain, direct, warm. We never describe the people we serve as tragedies or as inspiration. They are consumers choosing their own lives. Our job is the support that makes those choices possible."
Excerpt — money and asks
How we ask for support.
"No sad stories. Outcomes and specifics. Our federal base is shifting and recurring community gifts close the gap. Twenty-five dollars a month keeps one consumer in Building Me for six weeks. That is the ask. No dressing."
Excerpt — AI guardrails
Where AI helps and where it stops.
"AI drafts. Humans send. Every email, grant narrative, caption, or ad with the AccessAbility name on it passes a human before it leaves the building. AI never quotes a consumer, claims an outcome, or invokes the 51 percent board fact without a verified source from this document or a 990."
I deliver a full draft in Phase 1. You and the ambassador panel review it. Leadership ratifies. Then it goes live.
How it gets used — three simultaneous flows.
Flow 01 — Humans
Onboarding and alignment
New staffers, volunteers, and board members read it in week one. Every "how do we say this?" question gets the same answer. Onboarding goes from months to days.
Flow 02 — AI
Every Claude Project, every workflow
The document loads into every AI task — grants, captions, replies, ad copy, thank-yous. Output sounds like AccessAbility instead of generic nonprofit boilerplate, because it is grounded in your actual words.
Flow 03 — Public
Identity made visible
Excerpts become the About page, the Words that matter page, and the team bios. Your identity goes from hidden to front door. The right funders, volunteers, and consumers find you faster because you stopped sounding like everyone else.
This document does one thing really well — it pulls in the people you want and filters out the ones you do not. Clear identity, faster matches. That is the whole point.
SECTION 06
Phase 1 — what $6,000 gets you in thirty days.
One site, real donations, thrift under the same roof as the mission, an Ad Grant application filed, the Words that matter page live, and a grant pipeline loaded on day one.
Timeline
30 days
Days 1–3
Brand refresh, one nav, one domain
Five nav items: Services, Get Help, Thrift, Events, Give. Thrift comes off Shopify and onto a subdomain, so donors and shoppers share one site and one analytics property. Two-color palette plus neutrals. WCAG 2.2 AA design system.
Days 2–8
Site built on Sanity, Next.js, Vercel
Sanity Free gives you 20 seats and 10,000 documents — two to three years of runway. Vercel Hobby is free, Pro is $20 a month. Visual editing kills the WordPress maintenance tax. You two publish without calling a developer.
Days 6–12
Donations and thrift, both on Stripe
We file your Stripe nonprofit application — 2.2 percent plus 30 cents. Payment Links for one-time gifts. Recurring monthly tiers at $10, $25, $50. AbilityThrift runs on Payment Links plus a Sanity inventory collection. No more Shopify bill.
Days 10–15
Google Ad Grant — filed, not just talked about
$10,000 a month in free Google search ads for 501(c)(3)s, verified through Goodstack. Approval in two to four weeks. Keywords planned for both the respectful terms and the searched ones from Section 04, routing the second into Words that matter.
Days 14–18
Grant pipeline, loaded day one
Airtable or Notion, your pick. The full national pool, calendar, owners, deadlines. Tier-1 prospects already queued with links, past recipients, and a starting angle. See Section 09 for the pool itself.
Days 16–20
Words that matter page, plus content pipeline
The anchor page from Section 04, with FAQ schema and internal linking. A 45-minute Loom walkthrough. A simple publishing SOP. Twelve months of event templates, one testimonial per program, and a blog cadence seeded from your ILA podcast archive.
Day 20–21
Local SEO quick wins
Claim and fill out Google Business Profile, submit to the ILRU CIL directory, clean up Yelp. GBP done right usually lifts local discovery 15 to 25 percent inside sixty days.
Deliverable snapshot
What you have on day thirty
- One unified domain, one brand, one analytics property
- Working recurring donations and a thrift storefront off Shopify
- Google Ad Grant application filed
- Words that matter page live and indexed
- A twelve-month grant calendar, owner-assigned
- Julia and Kurtis publishing without a developer
SECTION 07
Phase 2 — $4,500 to put it on autopilot.
