Grantconnect Au MCP Server

@pipeworx/grantconnect-au

GrantConnect (Australia) MCP — Commonwealth grant opportunities and grants awarded, from grants.gov.au. Keyless.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1856+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• au_grants_search(query, agency, category, recipient_state, selection_process, min_value, max_value, awarded_from, awarded_to, sort, order, limit, offset) — awarded grants. Free text is a case-insensitive substring across recipient_name, purpose, grant_program, grant_activity; multiple words are AND-ed. Newest first by default, sort: "value" ranks by AUD.
• au_grant_award(ga_id) — one award in full, with the linked grant opportunity inlined when the award records a go_id. GrantConnect publishes awards and opportunities as separate reports; this is the join.
• au_grants_by_recipient(recipient_name | abn, awarded_from, awarded_to, limit, offset) — every award to one organisation plus the funding total: total AUD, award count, first/last award date, per-agency breakdown. ABN is accepted spaced (48 008 389 151) or unspaced.
• au_grant_opportunities_open(query, agency, category, closing_within_days, limit, offset) — opportunities whose close_date is still in the future, soonest first, with days_until_close computed at request time.
• au_grants_top_recipients(agency, category, recipient_state, awarded_from, awarded_to, limit, scan_limit) — recipients ranked by total AUD. Reports rows_scanned, total_matching_awards and ranking_covers_all_matching_awards.
• grantconnect_coverage() — which reports/date windows are actually loaded, row counts, min/max dates, and any ingest windows in error.

Auth

None.

Data sources

• GrantConnect — https://www.grants.gov.au (Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines reporting: grant opportunities + grants awarded)

Gotchas

GrantConnect has no JSON API — it publishes dated report downloads only, which is why grantconnect_coverage matters: while the ingest backfills, a year you ask about may simply not be loaded yet, and every tool returns { found: false, reason, hint } rather than an empty-looking answer. Recipient identity is messy at source: names are the legal entity as the recipient typed it (so one organisation appears under several spellings), and recipient_abn is published spaced and is blank on some rows — au_grants_by_recipient normalises the ABN and reports matched_recipient_names so you can see what was actually aggregated. is_aggregate rows bundle many small grants into one record (aggregate_number says how many), so award counts are not payment counts. Because PostgREST aggregate functions are disabled on this project, au_grants_top_recipients ranks from a bounded scan taken largest-award-first and states rows_scanned versus total_matching_awards — treat a ranking with ranking_covers_all_matching_awards: false as a ranking of the big-ticket end, not the whole table. Finally, close_date on opportunities carries a real time of day and addenda can move it: addenda_count > 0 means the notice was amended after publication.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grantconnect-au": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/grantconnect-au/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/grantconnect-au/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1856+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/au_grants_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"homelessness","agency":"Department of Social Services","recipient_state":"ACT","limit":10}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/au_grants_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-grantconnect-au is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/grantconnect-au/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grantconnect-au": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-grantconnect-au"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Grantconnect Au data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT