S.O.S. — Funding Roadmap & Grant Strategy
Non-dilutive federal & state funding · Research current as of June 2026
The plan: win federal SBIR money built for for-profit ed-tech — without giving up a point of equity.
The thesis
S.O.S. needs build capital, not investors yet. The right instrument is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program — federal R&D grants that exist specifically to pay for-profit small businesses to develop and commercialize innovative technology. SBIR is non-dilutive (no equity, you keep your IP), and the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation each run an SBIR program that S.O.S. fits cleanly. We pursue both, in parallel, on a deliberately built runway.
The two-track plan
| Program | Award | Entry point | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSF SBIR “America’s Seed Fund” · NSF 26-510 | Phase I up to $305K / 6–18 mo → Phase II up to $1.25M | A light ~3-page “Project Pitch” (a day of writing) → full proposal by invitation | Open now. Pitch anytime; full-proposal windows Jul 27 & Nov 4, 2026 |
| ED/IES SBIR Dept. of Education · Phase IA | Phase IA $250K / 9 mo → Phase II $1.0M / 2 yr (FY2027) | Full proposal against the IES solicitation; SAM.gov + UEI required to submit | FY2026 closes Jun 29, 2026 — gated sprint underway; FY2027 is the fallback |
You may hold an NSF and an ED/IES award at the same time — they’re different agencies. We tailor each submission to that agency’s emphasis (NSF rewards technical risk and novelty; ED/IES rewards an education product with a credible classroom-evaluation plan) and disclose the overlap, which keeps concurrent pursuit fully compliant.
The June 29 sprint — a gated, low-regret swing
The FY2026 ED/IES Phase IA deadline is June 29, 2026. With the company already a New York corporation, SAM.gov filed (in the 1–3 day approval window), and a full-time educator co-founder as PI, it’s back in play — so we’re drafting the full proposal now and will submit if SAM goes active in time (go/no-go ~June 26).
- Why it’s low-regret. Every document is reusable — if SAM stalls, the package becomes the backbone of the FY2027 ED/IES and NSF proposals. No work is wasted.
- Why it’s credible, not a Hail Mary. We have what most last-minute applicants don’t: a demonstrated MVP, a full-time PI who taught in the classroom, and a fast drafting pipeline. The runway below is the fallback, not a consolation.
- The one hard gate. Submission needs an active SAM.gov registration + UEI(“proposals without a UEI are rejected without review”). A brand-new EIN can lag validation, so SAM going active by ~June 26 is the trigger that decides go vs. roll-to-FY2027.
The critical path — SAM.gov is the long pole
One administrative item gates every federal dollar. We start it the day the S.O.S. entity exists, and everything else runs alongside it.
- 1
Applicant entity already exists — the S.O.S. New York corporation
No LLC to form, no EIN to wait on. The company is already a New York corporation with an EIN — which also keeps it eligible for the NY state match below. This deletes the longest step from the critical path.
Done ✓
- 2
Get a UEI + register on SAM.gov — start today
UEI assignment is ~1–2 business days; full active registration (entity validation + CAGE code from Defense Logistics) is 2–6 weeks. Because the entity already exists, this clock can start now — it’s the only real gate left.
You + me · drives the timeline
- 3
Register on Grants.gov + NSF Research.gov
The submission portals. Can begin once SAM.gov is active; needed for the NSF full proposal and the ED/IES proposal.
Me, with your sign-off
- 4
Draft + submit the NSF Project Pitch
Doesn't wait on SAM.gov. The fastest federal action available — a ~3-page pitch. Draft is below, ready to submit.
Drafted — see below
9-month runway (June 2026 → Spring 2027)
What the funding de-risks (ties to the Test Plan)
Phase I money funds exactly the jump our four-tier test plan already lays out — concept demo → real, tamper-resistant pilot:
- Tier 2 — Real APK: compile the native Android app so blocking is device-wide and survives Wi-Fi→cellular.
- Tier 3 — Real integrity signals: live IP-intelligence + Play Integrity attestation feeding the 0–100 score.
- Tier 4 — Tamper-proof pilot: Android Enterprise / Device Owner provisioning, real auth, a school’s real network ranges and roster.
- iOS / iPhone reach: a consent-anchored Family Controls app — anchored to the parent-consent portal — brings school-hours app/web governance to personal iPhones, with school-owned supervised devices reaching full tamper-proof parity. Quantifying the BYOD-vs-supervised enforcement gap is itself a Phase I/II research result (see the iOS track on the test plan).
- Compliance: counsel-reviewed FERPA/COPPA language, district DPA template, SOC 2 path, independent pen-test.
The full grant landscape (ranked, verified June 2026)
| Source | Fit | Amount | Status / next step |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSF SBIR | ★ High | $305K → $1.25M | Open. Submit Project Pitch now. |
| ED/IES SBIR | ★ High | $250K → $1.0M | FY2026 closes Jun 29 → target FY2027. |
| Tools Competition | High | $50K–$300K | Non-dilutive, for-profit OK, K-12 track. 2027 cycle ~Sept 2026. |
| NYSTAR IMG (NY match) | ★ High | up to $100K–$200K | State match, ≤50% of a federal SBIR win — non-dilutive. Round opens ~Oct 14, 2026; proactive track files before the federal decision. |
| GSV Cup 2027 | Med | up to $1M pool | Ed-tech startup competition. Interest form open now (free). |
Checked and skipped (closed, defunded in the 2025 Dept-of-Ed restructuring, or legally for-profit-excluded): DOJ COPS School Violence Prevention Program, BJA STOP, NIJ school-safety, ED Education Innovation & Research, CISA SLCGP, the FCC Cybersecurity Pilot, and state phone-storage grants (which fund lockers/pouches — the opposite of S.O.S.). Major foundations (Gates, Walton, Overdeck, Schmidt) are invite-only or nonprofit-only.
