Spheriq AI
Spheriq AI is the assistant built into Spheriq, the Swiss philanthropy platform. It helps non-profits find funders and draft appeals, and helps grant-giving foundations pre-screen incoming applications against their own funding criteria.
What is Spheriq AI?
Spheriq AI is the artificial intelligence layer embedded in Spheriq, the Swiss online platform for philanthropy operated by Spheriq AG in Basel. It is not a standalone product: it runs inside the platform's web application and surfaces on the screens where the work already happens — organisation profiles, search results and grant application management — rather than in a separate tool.
Its distinguishing claim is the material it reads. Instead of general web content, Spheriq AI queries the platform's own structured dataset: more than 16,000 organisation profiles, over 1,400 projects and requests, more than 200 active networks, and the funding logics of Swiss foundations. The vendor states that no other AI tool has access to this material.
Interaction begins with a component called the Launcher. Predefined action buttons appear in a side tab, already aware of the page being viewed — organisation identifier, project data, application history — so nothing has to be prompted. One click runs the analysis, and the conversation can then continue freely in a chat window.
For non-profits, the assistant identifies suitable funding organisations and explains its reasoning, reviews an organisation or project profile and proposes concrete improvements, checks whether a given foundation is a genuine match before time is invested in an application, drafts donation appeals, social media campaigns and requests, prepares due diligence, and analyses badge status.
For funders, an AI Concierge pre-screens incoming applications against the funder's own funding logic. It returns a FIT-SCORE for how closely a request meets the funding criteria, a HOPE-SCORE signalling reliability to the project partner, and a reasoned recommendation naming strengths and shortcomings. An entire inbox can be assessed at once, comparable earlier requests retrieved, organisations compared, and reporting prepared for committees and annual reports.
The vendor positions the tool as human in the loop: explicitly not an automated decision-making system, with the user deciding what happens to each result. Processing runs on Swiss and European infrastructure, and the assistant was developed with practitioners and more than 70 funding organisations. Full access requires the Pro or Partner level.
What it does
- Identify funding organisations that match a project, with a stated rationale
- Pre-screen incoming grant applications against a funder's own funding logic
- Score requests for fit and reliability, with strengths and weaknesses named
- Draft donation appeals, social media campaigns and funding requests
- Review an organisation or project profile and suggest concrete improvements
- Compare organisations and retrieve comparable past applications
- Prepare reporting for committees and annual reports
When to use Spheriq AI / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Spheriq AI is the right fit.
When to use Spheriq AI
- Swiss non-profits looking for suitable funding sources and writing grant applications
- Grant-giving foundations that receive, screen and document funding requests
- Fundraising and development teams drafting donation appeals and campaign texts
- Consultants and philanthropy experts advising organisations in the Swiss sector
- Existing Spheriq customers on the Pro or Partner level who want the full assistant
When not to use Spheriq AI
- Organisations outside Switzerland, since the platform is currently active in Switzerland only
- Anyone wanting a general-purpose assistant, as the tool deliberately ignores general web data
- Buyers looking for a standalone product, because the assistant exists only inside a platform subscription
- Free and Starter subscribers whose main use case is the AI, as those levels grant limited trial access only
- Teams expecting automated decisions, which the vendor explicitly rules out
How to use Spheriq AI
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on the Spheriq web application at app.spheriq.ch; registration is free
- Choose a role at sign-up — Nonprofit, Funder or Expert/Individual — which tailors the available features
- Set up your organisation and project profiles, since the assistant reads them as context
- Work as usual on a profile, a search or an application; no separate AI tool has to be opened