The hard part is done. Phase 2 is mostly automation and template work. After this, you run it without me.
Days 1–5
AI-assisted grant and donor outreach
Claude Pro ($20/mo) becomes your writing workbench, loaded with mission, 990 figures, consumer outcomes, and answers to the 30 most common grant questions. n8n wires it up — new prospect hits Airtable, a draft lands in the inbox for review. Humans approve every send. One landed grant pays for the stack for a decade.
Days 3–8
Ad Grant to 90-plus percent utilization
Most nonprofits use 10 to 20 percent of their Ad Grant. That is leaving money on the table. We file the $2 CPC exception, install automated bidding, add Google Ads scripts that rotate keyword themes by season. Target: the full $120,000 a year.
Days 6–11
Bridge Builders — your recurring donor program
Givebutter (free, tip-based) for peer-to-peer. Meta for Nonprofits enabled. Bridge Builders launches at $10, $25, $50 tiers. One hundred donors averaging $25/mo is $30,000 a year in unrestricted revenue — the most useful dollars you can have when federal funding moves.
Days 9–13
Lowcountry business-partner lists, ready to send
Six target lists, contacts included: elder-law and PI firms, pediatric and PT/OT practices, Kiawah/Seabrook/Daniel Island clubs, credit unions and community banks, auto dealers, and the tech corridor (Blackbaud, Benefitfocus, Bosch, Boeing, Volvo). Each with a suggested ask and a personalized opener.
Days 12–16
Social automation and quarterly check-in
Canva for Nonprofits (free), Buffer (free, three channels), Opus Clip ($19/mo) to turn your unload videos and ILA episodes into short clips. Full social plan in Section 11. Plus GA4, Plausible, and a 12-month grant-submission calendar with 30/60/90-day reminders.
SECTION 08
Who runs this after I leave — your team, with better tools.
I am not replacing anyone. The person running social keeps running social. The one updating the site keeps updating the site. What changes: no blank pages, no carrying the whole AccessAbility voice in your head while doing everything else. The Core Values document carries it. The AI copilots apply it.
Role
Social lead
Copilot: Opus Clip plus Claude, grounded in the Core Values document
Upload an unload video. Opus Clip finds the best moments. Claude drafts five caption options per clip in your voice. The lead picks, tweaks, posts. A 60-minute video becomes ten published clips in one afternoon instead of three days.
Role
Website editor
Copilot: Sanity visual editor plus Claude
Highlight any block and ask Claude to shorten it, warm it up, or rewrite for a caregiver. The draft comes back in your voice. Approve or reject. No tickets, no developers, no waiting a week.
Role
Grant writer
Copilot: Claude Project loaded with 990s, program outcomes, Core Values
Paste the RFP. Claude drafts the LOI, matches program outcomes to funder priorities, flags fit gaps, produces narrative in your voice. The writer edits and submits. A 12-hour draft becomes a 2-hour review.
Role
Events and email
Copilot: Claude plus calendar context plus Core Values
Event confirmed? A drafted announcement, save-the-date, thank-you, and social post are ready to review in under five minutes. Approve, personalize, send.
Role
Donor stewardship
Copilot: Claude plus donor history from Stripe and Givebutter
Every new gift drafts a thank-you that names the program the donor supported. Every lapsing monthly donor gets a re-engagement draft. Nobody slips through the cracks. Every message sounds like AccessAbility.
Role
Leadership — Julia and Kurtis
Copilot: weekly digest plus approval dashboard
One dashboard, one Monday digest. Everything waiting on you in one queue, not five inboxes. Review, approve, send. Hours back in your week for the work only a director can do.
Three weeks to get your team comfortable.
Week 1
Core Values kickoff
Ninety-minute all-hands session. One-on-one walkthrough of the Core Values document with each staff member. Signed acknowledgement filed.