The New York advantage
Being a New York corporation with a New York educator co-founder and New York school customers stacks three real advantages a generic applicant doesn’t have:
- A state match that stacks on the federal win. NYSTAR’s Innovation Matching Grants Program adds up to $100K (Phase I) / $200K (Phase II) — ≤50% of the federal award, non-dilutive. Its proactive track lets us secure a NY commitment letter before the federal decision (file ≥3 months ahead). Next round opens ~Oct 14, 2026.
- Domain credibility + a pilot path. A co-founder who taught K-12 in Nassau County is exactly the education expertise SBIR reviewers reward — and the warm channel to a New York pilot-school Letter of Intent.
- A built-in revenue channel. NY’s Smart Schools Bond Act ($2B) lets districts buy classroom technology and “high-tech security,” and NY Education Law §2-d mandates student-data-privacy terms — making S.O.S.’s privacy-by-design a compliance selling point, not just a feature.
Draft NSF Project Pitch — ready to submit
NSF’s entry point is four short fields. Below is a first draft within each character limit, leading with the genuine technical risk NSF funds. Submit at seedfund.nsf.gov under topic Learning & Cognition Technologies (LC), with Cybersecurity & Authentication as the cross-cut.
S.O.S. (Scholastic Operating System) is a device-level school-session governance system that turns a student’s personal Android phone into a school-managed learning environment during class and returns it to a fully private personal device after the bell. The core innovation is not a Wi-Fi filter — it is a session that attaches to the device, not the network. A trusted school gateway captures an enrolled device into a school session; the policy then persists on the device, so switching from school Wi-Fi to cellular, a hotspot, a VPN, or private DNS does not release it. Each of those becomes a logged bypass attempt that lowers the device’s trust score, rather than an escape hatch. The second innovation is a multi-layer Network Integrity Engine that scores every device 0–100 by fusing five signal layers — IP intelligence (VPN/proxy/Tor/datacenter), hardware attestation (Android Play Integrity; root/emulator/tamper), network-behavior analysis, school-gateway verification, and admin policy — into a calibrated band (Verified/Trusted/Suspicious/Restricted) mapped to an enforcement action. The third is privacy-preserving campus detection: the device proves it is on the school network by matching its egress IP to the school’s ranges, and transmits an IP only when in range — off-campus, no address ever leaves the device. The result is school-hours control on a device the school does not own, with a hard privacy boundary the rest of the time.
The central research challenge is holding a tamper-resistant session on a personal device the institution does not own, against a motivated student adversary, without surveillance-grade collection. Phase I objectives: (1) Anti-circumvention on un-owned hardware — keep on-device DNS/VPN-layer filtering enforced through Wi-Fi↔cellular handoffs, hotspot tethering, DoH/DoT, IP-literal fallback, private DNS, and uninstall attempts, using Android Enterprise / Device-Owner provisioning, and quantify the residual bypass surface. (2) A calibrated, adversary-robust integrity score — design and validate the fusion model so the 0–100 score and its band→action mapping are stable, explainable, and resistant to gaming, with measured false-positive/negative rates against scripted bypass scenarios. (3) Privacy-preserving presence proof — formalize the egress-IP campus check so on/off-campus is provable without transmitting off-campus identifiers, and server-side re-verification prevents spoofed on-campus claims. (4) An auditable AI decision-support layer that recommends (never auto-punishes) and logs every recommendation for human approval. The risks are real: anti-tamper on personal Android is an arms race; the integrity model must not penalize legitimate network conditions; and the privacy guarantees must hold in code, not just policy. Phase I produces a compiled, instrumented prototype tested against a documented bypass battery in a small classroom pilot.
Buyers are K-12 districts facing the #1 classroom distraction — student phones — where every current option forces a bad trade: confiscate (pouches/lockers), buy 1:1 hardware, or enroll a child’s personal phone into surveillance-grade MDM. The U.S. has ~13,000 districts / ~98,000 public schools; cell-phone-restriction policies are now law or pending in a majority of states, creating urgent, funded demand. S.O.S. sells software on devices students already own — lower cost than 1:1, more humane than confiscation, and privacy-preserving by design. Entry wedge: distraction-management + BYOD governance; expansion: school-network integrity and cybersecurity. Model: per-student annual SaaS.
S.O.S. is a U.S. for-profit small business — a New York corporation (≥51% U.S.-citizen-owned). It pairs a 35-year operator-entrepreneur (advertising, event production, a digital agency; now building AI-era ventures) with a co-founder who taught K-12 in Nassau County, New York — direct, credible education-domain expertise and a warm path to school pilots. A working MVP is already live and demonstrated: backend integrity engine, teacher/admin dashboard, device simulator, and real server-observed egress-IP campus detection on a physical phone, plus a code-complete native Android app awaiting compilation. The team is adding Android-enterprise and security engineering to reach a tamper-resistant pilot, with privacy counsel.
Immediate next actions
- Together: start the SAM.gov registration on the existing NY corp today — it’s the only real gate, and the 2–6 week clock should be running now.
- You + co-founder: open a warm line to a Nassau County district for a pilot Letter of Intent — the single biggest proposal-strengthener.
- Me: finalize the NSF Project Pitch above into a submission-ready packet; you review and we submit.
- Me: draft the ED/IES Phase IA proposal outline against the FY2027 blueprint so it’s ready when the solicitation opens.
- Build: get the Flutter APK compiled — the highest-leverage technical step for every proposal.