Every week, thousands of federal contracts and grants are posted that a small firm or a nonprofit could win. Most go unanswered by the firms best placed to do the work. Not because they lack the ability. Because they lack the capacity. This is the problem Crafteny was built to solve, and how it solves it.
The month nobody has
Take one opportunity. Reading a sixty-page solicitation. Working out whether you are eligible. Estimating what it is worth and what to charge. Finding a partner for the part you cannot do. Writing the volumes to the evaluation criteria. Checking them against every requirement. Filling the forms. Submitting on time. That is roughly a month of a capable person's time, and a small firm's capable people are already doing the work that pays this month's salaries.
Large primes solved this long ago with capture teams: analysts who read notices, pricers who build the numbers, writers who do nothing but write. Everyone else hires the work out one proposal at a time, at rates that only make sense for the biggest opportunities, or they do not bid. The second happens far more often, and it is why the same names keep winning.
The firms that should win federal work rarely have a capture team. The work is the same; only the team is missing.
What a capture team actually does
Strip a capture team down to its acts and there are eight. Someone finds the right opportunities. Someone decides which to chase. Someone builds the team. Someone prices it. Someone writes. Someone reviews it the way the evaluators will. Someone submits. Someone watches for the award. A prime has a person for each. A small firm has one person for all eight, on top of their real job.
How Crafteny solves it
Crafteny is those eight acts, done for you, on every opportunity, as one thing we call a pursuit. It begins before you lift a finger: each day it reads the federal contracts and grants that were posted and matches them to you, by your codes, your certifications and the kind of applicant you are. For each match it explains what is asked, whether you are eligible and what it is worth, and gives you a clear bid or no-bid call. The month of reading becomes a minute of deciding.
When you pursue one, it does the rest. It ranks partners for the gap the notice creates, from 700,000+ registered firms and their award records, or brings in the partners you already work with, and handles the invitations, the documents and the agreements. It estimates the value from comparable awards or builds the grant budget by federal category and checks it against the cost rules. It writes the package to the evaluation criteria, in your own template, from your own past work. It reviews the package the way an evaluator would, against every requirement, before you ever see it. It verifies your registration, prepares the package for submission, and once you have submitted, watches the award notices until you know the outcome.
What stays with you
Three things, and they are the three that matter. Whether to bid. What to charge. Whether to submit. Crafteny never makes those calls and never submits on your behalf; it puts everything you need to make them in front of you and does the work on either side. The capture team is yours. The decisions were always yours.
What changes
A firm that bid twice a year because twice was all it could carry can bid on what fits. A prime that turned down work for want of a partner can find one in an afternoon. A consultant who ran three clients' bids from three spreadsheets can run them from one board. The opportunities were always there. The capacity is new.