Week 2
Paired-prompt sessions
Each staffer runs three real tasks with their copilot alongside a coach. Prompts refined, voice calibrated, confidence built.
Week 3
Dashboard go-live
Approval queues activated. Automation workflows pushed to production. Every copilot connected to its data sources.
Ongoing
Quarterly tune-up
Ninety minutes each quarter. Core Values refinement, new workflows, new templates. The Loom library grows with every session.
Expected per-role impact
5 to 10 hours
Reclaimed every week per staff member on writing and publishing tasks.
Reinvested into
Consumers first
The reclaimed hours go back to services, events, and the grassroots work only humans can do.
Authority stays
With the team
Every AI output is a draft. Every human remains the final signature. The team is never replaced, only amplified.
A day in the life — before and after.
What each role actually feels like, side by side. The time saved goes right back to consumers, events, and programs — the part only humans can do.
Social lead
Roughly 8 hours reclaimed per week
Before
Watches a sixty-minute truck-unload video end to end, scrubbing for clippable moments. Manually cuts, reframes vertical, writes every caption from a blank page, second-guesses the voice, uploads to one platform at a time. One post a week, sometimes. Burnt out by Thursday.
After
Uploads raw footage in the morning. Opus Clip surfaces ten highlight clips by lunch, vertical and captioned. Claude drafts five caption options per clip in AccessAbility voice. The social lead picks six, schedules across TikTok, Reels, and Facebook in Buffer. Done by two o'clock. Ten posts live that week, consistent voice.
Website editor
Days shortened to minutes
Before
Typo on the homepage? Email the developer. Wait a week. Event date wrong? File a ticket. Blog post idea? Dies in drafts because publishing requires eight clicks, a WordPress login, and a Slack message to dev.
After
Log into Sanity. Click the block. Ask Claude for a warmer rewrite or a shorter headline. Approve. Live in under five minutes. A weekly blog cadence becomes realistic because the friction is gone.
Grant writer
Twelve-hour drafts become two-hour reviews
Before
Ten to twelve hours on a single letter of inquiry. Keeping 990 figures, consumer outcomes, program descriptions, and funder priorities straight across a messy Google Doc. One or two grants submitted per quarter. Deadlines quietly missed.
After
Paste the RFP into the grants Claude Project. Core Values, 990s, and program outcomes are already loaded as context. A first draft lands in seven minutes. Two-hour review instead of twelve-hour draft. Eight to twelve grants submitted per quarter. The portfolio math actually works.
Events and email
Four hours per event down to thirty minutes
Before
Every event needs a hand-drafted announcement, save-the-date, reminder, day-of note, and thank-you. Four to six hours per event. Thank-yous slip by a week. Consumers and donors do not hear from you between events.
After
A calendar event triggers a drafted five-message sequence in AccessAbility voice. The events lead reviews, tweaks the one moment that needs a human touch, schedules the set. Thirty minutes per event instead of four hours.
Donor stewardship
Every donor hears back within a day
Before
A gift lands in Stripe. Sits unacknowledged for a week, sometimes longer, because nobody has time. Lapsed monthly donors drift away silently. Steward communication happens when someone remembers.
After
Every new gift generates a drafted thank-you within an hour, referencing the specific program the donor supported. Every lapsing monthly donor flags a re-engagement draft. The queue is approved on Mondays. Every donor hears from AccessAbility by name.
Julia and Kurtis — leadership
One dashboard, one queue, one digest
Before
Five inboxes. Three Slacks. A paper stack on the desk. Approval requests scattered across everyone's channels. Strategic work happens at nine at night, after everything else is somehow already done. Permanent firefighting mode.
After
One Monday morning dashboard. One weekly digest: submissions pending, gifts received, clips posted, drafts waiting for approval. Strategic time is protected because the operational queue no longer lives in your heads. The work gets more directorial and less secretarial.
The people who built this over twenty-five years stay in the driver's seat. The software runs errands, takes notes, and drafts the first paragraph. Then it hands the keyboard back to Julia, Kurtis, and the team. That is the whole design.
