Built for the federal scholarship tax credit — and nothing else.
Every alternative is software built for something else, pointed at this program. Here is the comparison, requirement by requirement.
Running an SGO is three jobs no single tool was doing
A compliant SGO is simultaneously a regulated fundraising operation, a scholarship administrator, and a compliance program under annual audit. Before SGO Guide, the only way to cover all three was to stitch together tools built for other purposes — and the seams are exactly where the program’s rules live.
General fundraising tools stop at the receipt
Donor CRMs and giving pages were built for charitable gifts. They have no concept of a per-donor credit cap, an IRS-matched donor number, or a dollar that must stay locked to the state a donor designates.
Scholarship tools stop at the award
Application-and-review software collects forms and routes decisions. It does not verify income against the right area median figure, apply the statutory priority rules, or disburse in ways that prove qualified use.
Advisors stop at the advice
Attorneys and consultants can form the entity and answer questions well — that is their job, and it stays their job. What they do not provide is the operating infrastructure that keeps the organization compliant every day after.
What running an SGO takes, and who covers it
Eighteen capabilities every operating SGO ends up needing — the statutory requirements and the operational reality around them — against the three ways organizations try to assemble them without a purpose-built platform. This is the comparison for running your own SGO; a school that join one of ours instead gets every row of it operated on its behalf — once that program opens.
| Program requirement | SGO GuidePurpose-built SGO platform | General fundraising softwareDonor CRMs & giving pages | Scholarship app softwareApplication & review tools | Law firm + spreadsheetsCounsel for setup, DIY ops |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raising from donors | ||||
| $1,700 per-donor cap enforcementTracked exactly across every gift, refund, and recurring schedule | ||||
| Tax-credit receipts with the IRS unique donor numberCredit receipts are not charitable acknowledgments — and the IRS matches the number | ||||
| Pre-launch pledge campaignsSecured pledges, state-conditional triggers, automatic launch-day charging | ||||
| Recurring giving sized to the creditGive-to-your-cap schedules that fill $1,700 and stop — no overage refunds | ||||
| Donor marketing & outreach kitBranded brochures, QR codes, shareable giving pages, lapsed-donor win-back | ||||
| Operating across states | ||||
| One organization, listed in many statesDonors designate a state at the moment of giving; every dollar locks to that state's segregated account | ||||
| The 90/10 test, run per state accountReal-time tracking with live alerts — and over-cap releases blocked, in every account | ||||
| Committees that scale with your footprintPer-state committees, or one national committee over per-state dockets | ||||
| Awarding scholarships | ||||
| 300% area-median-income verificationCalibrated to each family's location, not a statewide average | ||||
| Arm's-length awards with no-earmarking safeguardsBlind review, returning-student and sibling priority, multi-school checks | ||||
| Bilingual family portals — English & EspañolApplications, giving pages, receipts, and award letters, with one toggle | ||||
| Moving money compliantly | ||||
| Tuition paid directly to the schoolApproved tuition released to the school in one bulk remittance — funds never pass through the family's hands | ||||
| Amazon Business PunchOut for suppliesStaff shop on the SGO's Amazon Business account; the cart becomes a disbursement request and approval places the order | ||||
| Checks to providers for edge casesPaid to the tutor or provider — never to the family — on the same approval trail | ||||
| Proving compliance | ||||
| Tamper-evident audit log & evidence packagesHash-chained records — because the annual audit is programmatic, not just financial | ||||
| State annual reports & board dashboardsEach state's required format, donor impact reports, and IRS documentation from one source | ||||
| Getting started & staying current | ||||
| Formation, state registration & listing501(c)(3) structuring through the state's certified SGO list | ||||
| Regulatory tracking as the rules changeProposed regulations land September 2026 — and keep evolving after | ||||
This compares tool categories, not named vendors — capabilities vary by product. “Custom work” means a capable team can approximate the requirement with configuration, manual process, or add-on services.
One platform, four jobs, the whole lifecycle
Everything an SGO does falls into four jobs. SGO Guide covers each one with dedicated products that share a single system of record.
Form
Entity structure, governing documents, state registration, and the certified list.
Raise
Branded giving portal, pledge drives, cap tracking, and compliant credit receipts.
The Products, Exactly
ClearPath Launch
From intent to compliant, operating SGO
Full-service SGO formation: 501(c)(3) structuring, governing documents, state opt-in registration, and Section 25F (Education Freedom Tax Credit) compliance from the ground up. The legal foundation every other ClearPath product is built on.
