The team behind SGO Guide
We build the infrastructure Scholarship Granting Organizations need to run compliant Section 25F programs — and publish the guidance the whole ecosystem relies on.
Why SGO Guide exists
Section 25F of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act creates the first federal scholarship tax credit, effective January 1, 2027. It also creates a demanding operating mandate: the organizations that administer these scholarships must hold to the 90/10 spending rule, run genuinely arm's-length award processes, prevent donor earmarking, verify income eligibility, and disburse funds in ways that stand up to an audit.
We started SGO Guide because that operational bar is too high to clear with spreadsheets and generic nonprofit tools. ClearPath, our platform, gives SGOs the donor management, scholarship administration, compliance monitoring, and reporting infrastructure the program demands — and our free resources, state tracker, and course exist so that everyone in the ecosystem, from donors to policymakers, can understand how the program actually works.
Deep expertise on both sides of the problem
Running a compliant SGO is an education problem and an engineering problem at the same time. SGO Guide was founded by one career expert in each — and built so that neither side is an afterthought.
Taylor Hess
Co-Founder
Taylor is a technologist with more than 15 years of experience building software products, most recently as an engineer at Meta working to protect children and teens from the harms of social media — work where safety, compliance, and audit-readiness were not features of the product, they were the product.
He brings that engineering standard to ClearPath as his full-time focus: tamper-evident audit logs, real-time compliance monitoring, and disbursement controls built for organizations that cannot afford to get them wrong.
Robert Hoehn-Saric
Co-Founder
Robert has spent his entire career in education. He has helped establish private schools, advised education institutions, and built software products serving secondary and higher education.
At Sterling Partners, the Chicago-based investment firm with a decades-long history in education, Robert has worked with many of the firm's education portfolio companies — a vantage point that gives him a firsthand understanding of how secondary education is funded and what schools and families actually need. Section 25F is the problem he has spent his career preparing for; SGO Guide is where he is solving it.
Around that founding core, SGO Guide draws on a network of specialists — legal and tax counsel focused on Section 25F, compliance advisors, and education operators — so that every product decision and every piece of published guidance is checked against how the program actually works. Education, technology, and SGO compliance are not side interests for this team. They are the whole job.
How we approach what we publish
Everything on this site — the blog, the state opt-in tracker, the glossary, and the SGO Fundamentals course — is written from the statute and the operational realities of running an SGO. State tracker entries carry the month they were last reviewed, and we update analysis as the IRS regulatory process develops.
Our material is educational, not legal or tax advice. Section 25F regulations are still evolving, and we say so plainly wherever it matters. Organizations making formation or structural decisions should consult qualified legal and tax counsel — and we work alongside those advisors, not in place of them.
See the platform live. Then decide.
Tell us about your organization and we’ll set up a live demo — the real product, loaded with sample data — alongside a consultation on your formation path, state, and timeline.
What happens next
We review your submission and respond within one business day
Live platform demo — the actual product on sample data, typically 45–60 minutes
Diagnostic consultation on your formation path, state requirements, and timeline
You leave with a clear scope and recommendation — even if the answer is to partner rather than form