SECTION 09
The national grant pool — roughly one point two million dollars in annual addressable asks.
MEAF is one grant in a portfolio. The honest math says no single application is a lock. The honest math also says that for a federally recognized CIL with a disability-majority board, twenty-five years of service, and programs that match the exact language foundations are looking for, the portfolio is the story.
Eligible funders identified
52 plus
National, regional, and SC-specific foundations and federal programs a CIL of your profile can credibly apply to.
Annual addressable asks
~$1.2M
Sum of realistic asks across the portfolio in any twelve-month window. Some funders cycle multi-year.
Realistic capture, year one
$150K to $250K
At a disciplined fifteen to twenty percent hit rate typical of AI-accelerated grant writing with human review.
Tier 1 — national disability-focused funders with strong fit
| Funder | Focus fit | Range per award | Cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation | Youth with disabilities, employment prep — HireMeSC fit | $10K to $100K/yr, 1 to 2 yrs | Jul to Nov |
| Kessler Foundation | Disability employment, signature strong fit | ~$75K to $150K | Annual RFP |
| Craig H. Neilsen Foundation | Spinal cord injury, independent living, mobility | $25K to $150K | Multiple cycles |
| Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation | Quality of Life grants, community programs | up to $30K | Twice annually |
| NEC Foundation of America | Technology, science, service for people with disabilities | up to $30K | Annual |
| Hearst Foundations | Health, education, social service for vulnerable populations | $50K to $250K | Rolling |
| Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | Health equity, regional cycles applicable | $50K plus | Cycle-based |
| Ford Foundation Disability Rights | Disability justice, advocacy, rights work | Competitive, larger | LOI first |
| Autism Speaks Community Grants | Where program scope overlaps | $5K to $25K | Annual |
| Special Hope Foundation | Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities | $10K to $50K | Annual |
Tier 2 — SC and Lowcountry regional funders
| Funder | Vehicle | Range | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coastal Community Foundation | Charles-Webb Ed Croft Endowment, children w/ special needs, BCD | up to $10,000 | Feb 2 annually |
| Coastal Community Foundation | Blackbaud Fund, special-needs youth, BCD | ~$5,000 avg | Feb 2 annually |
| Coastal Community Foundation | Northern Lowcountry Regional Cycle, general ops | up to $15,000 | June 1 annually |
| Coastal Community Foundation | Boeing Interfaith Fund, health and wellness | $3,000 to $5,000 | Rolling |
| The Duke Endowment | Rural health and human services, SC focus | $25,000 plus | Rolling, LOI first |
| Sisters of Charity Foundation of SC | Healthy communities, disability inclusion | $10,000 to $50,000 | Cycle-based |
| BlueCross BlueShield of SC Foundation | Health access, underserved populations | $25,000 plus | Cycle-based |
Tier 3 — volume funders and federal programs
Walmart Spark Good and Community Grants
$250 to $5,000 per store, rolling. North Charleston, Summerville, and Moncks Corner stores all qualify.
AARP Community Challenge
$2,500 to $20,000, annual. Livable communities for all ages and abilities.
Lowe's Hometowns
Up to $100,000 for accessibility-focused community projects. Annual.
Home Depot Foundation
Community Impact Grants for accessible housing modifications. $5,000.
WIOA Youth Programs (DOL)
Federal workforce funds with disability priority. $100,000 to $500,000 for coalitions.
HRSA Rural Health grants
Federal, rural-designated counties. Orangeburg and Williamsburg qualify. $50K to $500K.
CDC DD Councils pass-through
SC DD Council sub-awards for programs serving people with IDD.
Rotary and Kiwanis local clubs
$1,000 to $10,000 each. Volume play. Twelve clubs in tri-county.
Corporate employee match programs
Boeing, Blackbaud, Benefitfocus, Volvo, Bosch. Silent multiplier once the donor base exists.