ClearPath Managed
Your SGO. We run it.
Full outsourced administration of an SGO you own. Your nonprofit, your board, your brand on every receipt — and our team doing the operating work: donor processing and receipts, application intake and income verification, disbursement, 90/10 accounting, state reporting, and audit preparation. You keep the entity and every decision that has to be the board's; you do not staff the back office.
ClearPath Donors
Every donor interaction, fully compliant
The complete donor-facing platform: a branded donation portal, automated Education Freedom Tax Credit (Section 25F) receipts, a full CRM with per-donor limit enforcement, recurring giving management, and ClearPath Pledge — pre-launch pledge drives that build your donor base before giving even opens.
ClearPath Scholarship
Applications, eligibility, awards, and disbursements
The complete scholarship administration platform: a branded family application portal, geography-specific 300% AMI income verification, a weighted rubric that scores every applicant, a review console built for hundreds of files, and compliant scholarship disbursement.
ClearPath Shield
Continuous compliance, not annual reviews
Real-time compliance monitoring with a tamper-evident record underneath: continuous 90/10 tracking with live alerts, a cryptographically hash-chained audit log, one-click audit evidence packages, refund and chargeback integrity, payout reconciliation, and state reporting — built for the audit you hope never comes.
ClearPath Insights
Data your board, donors, and regulators each need
A real-time reporting and impact analytics platform that aggregates data across your entire SGO operation — producing board dashboards, donor impact reports, state regulatory submissions, and IRS documentation from a single source.
ClearPath Advisory
The decisions before the decisions — free
The conversation that comes before you choose anything. We work out with you whether an SGO should be yours at all, who should run it day to day, and what your state actually requires — then point you at the answer, including the one where you do not need us. It costs nothing, and it is where almost everyone starts.
ClearPath Advance
The advancement office for schools raising scholarship dollars
A school's complete fundraising and marketing suite, built for tax-credit giving: a donor CRM that understands households and grandparents, multi-step campaigns across email, text, and print, AI that drafts in your school's voice, print-ready materials with tracked QR codes on every piece, and a tax-credit ask engine that shows each family exactly what their gift costs them. Works whether your SGO is one we run or someone else's.
ClearPath Partner Schools
Join an SGO instead of forming one
The fastest way for a school to offer federal tax-credit scholarships: join an SGO we operate instead of forming your own. $0 to start. Your school gets a branded giving page and QR code, donors can name your school as their preferred school, your school confirms enrollment in one click, and the SGO carries every Section 25F obligation.
ClearPath Pledge
Build your launch-day donor base months in advance
Pre-launch pledge drives that build your January 1 donor base months in advance: supporters commit today — anywhere from just an email address to a fully secured, multi-year pledge — and ClearPath processes every gift automatically the moment Section 25F activates.
What separates us from every other option here
The rules are still being written — we track them so you don't
Treasury's proposed regulations arrive by the end of September 2026, and guidance will keep evolving from there. A generic tool leaves every regulatory change for your team to notice, interpret, and configure. SGO Guide exists to absorb that work: when the rules move, the platform and its guidance move with them — the same monitoring behind our state opt-in tracker and regulatory analysis.
Compliance is structural, not a checklist
The program's hardest rules are about how money moves: dollars locked to donor-designated state accounts, a 90/10 test on each account, disbursements that must prove qualified use. Software adapted from general fundraising records transactions and hopes the process around it was right. SGO Guide is built so the compliant path is the default path — the system won't let a gift skip its state designation or a disbursement skip its evidence.
One system of record, one unbroken audit trail
Every SGO faces an annual independent audit that is programmatic, not just financial — it follows each dollar from donor to state account to verified student to qualified expense. Stitch four tools together and that chain breaks at every seam, leaving your staff to reconstruct it by hand. On one platform, the trail is a byproduct of normal operations, exportable as an evidence package on demand.
The only vendor that can also be the SGO
Every other option in this comparison assumes you have already decided to form and run an SGO — that decision is a prerequisite for buying anything. We are the software other nonprofits run their own SGOs on, and we operate certified SGOs of our own that a school can simply join as a partner school. That matters on the way in, because you can start where you actually are instead of committing to an entity, a board, and an annual audit to find out whether the program works for your community. It matters more later: a partner school that outgrows the arrangement can form its own SGO on the same platform, and its donor records, receipts, and award history come along rather than being rebuilt.