- Open the side tab to reveal the Launcher and its predefined action buttons for that page
- Click an action to run it; the assistant already knows the organisation, project and application history
- Continue in the chat window if you want to go further than the predefined action
- Review the output and decide whether to discard it, refine it or carry it over into your work
- Upgrade to Pro or Partner for unrestricted access, as Free and Starter allow limited trial use only
- Optionally join the free Spheriq AI webinar, held in German, for new launchers and usage feedback
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Works on a sector-specific dataset that general-purpose assistants simply do not have
- Embedded in the daily workflow, with no detour through a separate tool
- No prompt writing required, thanks to predefined and tested action buttons
- European hosting claimed, with the vendor stating data does not leave Europe
- Decisions explicitly left to the user; automated decision-making is ruled out
- Co-developed with more than 70 funding organisations and sector practitioners
- Users keep the rights to the content they upload, under clause 5.3 of the terms
Cons
- Unrestricted access starts at the Pro level, CHF 650 per year, and Free and Starter are trial-limited
- No standalone existence: it requires a subscription to the whole platform
- The platform is currently active in Switzerland only
- Annual subscriptions only, with no monthly option and no time-limited free trial
- The site never states whether customer data is used to train models, and documents no opt-out
- No AI model provider is named, and no security certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 is claimed
- The product page contradicts itself on hosting, promising both Switzerland only and three countries
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available at no charge, covering up to three users, and it includes limited trial access to Spheriq AI. The lowest paid entry point is the Starter level at CHF 300 per year excluding VAT for up to five users, which also limits the assistant. Unrestricted use of Spheriq AI begins at the Pro level, CHF 650 per year excluding VAT for up to ten users. All subscriptions are billed annually; no monthly term is offered, and there is no time-limited free trial.
- Free — free of charge
- 3 users included
- organisation and project profiles
- Spheriq AI available to try with limitations
- Starter — CHF 300 per year excl. VAT
- 5 users included
- unrestricted search and donation tools
- Spheriq AI available to try with limitations
- Pro — CHF 650 per year excl. VAT
- 10 users included
- systematic research
- advanced lists
- own networks and media review
- Spheriq AI without restrictions
- Partner — from CHF 1'650 per year excl. VAT
- 15 users included with additional users bookable
- workspaces and grant management
- Spheriq AI without restrictions
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Spheriq AI handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy addresses the GDPR explicitly and in detail. Spheriq AG declares itself subject to Swiss data protection law, the DSG and its ordinance, and to the GDPR wherever it applies, noting that the European Commission recognises Swiss law as adequate. It names its legal bases article by article, citing Article 6(1) points (a) to (f). Data subject rights are set out individually: access, rectification, restriction, erasure, objection, disclosure and portability. Complaints may be lodged with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner or, where the GDPR applies, with a competent European supervisory authority. Personal data is processed in principle in Switzerland and the EEA, with transfers elsewhere subject to adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses. No Article 27 representative and no data protection officer are named.
Who owns the data?
Under clause 5.3 of the Terms of Use, the rights to user content remain with the users who provide it. Spheriq receives only a simple, revocable right of use, limited to the duration of the membership and to two purposes: delivering the contractual services, and producing aggregated or anonymised statistics for the philanthropic sector. User content is not passed on as individual data and is not exposed through APIs without written consent. Separately, clause 5.2 lets Spheriq process platform content technically for operation, quality assurance, security, support and promotion. The controller for personal data is Spheriq AG, Centralbahnstrasse 10, 4051 Basel, reachable at support@spheriq.ch.