Honest note on portfolio math
No single grant is a guarantee. Three quarters of disciplined applications will not land. The strategy works at the portfolio level, not on any single win. Plan for two quarters of consistent submissions before results compound. That is why the grant-submission calendar and the AI drafting workflow are in Phase 1 and Phase 2 — cadence is the job.
SECTION 10
The real stack and what it actually saves.
Most agencies hide the monthly cost. Here it is plainly, with a side-by-side against what AbilityThrift is paying Shopify today.
Essential stack
$0/mo fixed
Minimum viable. You pay Stripe fees on donations processed, nothing else.
- Sanity Free — 20 seats, 10,000 documents
- Vercel Hobby — free non-commercial hosting
- Stripe — transaction-only, nonprofit rate applied
- Google Ad Grant — up to $120,000 in free search ads per year
- Canva for Nonprofits — free
- GA4 — free
- Buffer free tier
- Givebutter — free, tip-based
Recommended
Recommended stack
$105 to $125/mo
Every tool earns its keep. Full list with pricing below.
- Sanity Free, Growth if seats grow — $0 to $15
- Vercel Pro — $20
- Claude Pro — $20
- n8n Cloud Starter or self-hosted — $0 to $20
- Instantly Growth — $37
- Plausible Analytics — $9
- Opus Clip for video repurposing — $19
Shopify side-by-side
What AbilityThrift on Shopify is costing you right now.
Today — Shopify Basic
- $39 per month base plan — Shopify Basic is not discounted for nonprofits
- 2.9 percent plus thirty cents per transaction on Shopify Payments
- Any installed apps stack on top — Klaviyo, inventory, loyalty
- Separate URL, separate brand, separate analytics from abilitysc.org
On roughly $100,000 in annual thrift revenue: about $468 in base SaaS plus about $3,200 in processing, before any apps.
Tomorrow — unified stack
- $0 extra SaaS — thrift runs on the same Sanity plus Next.js site as donations
- 2.2 percent plus thirty cents per transaction at Stripe's nonprofit rate
- One brand, one domain, one analytics property, one donor journey
- Inventory managed by Julia or Kurtis in Sanity, no Shopify admin
On the same $100K in thrift: about $2,500 total — saving roughly $900 to $1,500 a year, plus the intangible gain of one unified shopper and donor journey.
Note: if AccessAbility is already on PayPal Giving Fund or another zero-fee nonprofit processor for any portion of revenue, those keep running alongside Stripe at no cost. The Shopify savings are independent of that choice.
Why this matters — portability.
Nothing in this stack has lock-in. If AccessAbility decides in year two to move back to Shopify for thrift or adopt HubSpot for CRM, the Sanity content and Stripe customer data export cleanly. Nonprofits get burned repeatedly by vendors who make migration painful. This is the opposite of that.
SECTION 12
The ROI math, stated plainly.
Phase 1 plus Phase 2 together is $10,500. Two scenarios — conservative and realistic. Neither counts any single grant as a lock.
Grant portfolio
$150K to $250K
Year one capture at 15 to 20 percent hit rate on the $1.2M pool.
Ad Grant, automated
$96K to $120K
At 80 to 100 percent utilization after Phase 2 automation.
Bridge Builders
$30,000
At 100 donors and $25 per month. Unrestricted, most valuable dollar type.
Shopify plus fee savings
$900 to $1,500
Per year, from consolidating thrift and applying Stripe nonprofit rate.
Conservative scenario
$175,000 new revenue
One Tier 1 grant at $25K, two Tier 2 at $15K each, Ad Grant at 50% utilization, Bridge Builders at 40 donors.
16:1
First-year return against $10,500 investment.
Realistic scenario
$300,000 plus new revenue
Two Tier 1 grants at $50K average, four Tier 2 at $12K average, Ad Grant at 80% utilization, Bridge Builders at 100 donors, Shopify consolidated.
28:1
First-year return against $10,500 investment.
