💡 Automated USDA Grant Reporting Dashboard for Market Managers

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

Market managers who receive FMPP, SNAP, or LAMP grants must report specific metrics (vendor attendance, market day counts, customer visit estimates, economic impact) to USDA. Today they compile these manually in spreadsheets. Markets can auto-generate USDA-compliant reports from operational data already collected through normal platform use — vendor check-ins, market day records, follower/visit analytics.

Market Signal

USDA FY2026 has $17.84M+ in active grant programs: $4M SNAP Mobile Payments cooperative agreement, $13.84M FMPP (Farmers Market Promotion Program), and $26.5M LAMP (Local Agriculture Market Program). Hundreds of markets depend on these grants. No competitor — MarketWurks ($1,500/location/year), VibePro ($149-595/month), Marketspread, or ManageMyMarket — offers automated grant-compliant reporting. This is a clear competitive whitespace.

User Signal

The PRD identifies manager operational overhead as a core pain point. Grant reporting compounds this — managers already drowning in texts now also face quarterly/annual USDA reporting deadlines. FR32a (aggregated activity feed) and FR37 (audit log) already collect the raw data needed. Making Markets the reporting backbone for grant-funded markets creates deep platform stickiness.

Technical Opportunity

The append-only audit log (NFR12, NFR21-24) and the manager activity feed (FR32a) already capture vendor attendance, check-in/checkout timestamps, market day records, and action counts. A reporting module queries audit_log + check_ins + market_vendors tables to generate structured exports. The Go event bus (internal/events/) can trigger scheduled report generation. Export as PDF/CSV via a new GraphQL query in audit.graphqls.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	Data already collected via audit log and check-in records; reporting is a query + export layer
Impact	high	Makes Markets essential infrastructure for grant-funded markets; creates switching cost
Urgency	high	$17.84M+ in active USDA grant programs; next FMPP cycle will open soon

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: The app tracks attendance and status, not actual vendor sales revenue — the reports will be incomplete for grants that require economic impact data.

Rebuttal: FMPP reporting requires market day counts, vendor participation rates, customer visit estimates, and program reach — all of which Markets collects natively. Sales data can be added as an optional vendor self-report field without requiring payment integration (respecting NFR14). Even partial automation saves managers 10-20 hours per reporting cycle.

Suggested Next Step

Research the exact FMPP and SNAP grant reporting templates (available on ams.usda.gov) and map each required field to existing or planned data models. Create a reporting domain schema extension in the Go backend.