Built by someone who
needed it and couldn’t
find it anywhere.

For more than two decades, I worked at the intersection of finance and technology — building systems, solving accounting problems, and helping businesses of all sizes make sense of their numbers. For-profit accounting I understood well. The tools are mature, the workflows established, and the software largely does what it says.

Then some close friends started a nonprofit and asked if I'd serve as their treasurer. I said yes — I'd spent years helping businesses with their books. How different could a small nonprofit be?

Significantly more different than I expected. The further I got into the role, the clearer it became that nonprofit finance is a genuinely distinct discipline — not a simpler version of business accounting, but a more complex one. Restricted funds that can only be spent in specific ways. Grants with expiration dates, budget lines, and funder reporting requirements. Four required financial statements that most software doesn't produce correctly. A Form 990 that has to reconcile precisely with your books. Fund accounting rules that generic tools treat as an afterthought.

I tried every tool available. QuickBooks — excellent software for businesses — required elaborate workarounds that I didn't fully trust. The nonprofit-specific platforms I found were either legacy systems from a previous decade or enterprise tools priced for organizations twenty times our size. None of them started from the premise that nonprofit finance deserves purpose-built software.

So I decided to build it. With my background in finance, accounting, and technology, I knew what it needed to do — and I knew no one else was going to build it the right way. Ciste is what I wish had existed when I took that treasurer role.

Irish Gaelic for treasury, chest, fund — a coffer used to safeguard valuables. The name is intentional: Ciste exists to protect what donors and grantors have entrusted to your organization.

Nonprofits first. Always.

Ciste is built exclusively for 501(c)(3) organizations. Not adapted from a business tool. Not a nonprofit 'mode' bolted onto a general ledger. Every design decision starts with the question: does this serve nonprofit finance?

Rigorous where rigor matters.

Double-entry accounting is not optional. FASB compliance is not optional. Restriction tracking is not optional. We hold the line on correctness even when it would be easier to ship something that mostly works.

Honest about what we are.

We are a small team building a focused product. We won't claim certifications we haven't earned or features we haven't shipped. What we promise, we deliver.

Built for the people doing the work.

Executive directors, bookkeepers, and finance directors are not accountants by training — they're mission-driven people who took on a hard job. Ciste should feel like support, not another obstacle.