Read it plainly
The math does not require any single thing to break right. It requires a calendar, a pipeline, a review queue, and the patience to run the portfolio for two quarters. That is what Phase 1 and Phase 2 buy you. The rest is execution.
SECTION 13
This page is the demo.
Disability is the cause. It should also be the standard the website is built to. Everything on this page meets WCAG 2.2 AA. Several features go further. Try them — the controls live in the header.
Vision
Light and dark mode, on your schedule.
Respects the system preference on first load. A header toggle overrides it. Colors meet AA contrast in both modes.
Vision
Four-step text resizing.
A-, A, A plus, A plus plus. Layout holds at every size. No horizontal scroll at 200 percent browser zoom.
Vision
High-contrast boost.
One tap to pure black and white for low-vision readers and bright-light environments.
Vestibular
Reduced motion, honored.
We listen to prefers-reduced-motion. There is also a manual override. Nothing on this page flashes, bounces, or ambushes.
Motor
Keyboard first.
Every control is reachable by Tab. Focus is always visible, always high-contrast. Skip link jumps straight to main content.
Cognitive
Plain language and clear structure.
Short sentences. Headings that describe. One action per call to action. Tables have captions and row headers that screen readers can navigate.
Screen readers
Semantic HTML, ARIA where it adds value.
Landmarks, headings in order, live regions for announcements, and labelled form controls. No icon-only buttons without names.
Hearing
Captions and transcripts by default.
Every video we produce for you ships with auto-captioned transcripts. Every audio clip ships with a text version.
Grant-competitive moat
Most peers do not bother.
Accessibility compliance is a real differentiator in grant review. For a CIL, it is table stakes that the current site does not fully meet. After launch, it does.
Try it now: press Tab from anywhere on this page. The skip-to-content link will appear in the top-left. Use Shift + Tab to go backward. The Accessibility menu in the header announces changes to a screen reader live region.
SECTION 14
Risks and honest uncertainties.
Epistemic honesty matters more than upsell. Four things are worth naming directly before you sign anything.
-
Risk 01
Grants are a portfolio, not a lock.
Three quarters of well-written applications do not land. The $1.2M addressable pool becomes real revenue only with consistent cadence — eight to twelve applications per quarter is the working target. The AI-accelerated workflow exists because hitting that cadence manually is impossible for a team of eight.
-
Risk 02
Google Ad Grant approvals are tightening in 2026.
Goodstack validation now requires deeper site content and stricter compliance. There is a real chance AccessAbility needs two to three extra weeks of content work before approval lands. The Words that matter page plus the Phase 1 copywriting sprint is already designed to absorb that.
-
Risk 03
The language page needs board alignment.
Publicly naming terms like handicapped or disabled to educate searchers is a thoughtful stance, not a passive one. The board should see the page draft and sign off on the framing before it goes live. Done well, it becomes one of the strongest advocacy pages on the site. Done carelessly, it reads wrong. Phase 1 includes a dedicated board-review pass for exactly this reason.
-
Risk 04
AI-drafted outreach requires human approval gates.
Sending Claude-drafted emails unreviewed to foundation program officers is a reputational risk. Phase 2 automation is always review-then-send, never fully autonomous. Julia and Kurtis remain in the loop on anything with the AccessAbility name on it.
What this proposal explicitly does not do yet
A native mobile educational app, a full Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud implementation, or a paid media budget beyond the Ad Grant are year-two conversations. The right sequence is: stabilize the web and revenue base first, let the recurring-donor and grant pipelines prove themselves for two quarters, then reinvest the unrestricted dollars into the next capability. Build order is the discipline.
SECTION 15
The decision in front of Julia and Kurtis.
You have the rarest asset a Lowcountry nonprofit can have — twenty-five years of consumer-controlled service, a federally recognized CIL license, a disability-majority board, and programs with measurable outcomes. What is missing is the digital surface area to turn that asset into diversified revenue, national visibility, and a grant pipeline that outlasts any single policy cycle.
Phase 1
$6,000
20 to 30 days. Unified website, donation engine, thrift storefront off Shopify, filed Ad Grant application, Words that matter page, loaded grant pipeline.
