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Data Flowchart
Inspiration
After founding our own 501(c)3 nonprofit and working in nonprofit tech and operations, we realized how many small local nonprofits struggle with outdated or the non-usage of technology in their operations. Resultantly, many are not publicly listed, lack donor workflows and ultimately miss funding opportunities despite stellar community impact - hindering the communities that want to donate to support them. With the advent of recent governmental funding cuts, Common Good seeks to create an easy to implement tech package that modernizes nonprofit operations, while also making it easy for donors to support their local causes.
What it does
Common Good acts as a technological gateway for nonprofits, acting as a lightweight, easy to onboard CRM - managing constituents, donations/workflows, and outreach. Once onboarded, nonprofits are listed in a public donor database where donors can discover them. Nonprofits win by benefitting from increased operational efficiency and online presence/outreach, and donors get to learn about and donate to local community causes!
How we built it
We used a monorepo structure with:
- Next.js + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS + Shadcn UI for the frontend
- Python (FastAPI) + Supabase (PostgreSQL) for the backend Features include nonprofit vetting system, real-time impact modeling, a lightweight CRM with automated communications, and dynamic donor analytics.
Challenges we ran into
Designing a CRM that was simply enough for non-technical nonprofits while still being powerful and scalable was difficult. Pulling from our experiences in nonprofit operations, we had to carefully go through the design process of key problems such as donor needs vs. nonprofit needs, equitability for smaller nonprofits, and attempting to keep the listings as fair as possible (ex. we ended up scrapping a "trust score" due to its subjectivity), while still helping newcomers.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Being able to bridge the gap between nonprofit technological integration and donor information. With almost no updated listings on local nonprofits and most CRMs having high learning curves, Common Good is in a spot like no other.
- Contrary to the big back allegations, we ONLY had TacoBell and Chipotle for lunch.
What we learned
Coming into this Hackthon, despite all of us having technical experience, half of us had never been to a Hackathon! We learned so much about Supabase, SQL, uvicorn and ultimately how they connected us to build a niche but highly impactful package for the nonprofit sector.
What's next for Common Good
The idea of common good had been floated about the nonprofit sector for some time, and we are incredibly glad that we were able to create this proof of concept. We'd love to do more market research what other features a tech package would need (i.e. more workflows, website integrations, etc.) and make it a true stepping stone into modernizing your nonprofit with a more concrete CRM system.
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