Byte Back Buffalo - Harvest House Buffalo Grant Accelerator

Inspiration

Harvest House Buffalo shared that writing a \$5,000 grant takes as long as a \$500,000 grant. Each grant requires different stories, data, and funder customization across programs like healthcare, food as medicine, and children’s services. They currently store documents in Google Drive, making it hard to find what they need, slowing them down, and risking missed funding. We wanted to create a practical, adoptable solution to help them save time, organize stories, and focus on serving the Buffalo community.

What it does

The Harvest House Grant Accelerator is a Zoho Creator–based platform that:

Centralizes grant tracking, statuses, and deadlines.
Stores stories, Letters of Intent, budgets, photos, and program data per grant.
Provides advanced search across all document contents and metadata.
Uses Zoho’s built-in AI for draft generation and OCR on handwritten intake forms.
Supports multilingual staff and stakeholder needs.

It saves staff time, increases grant-writing capacity, and helps Harvest House secure more funding while aligning with their current Zoho migration for easy implementation.

How we built it

We:

Interviewed Harvest House to define pain points and requirements.
Researched their tech stack and confirmed they are migrating to Zoho CRM.
Designed a clean, accessible Figma prototype for dashboards, document management, and workflows.
Mapped these designs into Zoho Creator’s low-code environment for realistic implementation.
Integrated Zoho’s AI capabilities for drafting and OCR.
Built structured document linking and advanced search using Zoho’s internal tools.
Tested flows for ease of use for non-technical staff.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing innovation with feasibility while staying within Harvest House’s resources and Zoho’s environment.
Designing a user-friendly experience for non-technical staff while maintaining flexibility across departments.
Managing data privacy for client stories and program data within secure workflows.
Ensuring the system could scale while focusing on an MVP that delivers immediate value.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a solution Harvest House can actually implement immediately without extensive developer costs.
Designing clean, intuitive workflows for organizing stories and grant documents.
Successfully integrating AI and OCR within Zoho to reduce staff workload.
Building a system that directly supports Harvest House’s mission to serve the Buffalo community with equity and compassion.

What we learned

Non-profits need sustainable tech, not just flashy tech.
Integrating AI thoughtfully can greatly reduce repetitive grant writing tasks.
Listening deeply to an organization’s workflow and constraints leads to better design decisions.
Designing for real-world deployment is critical for impact.

What's next for Byte Back Buffalo - Harvest House Buffalo Grant Accelerator

We plan to:

Pilot the system with Harvest House staff for one department before scaling to other programs.
Refine the search and AI draft functionalities based on staff feedback.
Integrate Zoho CRM and financial tools for live budget updates and impact reporting.
Expand multilingual and accessibility features to support a broader range of staff and community needs.