Phase 2
$4,500
AI outreach, Ad Grant automation, Bridge Builders recurring giving, business-partner lists, Opus Clip social pipeline, quarterly review.
AccessAbility has twenty-five years of programs, outcomes, and community trust. What has been missing is the infrastructure to make that visible — a unified site, a donation engine, a grant pipeline that does not require a full-time development staff to maintain, and advertising that reaches the people searching for exactly what you do. That is what this plan builds.
Wood
Invoice
Click the Phase 2 sheet to bring it forward.
Invoice · Phase 2
AccessAbility SC — Hans Turner
Invoice Details
- Invoice # :
- AASC-P2-2026
- Date :
- Upon Phase 1 go-live
- Terms :
- Net-15 · 50/50 kickoff / completion
- Status :
- Pending Phase 1
Line items
- AI grant outreach setup :
- Days 1–5 · $1,800
- Ad Grant optimization :
- Days 3–8 · $1,500
- Bridge Builders program :
- Days 6–11 · $1,200
- Business-partner lists :
- Days 9–13 · $600
- Social + quarterly check-in :
- Days 12–16 · $600
- Phase 2 total :
- $4,500.00
Click to bring forward ↗
Invoice · Phase 1
AccessAbility SC — Hans Turner
Parties
- Bill to :
- Julia Barrett-Martinelli / Kurtis Whitehead
AccessAbility SC
7944 Dorchester Rd, Suite 5
North Charleston, SC 29420 - Remit to :
- Hans Turner
1651 Eldora Ln. STE 310
Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
Check / Zelle / Wire
Invoice Details
- Invoice # :
- AASC-P1-2026
- Date :
- April 21, 2026
- Terms :
- Net-15 · 50% at kickoff / 50% at go-live
- Status :
- Ready to send
Line items
- Brand + unified nav :
- Days 1–3 · $1,500
- Site — Sanity + Next.js :
- Days 2–8 · $2,250
- Donations + thrift on Stripe :
- Days 6–12 · $1,200
- Google Ad Grant filing :
- Days 10–15 · $500
- Grant pipeline setup :
- Days 14–18 · $375
- Words that Matter page :
- Days 16–20 · $125
- Local SEO quick wins :
- Days 20–21 · $50
- Phase 1 total :
- $6,000.00
- Due at kickoff :
- $3,000.00
- Due at go-live :
- $3,000.00
Print → Save as PDF for a clean copy. Phase 2 ships after Phase 1 goes live.
SECTION 11
From 1,419 followers to nationally discoverable.
Twenty-five years of genuine community trust with zero algorithmic amplification is not a failure. It is an unclaimed launchpad. Small thrift and disability-affinity nonprofits routinely hit hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of views on a single well-framed clip, because TikTok and Reels viewers actively seek out authentic accessibility content. AccessAbility has the raw material most of them would pay to have. You just have not been editing it for the algorithm yet.
The unload videos are the best content you are already making. They are honest, hyper-local, and nobody else in the Lowcountry nonprofit world is making them. The only problem is length — a sixty-plus-minute truck-drop segment does not land on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or Facebook Reels, where attention budgets start at seven seconds.
We keep filming the whole thing. We just let software do the editing.
Recommended tool
Opus Clip — AI video repurposing
Upload a sixty-minute thrift-truck unload. Opus Clip auto-detects the highest-engagement moments, reframes them vertically for TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, adds captions, and exports eight to twelve short clips in under an hour. Nineteen dollars a month. No editing skill required.
60 min
Raw footage in
~50 min
Processing time
8 to 12
Captioned vertical clips out
Why it can go viral
Where clips go
Guardrails we add
Treat each truck as ten posts, not one. Treat each ILA podcast episode as twelve clips, not one. At that cadence, a 1,419-follower page becomes a ten-thousand-follower page inside a year, and a national audience that has never been to Charleston starts showing up in your donor and volunteer pipelines.