Reuse rights
Users keep their rights and may continue to use their own content freely; what the terms restrict is the reuse of platform content belonging to others. Clause 5.1 allows viewing, searching and linking within the platform's functions, but framing, embedding or any presentation suggesting own authorship is prohibited, and any further use — reproduction, transmission, modification or commercial exploitation — requires prior written consent from Spheriq or the rights holders. Automated mass extraction, or scraping, is not permitted, and automated access is allowed only through the documented APIs and within any rate limits. Spheriq may grant sub-licences to third parties within its API services where the purpose is close to its own, such as operating a cantonal foundation platform.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The controller is Spheriq AG in Basel, so processing sits primarily under Swiss data protection law, with the GDPR applying where relevant. The privacy policy states that personal data is processed in principle in Switzerland and the European Economic Area, and that transfers beyond them rely on adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards. The Spheriq AI product page is more specific but not consistent: it describes the assistant as running on Swiss infrastructure, says data is hosted on servers in Germany, France and Switzerland, and asserts that data does not leave Europe, while a separate block on the same page claims data remains in Switzerland. The declared infrastructure suppliers are Microsoft Azure for storage and WordPress.com for the blog. The public website itself resolves to a Swiss address operated by Nine Internet Solutions in Zurich. No hosting certification is claimed anywhere.
Where Spheriq AI works
Country-level availability.
Available in
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Spheriq AI.
- Scores such as FIT-SCORE and HOPE-SCORE are easy to read as verdicts; a reasoned number still encodes assumptions, and funding decisions about real organisations deserve human scrutiny rather than deference to a ranking
- Bulk assessment of an entire inbox saves time but can flatten the unusual application, the small organisation or the unconventional project that a human reader would have paused on
- The site never states whether customer data is used to train AI models and documents no opt-out, so organisations handling donor or beneficiary information cannot verify what happens to it
- The product page contradicts itself on hosting, claiming both that data remains in Switzerland and that it sits on servers in Germany, France and Switzerland; anyone with a strict data residency requirement should get this in writing
- Relying on the assistant to draft appeals and applications can erode a team's own writing and reasoning skills, and can make different organisations sound alike to the same funders
- The assistant reads only the platform's dataset, so funding opportunities outside Spheriq stay invisible and a user may mistake its coverage for the whole field
- Because it is bound to a platform subscription, access to the AI ends when the subscription does, and drafts or workflows built around it are not portable
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. There is nothing to install and nothing to configure: the assistant is part of the web application. A user registers free of charge, picks a role between Nonprofit, Funder and Expert, and fills in the organisation and project profiles that give the assistant its context. From there the Launcher appears in a side tab on the relevant pages, and actions run with a single click, with no prompt writing required. The only real barrier is commercial rather than technical, since unrestricted access depends on the subscription level.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind Spheriq AI
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is Spheriq AI a standalone product?
What data does the assistant work on?
Which subscription gives full access?
Is there a free trial?
Can I pay monthly?
Where is the data hosted?
Does the AI decide on my behalf?
Is my content used to train AI models?
Who owns the content I upload?
Which countries and languages are covered?
Should you pick Spheriq AI?
Spheriq AI is a narrow tool that knows exactly whom it serves. Its value does not come from the model but from the dataset behind it: the structured record of Swiss philanthropy that Spheriq AG has been assembling since it was registered in Basel in 2013, first as Philanthropy Services AG and then under the StiftungSchweiz brand. For a fundraiser hunting for the right foundation, or for a grant officer facing an inbox of applications, an assistant that already knows the organisation, the project and the funding logic removes work that a general-purpose chatbot cannot touch.
The design choices are conservative in a way that suits the sector. The Launcher removes prompt writing, the vendor insists the system is not an automated decision-making system, and users keep the rights to what they upload. Hosting is European and the company is owned by Zürcher Kantonalbank and a consortium of ten grant-giving foundations, which gives it an unusually stable footing for a product of this size.
The reservations are real. Full access begins at CHF 650 per year and only as part of a whole-platform subscription billed annually, so the assistant cannot be bought on its own or tried for a month. The service is confined to Switzerland. Most importantly, the site never says whether customer data is used to train models, offers no opt-out, and names no model provider — a gap that matters for organisations handling donor and beneficiary information. The product page also contradicts itself on where data is stored.
For a Swiss non-profit or foundation already on Spheriq, this is a sensible extension of a tool they use daily. For anyone else, it is not purchasable in isolation, and the unanswered questions about model training deserve a direct enquiry before committing.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.