When we’re not the right answer
A comparison page you can trust has to include this part. If your community is small and a single school is the natural beneficiary, forming your own SGO is usually the wrong move — our own analysis says so, and we published the framework. That is exactly why we run SGOs of our own: you can join one as a partner school at $0 with no entity to form — coming soon, with an early-access list open now — or browse the full SGO directory if another organization already serves your state better. And if all you need is formation counsel with no operating program behind it, an exempt-organizations attorney alone may serve you fine.
For everyone building a real operating SGO — a diocese, a school network, an association, a community organization — the question isn’t whether you’ll need this infrastructure. It’s whether you assemble it from parts or start with it whole — and, separately, whether your own staff drive it or ours do. If you aren’t sure which of the three paths is yours, compare all three side by side.
Common questions
How is SGO Guide different from general nonprofit fundraising software?
General fundraising software is built for charitable gifts: donation pages, acknowledgment letters, and donor records. The federal scholarship tax credit program needs things that category has no concept of — a $1,700 per-donor statutory cap, tax-credit receipts carrying an IRS-matched unique donor number, state-designated segregated accounts, and a 90/10 test on each account. SGO Guide is built around those requirements natively rather than approximating them with custom fields and manual process.
We already have a donor CRM. Do we have to replace it?
No. Many organizations keep their existing CRM for general fundraising and run qualified Section 25F contributions through SGO Guide, where the cap tracking, credit receipts, and state-account rails live. The two serve different gift types — general operating support and qualified contributions are legally distinct anyway, and keeping them in separate systems mirrors the separation the program itself requires.
Does SGO Guide replace our attorney or auditor?
No — and it shouldn't. Formation counsel and an independent auditor are part of a well-run SGO. SGO Guide does the work between them: it operationalizes the structure counsel designs, and it produces the organized, tamper-evident records your auditor needs. Organizations using ClearPath Launch and Advisory typically involve counsel at the decision points rather than for day-to-day operations.
Can't we run this on spreadsheets until we're bigger?
You can start almost anything on spreadsheets — but this program punishes retrofitting. Receipts with unique donor numbers, per-state account tracking, income verification records, and the 90/10 ratio all have to be right from the first contribution, because the annual audit reviews the whole year and donor credits depend on your compliance. The organizations that struggle most are the ones rebuilding their records after the fact.
Do we have to start our own SGO to work with SGO Guide?
No — there are three ways in, and we offer all of them, though only two are open today. Most organizations on ClearPath run their own SGO: their nonprofit, their board, their scholarship committee, their brand on every receipt, with our platform as the infrastructure underneath. If you want that same SGO but have nobody to staff it, ClearPath Managed is the second way: you still own the entity and your committee still decides every award, and our team does the operating work — gifts, receipts, applications, income verification, disbursement, the per-state 90/10 books, and the state reports. Both of those are available now. The third way is for a school that does not want to form an entity, get certified, and carry an annual audit at all: it will be able to join an SGO we operate as a ClearPath Partner School — days to onboard at $0, with the school's own branded giving page and one recurring job, confirming that a student is enrolled. That program is coming soon, being stood up ahead of January 1, 2027, and schools can join the early-access list now. The trade in the third one is control: in an SGO we run, our committee sets eligibility and decides awards, and donor preference guides those decisions without binding them. In all three, at least 90% of every qualified contribution reaches students.
What exactly is included?
Products covering the full lifecycle: ClearPath Launch (formation and state registration), Donors and Pledge (giving portal, CRM, receipts, pledge drives), Scholarship (applications, income verification, awards, disbursement), Shield (compliance monitoring and audit evidence), Insights (board and regulatory reporting), and Advisory (strategy). They run as one platform with one system of record — use the full stack or start where your need is sharpest. ClearPath Managed is the same stack with our team operating it for you rather than yours.
Talk it through before you decide.
Tell us about your organization and we’ll set up a consultation on your formation path, your state, and the timeline. It costs nothing and there is nothing to sign — and if it’s useful, we’ll walk through the platform on the same call.
What happens next
We read your submission and respond within one business day
A working session, typically 45–60 minutes — your situation, not a sales pitch
Which of the three paths fits, what your state requires, and what the timeline is
You leave with a clear recommendation — including when the answer is to join an SGO rather than form one, or to wait