ABOUT CATYLST

Why faith-aligned giving needed a new platform.

The giving tools available today were built for the people asking for money, not the people giving it. We built Catylst to change that.

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Our story

Three paragraphs.

01 · The honest problem

Faith-aligned giving deserves the same rigor as any serious allocation decision — and historically, it has not had it. DAF balances sit in holding accounts while donors scan websites, chase warm introductions, and trust gut-feel. Church missions boards evaluate twelve organizations from spreadsheets. Family foundations with Christian charters lean on the same advisors who serve secular portfolios, with copy and tools built for someone else.

The platforms that exist are either cold fintech built for portfolio managers or warm directories that stop at discovery and leave every hard question unanswered. Faith donors deserve infrastructure that takes both their convictions and their diligence seriously.

The gap
Before Catylst
Spreadsheets, email threads, and gut-feel
DiscoveryGuideStar, word of mouth
DiligenceEmail + PDF folder
Decision recordFrom memory
02 · The product and the promise

Catylst is built for the giver who cares where it lands. We match faith-aligned donors with ministries and nonprofits across ten transparent dimensions — mission, faith alignment, cause, geography, grant size, funding type, outcome, population, trust verification, and urgency — and every match comes with a plain-language explanation you can read, question, and cite.

Our deal rooms turn diligence into a workspace instead of an inbox. Documents, conversations, checklists, AI summaries, and decision rationale all live in one audit-trailed place. Our AI never fabricates, never scores you opaquely, and never touches your funds. When you are ready to recommend a grant, Catylst prepares a compliant package you hand off to your DAF custodian. Final authority stays where it belongs: with you.

Catylst
One workspace
Matching, diligence, package, hand-off
Ten transparent dimensionsCited
Collaborative diligenceShared
Compliant grant packageReady
03 · The broader mission

Underneath the faith-aligned experience, Catylst is intelligent capital allocation infrastructure. Foundations, family offices, professional advisors, and institutional funders use the same matching engine, the same audit-trailed deal rooms, and the same portfolio views to run serious allocation at scale.

One platform. One standard of rigor. Capital in motion — wherever your conviction takes it.

Foundations
Portfolio view
Same engine, institutional workflow
Portfolio-level allocationReady
Board-ready reportingReady
Founding principles

Six principles we will hold ourselves to.

Transparency over mystery

Every match explanation cites the donor profile field and the organization profile field that produced it. When data is missing, we say so. No composite scores. No paywalled ranking.

Trust through verification

Trust badges are earned through documented verification, not paid placement. We never sell badges. We never rank organizations by ad spend.

Compliance by default

Catylst prepares recommendations. Catylst never custodies funds, executes grants, or provides financial or tax advice. Every grant package carries the compliance disclaimer on every page.

Faith with dignity

Faith taxonomy is inclusive (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Non-denominational, and “Prefer not to specify” as the prominent first option), never ranked, and never scored against doctrine.

Action over information

Catylst is not a directory. We surface aligned organizations, help you run diligence in a workspace, and prepare a compliant package. The goal is action — a grant recommended, a report received, an outcome tracked.

Collaboration as first-class

Deal rooms, shared checklists, elder participation, family office roles, advisor-client portals — collaborative giving is how this actually happens. We build for it from day one.

Faith review

About our faith review posture.

Faith content on Catylst — our faith taxonomy, our ministry orientation cards, our faith statement field, and our marketing copy on the For Churches and For Donors pages — is reviewed by a small group of trusted pastoral advisors before it ships. These are pastors and theologians who have agreed to review our faith content and flag anything that misrepresents tradition, doctrine, or pastoral sensibility.

A formal Theological Review Board is on our post-launch roadmap, and we consider it a priority. We chose to launch with an informal review posture rather than delay launch to stand up a formal board. We think transparency about our review posture is more important than claiming one we haven’t built yet.

If you believe any faith content on Catylst misrepresents your tradition, doctrine, or pastoral sensibility, please write to us at faithreview@catylst.com. We will investigate, respond within three business days, and correct anything we got wrong.

The team

Who’s building this.

Catylst is being built by a small founding team with backgrounds in fintech, faith-led philanthropy, and enterprise software. Full team bios will appear here at launch.

Founding team

Founder & CEO

Founding team

Engineering

Founding team

Product

Founding team

Design

Our Values

What we stand for.

  • Transparency

    Every recommendation cites its sources. Every claim is verifiable.

  • Optionality

    Faith alignment is a donor's free choice. Catylst never penalizes donors who decline.

  • Custody restraint

    We prepare. Your DAF custodian executes. The separation matters.

  • Donor dignity

    Donors aren't extracted from; they're equipped.

The short version

Press and partnerships.

Catylst is the transparent matching and diligence platform for faith-aligned donors, churches, foundations, and advisors who move DAF capital to ministries and nonprofits that fit their convictions. Every match comes with a cited, human-readable explanation. Every grant package is prepared compliantly for hand-off to a DAF custodian — Catylst never custodies funds, executes grants, or provides financial or tax advice.

Underneath the faith-aligned experience, Catylst is intelligent capital allocation infrastructure for any mission-driven funder. Capital in motion, wherever your conviction takes it. Learn more at catylst.com.

Press inquiries: press@catylst.com. Partnerships: partners@catylst.com.

Get in touch.

We answer every email.

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