Compliance enforced in code
IRS Publication 1771 receipts, the $1,700 donor cap, the 90% expenditure ratio, anti-earmarking and 7-year retention run as database rules. IRS unique donor numbers replace SSN collection.
One platform. Every Section 25F rule.
Run your entire SGO.
Audit-ready every day.
BrightTrust covers the full Section 25F lifecycle: compliant donations, an immutable ledger, student eligibility, scholarship awards, direct vendor payments and IRS reporting. Every compliance rule is enforced in code, not in policy binders.
Federal Section 25F tax-credit scholarships. Donations go live January 1, 2027.
Compliance dashboardReconciled today
92.4%
Expenditure ratio, 90% required
Maple Ridge Elementary$48,210.00
Silver Creek Elementary$51,904.50
Alder County homeschool hub$12,300.00
txn 0x8f3a…c41e · hash chain verified · 14:02 MT
From donation to disbursement,
in five steps.
One system of record carries every dollar through the whole Section 25F lifecycle, so nothing is re-keyed and nothing goes missing.
- 1
Donate
A five-minute, cap-aware donation flow with an instant IRS-compliant receipt.
- 2
Record
Every dollar lands in an append-only, double-entry ledger, segregated by school.
- 3
Award
Eligibility checks, application review and acceptance in one scholarship workflow.
- 4
Pay
Approved vendors are paid directly. Funds never pass through schools or families.
- 5
Report
IRS exports, year-end donor letters and a read-only auditor portal.
What BrightTrust does
Everything an SGO needs to launch compliant on day one and stay that way through every audit.
An audit-grade ledger
Append-only, double-entry and SHA-256 hash-chained. Corrections are reversing entries only. Per-school funds reconcile daily against the bank, and a mismatch blocks disbursements automatically.
Scholarship awards, end to end
Parent enrollment, live 300% AMGI income checks by county, application review, priority tiers and acceptance certification, with hashed-token duplicate-award prevention built for state reporting.
Direct vendor payments
Schools submit budgets, admins approve line items, and the platform pays approved vendors directly through a dedicated vendor portal.
Fundraising goals you can defend
Upload a school budget and every line item is flagged Eligible, Partial or Ineligible under Section 25F with a plain-language rationale. The result is a defensible campaign goal and the donor math to reach it.
A portal for every seat
Donor, parent, school, homeschool hub, vendor, admin and read-only auditor experiences, backed by role-based access, MFA, PCI SAQ-A payments and a searchable append-only audit log.
< 5 min
From landing page to a receipted donation
100%
Dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donors
90¢+
Of every dollar reaches students, tracked live
0 SSNs
IRS unique donor numbers, no SSN collection
Built for everyone
who touches the money.
Seven role-scoped portals share one ledger. Each person sees exactly what their seat needs, and nothing else.
Donors and parents
Eligibility check, school choice, recurring gifts, receipts, and an impact dashboard that shows what their taxes now fund.
Schools, hubs and vendors
Budget submission, live fundraising progress, delivery confirmation and receipt upload. Vendors see only what they are owed.
Administrators
Budget approval, quarterly payment batches, surplus redistribution and a compliance dashboard that recalculates within a minute of any ledger write.
Auditors and the board
Read-only access to every financial, eligibility and compliance record. Every auditor read is itself logged.
Compliance in code,
not in binders.
Section 25F is new law, and the IRS will audit against it. BrightTrust turns each rule into a constraint the database refuses to break, then keeps the cryptographic record that proves it.
When Treasury guidance changes, the rule is updated once and applied to every customer.
- IRS Publication 1771 receipts generated on every gift
- $1,700 per donor annual cap, enforced race-safe at the database
- 90% expenditure ratio tracked live, with alerts before you drift
- Anti-earmarking: school designation only, never a student name
- Per-school fund segregation with daily bank reconciliation
- Append-only double-entry ledger with a SHA-256 hash chain
- Direct vendor payment, never to schools or families
- IRS unique donor numbers, so no SSNs are ever collected
- Immutable audit log of every create, update and state change
- Form 990 Schedule I export and year-end donor acknowledgment letters
- 7-year record retention built into storage lifecycle
Identity you can trust
AWS Cognito sign-in with optional multi-factor authentication and six scoped roles. Unauthorized requests are refused, and logged.
Card data never touches us
Stripe Elements keeps BrightTrust in PCI SAQ-A scope. No analytics, chat or third-party scripts on the donation page.
Records that cannot be rewritten
Update and delete are revoked on the ledger at the database role level. Documents are encrypted and versioned in AWS S3.
Questions SGOs ask us
Does BrightTrust hold or move money?
No. BrightTrust is software only. Stripe processes donations and your organization's bank holds the cash. The platform keeps the virtual per-school ledger, reconciles it against the bank every day, and blocks disbursements if the two ever disagree.
Which organizations is it for?
Scholarship Granting Organizations preparing to accept federal Section 25F tax-credit donations, from a single-program startup SGO to a multi-school statewide organization. It was built alongside our launch partner, Sunnyside Rising, a Colorado SGO piloting with two Denver public elementary schools.
When can we launch?
Section 25F donations go live January 1, 2027. Onboarding takes weeks, not quarters, so there is still time to be compliant on day one. Book a walkthrough and we will map your launch timeline together.
Is this legal or tax advice?
No. BrightTrust enforces compliance controls in code and gives you the records to prove it, but your organization remains responsible for its own IRS and state filings. We are glad to work alongside your counsel and auditor.
See the whole
lifecycle, live.
Book a walkthrough of the donor flow, vendor payments and the compliance ledger. You talk to the people who build BrightTrust, and we reply within one business day.