The global DAF sponsor was scaling fast, doubling their grantmaking YoY. Their grant payments infrastructure wasn't. Here's how Chariot Disbursements changed that.
"Chariot helps us deliver a best-in-market experience to our donors by making our grant payments faster, safer, and far less repetitive for the nonprofits we support."
Founders Pledge is a global community of entrepreneurs, founders, and investors who pledge a meaningful portion of their wealth to charity at time of exit. Across entities in the US, UK, and Germany, they administer donor advised funds for their members and run in-house thematic grantmaking funds — disbursing capital to high-impact organizations working on climate, global health, and more.
In 2025, grant volume surged 99%. For Travers Oliver, Head of Philanthropic Services at Founders Pledge, that growth was exhilarating — and alarming. "We, as an organization, have been really intentional about how we scale," he said. "How do we continue to deliver the same service level to our member base without compromising on risk mitigation or speed?"
They needed grant payments infrastructure that could do all three.
The Problem
Tedious, Manual Workflows
Founders Pledge's grantmaking falls into two buckets: straightforward domestic grants that should be fast and automated, and complex international or expenditure responsibility grants that require deeper diligence. The challenge was that their manual payment infrastructure was treating everything like the latter.
Every domestic grant triggered a chain — outreach to the grantee, collection of payment details, a verification call, a hand-off to finance for additional checks. Multiple teams. Multiple touch points. Multiple opportunities for human error. When grant volume doubles, that process doesn’t become twice as painful. It becomes untenable.
Payment Risk
And the risk environment was making it worse. "Bad actors are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the solutions are slow to catch up," Travers said. "Everyone I talk to always has the same questions: How are you paying? How are you mitigating risk? And no one really had a great answer."
The risks are real: checks intercepted in the mail, wires misdirected by impersonators, verification calls compromised by AI bots and deepfakes. Building in-house defenses against a threat landscape that evolves this fast isn't realistic for most grantmaking teams.
"Unless you have an in-house team specializing 24/7 on how to mitigate these risks," Travers said, "you're going to fall behind."
The Solution
Travers found Chariot through a LinkedIn post, and what started as his cold outreach to the team quickly became a deep partnership. Onboarding was completed in a matter of weeks, with Founders Pledge going live in November 2025, fully operational before the giving season peak.
Chariot Disbursements gave Founders Pledge a single, purpose-built system to handle every payment — replacing the fragmented, manual process:
- Electronic payments — fast, secure transfers to verified nonprofits, with real-time status tracking on every grant.
- Nonprofit verification — IRS good standing validation, OFAC/AML screening, and bank account verification handled automatically, so Founders Pledge never has to collect or store sensitive banking details themselves.
- Exception handling — for grantees who don't claim their Chariot accounts, Chariot facilitates check delivery, manages returns, and resolves exceptions without staff involvement.
- White-glove support — dedicated support for both Founders Pledge and their grantees, with rapid response to payment questions and on-demand technical support.
"From that first day where I sent a message and you immediately responded — there's always someone on the other line. I've been in other spaces where partners are just harder to get in contact with. And there's nothing worse."
A key onboarding step: before going live, Founders Pledge sent a launch email guiding their grantees through Chariot's verification process. By the time giving season arrived, grantees were already onboarded. When grants needed to move, it was — as Travers put it — "literally the click of the button experience."
97%
Grant volume now moves electronically through Chariot — meaning grantees are verifying successfully, claiming accounts, and receiving funds digitally, at scale, without issue.
$12 Million
Total volume disbursed in first 4 months
"Between our philanthropy team and finance, there were just so many hands touching every grant — outreach to grantees, collecting details, verification calls, back to finance for checks. And there's always a human error component to that. It really has been a massive game changer."
The giving season pain points that previously consumed multiple teams essentially disappeared. Grantees who'd already onboarded into Chariot moved through without re-verification. No delays. No inbound "what's taking so long?" Just grants moving.
"When we saw it implemented and saw how seamless it was — we could take a deep breath," Travers said. "The first thing people on my team said was: 'What took us so long?"
Beyond the team's relief, Chariot unlocked something strategically important: capacity. In the first 4 months of using Chariot, they estimated that they gained back 1 full working day per week. Freed from the manual overhead of domestic grant processing, Founders Pledge's team can now focus on the high-complexity work that warrants their focus — international grantmaking, expenditure responsibility grants, deeper member advisory relationships.
"This has given us the ability to free up our time to really do that work and put our effort there," Travers said. "It's been a game changer. It really has."
Members have felt the shift too. Faster, seamless grant delivery has become a visible improvement in the Founders Pledge member experience. And perhaps the clearest proof: peer grantmakers — watching Founders Pledge operate through giving season — started reaching out to ask how they were doing it.
Advice to the Field: Don't Wait for the Pipe to Burst
Travers is direct about what he'd tell his peers at other DAF sponsors and grantmaking organizations.
"If you have a small pipe and the volume through it keeps doubling — if there's the slightest crack, it's going to burst," he said. "Don't let it get to that point. If you see a crack, fix it. Be an advocate within your organization. Don't wait for your CEO to mandate it."
What still excites him most about Chariot isn't just the automation — it's the shared grantee network. When a nonprofit onboards into Chariot, verifying their identity, banking details, and IRS standing, that verification becomes available across every Chariot grantmaker. Grantees don't have to repeat the process for Founders Pledge, then NPT, then every other sponsor they receive grants from. One validation, shared across the field.
"You bring your grantees, I bring mine. We do one check up front, and then we can all leverage that together," he said.
"We want grantees focused on their work. There's a reason our members are sending them funds — to deliver impact on the ground. We don't want to add unnecessary administrative burden on top of that."
The cost of inaction isn't just operational — it's reputational. "No one wants a reputational risk for something going wrong because someone in my role didn't act when they had the chance," he said.
"We are here to deliver funds to charities delivering impact on the ground. In order to do that well, we have to do it with speed — but also with precision. Risk mitigation isn't separate from our mission. It is our mission."
Interested in how Chariot Disbursements could transform your grant payments operation? Talk to our team
