Built by the sector. Owned by you.
A single intelligent system for non-profit back-office operations. Gift processing, budgeting, and fund management — connected, automated, and built by someone who has done this work for over 15 years.
The problem is real.
So are the results.
Gift processing at a national non-profit processing over 50 donations per month. This is what the journey from manual to automated looks like.
Spreadsheet reconciliation, manual receipt entry, cross-referencing three systems by hand.
Power Automate + Power Query reduced the burden — but brittle, hard to maintain, and still required manual oversight.
Fully automated, auditable, and scalable. Every donation flows from processor to CRM to QBO without human intervention.
Based on a real national non-profit client. Low-code predecessor built with Microsoft Power Automate, Power Query, and Teams (2025).
One system. Three deep domains.
TERN isn't a collection of separate tools. It's a single intelligent system with deep expertise in the back-office workflows that consume non-profit capacity.
Gift Processing & Reconciliation
Automated sync between your gift processor, CRM, and QBO — correctly coded, fund-restricted receipts without manual entry.
Collaborative Budgeting
Multi-departmental budget creation with real-time variance tracking — connected directly to your QBO actuals.
Fund & Grant Management
Restricted fund governance, grant compliance, labour allocation, and multi-funder reporting — built for how non-profit money actually works.
Privacy isn't a feature. It's the architecture.
Every TERN workflow is built on five non-negotiable design principles. These aren't marketing claims — they're the constraints we build within.
Data Sovereignty
You choose where your data lives — your own server, your cloud, or a hosted environment in the jurisdiction of your choice. Full export and migration rights, always. No lock-in.
Open Source First
We default to open source tools wherever feasible. Proprietary ecosystems that hold data hostage are avoided. Sovereignty is only meaningful if the tools support it in practice.
De-identification as the Primary Control
Only de-identified data ever passes to an AI model. This is a foundational design principle, not an add-on. It is the real safeguard — not vendor promises.
Enterprise APIs Only — But Don't Trust Them
When AI APIs are used, only enterprise endpoints with explicit non-retention and non-training agreements are acceptable. Because vendor agreements aren't fully trustworthy, Principle 3 is the actual control.
Minimum Data Footprint
We store only what the tool needs to function — typically reference IDs, not underlying records. Actual data stays in source systems. Less duplication means less risk.
Arctic Tern — longest migration of any animal on Earth
Precision Built for the Distance.
The Arctic Tern makes the longest migration of any animal on Earth — from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back, covering over 90,000 kilometres each year. It navigates with precision that defies its size, arrives exactly where it needs to be, and does it all on remarkably little.
That is the operating reality of every non-profit we work with. Long missions. Chronic under-resourcing. Financial systems that were never designed for fund accounting, grant compliance, and restricted revenue management — yet somehow navigated anyway, year after year. TERN is named for that quality of navigation: purposeful, precise, and built for the distance.
The name is also a statement of intent. TERN is built by someone who has spent over 15 years inside these systems — not observing them, working inside them. That is what “Built by the sector. Owned by you.” means.
Have questions about the TERN Suite?
Browse our knowledge base for answers — or reach out directly and we'll respond personally.