This work does not fit a package.
A foundation guiding hundreds of families, an umbrella body with thousands of members, a fund accountable to municipalities and ministries: these are not administrations but tracking systems. Who is in which programme, which step they have had, what was agreed and what still has to happen.
That is the kind of organisation we build software for. Fully custom where it has to be, connected to what is already there, with privacy and reporting built in rather than bolted on.
Reporting eats what you meant to spend on people.
A social organisation that grows does not only gain participants, it gains funders. And every funder wants their own figures, in their own format, over their own period. Municipality, ministry and fund each ask something different about the same work.
As long as that does not build up during the daily work, it gets collected afterwards. That costs exactly the hours meant for the people it is all about, and it happens in the months that are already busy. At an organisation guiding hundreds of families it adds up to a full-time job in reporting.
The money was granted to the programme, not to the paperwork around it.
And more than time is at stake. Funders look at how you account for your work when renewing, and an accountant or supervisor wants to see who was allowed to view which data. If that sits in spreadsheets and mailboxes, it cannot be demonstrated. For an organisation living from grant to grant, that is a risk well beyond an unpleasant week.
On top of that, standard packages assume one fixed model. The moment you run two programmes with different phases and conditions, workarounds appear that only their inventor understands. So we build the tracking system around your programmes, and let the reporting run alongside the work instead of after it.
What we build for these organisations.
From a tracking system for a multi-year programme to the portal where a participant arranges their own affairs. Usually a platform of your own, because this work does not squeeze into a package.
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Participant tracking
Who is in which programme, which step has been taken, who the case worker is and what is outstanding. With a timeline per participant, so a colleague takes over a file without an hour of phone calls first.
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Programmes with their own phases
Each programme with its own steps, forms and deadlines, without needing a new system. Start a programme next year with different conditions and you add it inside rather than beside.
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Reporting to funders
The figures a municipality, ministry or fund asks for, built from what was already recorded during the work. Per programme, per period and per line, printed rather than reconstructed.
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Portals for everyone involved
A participant seeing their appointments, a partner updating their part, a case worker reporting on location. Everyone in the same source, seeing only what they are allowed to.
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Members, donors and subscriptions
For umbrella bodies and associations: memberships with families, tiers and types, direct debit and self-service. Also at tens of thousands of members and a register that changes every year.
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Rights, logging and retention
Recorded per role who may see what, with a log of who viewed what and when, and data that disappears once the retention period ends. Not as an appendix, but as part of the system.
Four things we see at foundations.
Commercial software assumes customers and suppliers. A social organisation has participants, programmes, case workers, funders and partners, and that rarely fits a package without a string of detours.
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The tracking system is a pile of files
Participants in one system, programmes in another, agreements in email and progress in a spreadsheet someone maintains. Asking how many people completed a programme this year costs an afternoon instead of a screen.
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Every programme has its own rules
A programme funded in 2023 runs differently from last year's, with other phases, other forms and other reporting. Standard software forces you into one model, and then the rest starts living beside the system.
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Reporting eats programme time
Municipalities, ministries and funds each want their own figures, per programme and per line. Whatever does not build up during the work has to be collected afterwards, and those hours come off what your organisation exists for.
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Too many people see too much
In an organisation with case workers, volunteers and partners, not everyone should see everything. Usually that is arranged on trust, and only an audit or an incident reveals that it was never actually recorded.
How we start at a foundation.
With the people doing the work, not only the board. What a case worker fills in every day decides whether a tracking system will work.
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Follow one programme
We walk one participant through from registration to completion and note where something is recorded twice or left waiting. That is immediately the list of what the system must do, and above all what it need not.
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One programme live first
Not the whole organisation at once, but one programme with real participants. In use within a few months, so you find out whether it fits before the rest follows.
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Extend and keep it transferable
Then the other programmes, the reporting and the portals. Everything is in the foundation's name, with documentation a next board or another party will also understand.
What it connects to.
The bookkeeping, the bank and the existing packages stay where they are. We build the tracking system around them and pull in what already exists.
Does your organisation use a grant system or a membership package that works fine in itself? Then we do not replace it, we add what it just does not do.
- Salesforce Nonprofit Common at larger funds; we build alongside it, not inside it.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sync participants and relations through the standard API.
- iWmo / iJw Message exchange with municipalities on the national standard.
- VECOZO / GGK The route those messages travel to reach the municipality.
- AFAS Bring in case workers' hours and payroll.
- Exact Online Post subscriptions and grants per project.
- Twinfield Run cost centres per programme alongside.
- e-Boekhouden A light package, fine for smaller organisations.
- SEPA direct debit Handle mandates, collection runs and reversals.
- Mollie / iDEAL Let donations and signups be paid straight away.
- Microsoft 365 Log in with the account you already have.
- Power BI Board figures from the same source.
- Two-factor login Required as soon as case files sit behind it.
- ANBI publication Keep the mandatory figures current by themselves.
Using a different package?
Name it. With membership packages and grant systems we first look at whether we can connect, because replacing is rarely the cheapest route for a foundation.
Questions from this corner.
If your question is not here, give us a call. You get someone who builds these systems themselves.
Book a callIs there no package for this?
For membership records and bookkeeping there is, and then we simply recommend it. For a tracking system with its own programmes, phases and reporting there is barely one: those packages assume a single fixed model, and as soon as you have two programmes with different rules you start building workarounds nobody can oversee.
We have a public tender. Can you take part?
Yes, and we also say when we do not meet something. Data processing agreement, Dutch servers, rights and logging are in order. If a tender asks for a specific certification we do not hold, you hear that before you invest time in it.
Where is our participants' data stored?
On our own servers in Rotterdam, with a failover location in the Netherlands, under Dutch law. Not with an American provider. Retention periods are set per data type, so nothing lingers that should have gone.
What does a tracking system like this cost?
A first working version for one programme usually lands between forty and eighty thousand euros, depending on how many roles and integrations it holds. We deliberately start small, so after a few months you know what you are buying before you order the rest.
What if our funding stops?
Then building stops and it keeps running. Everything is in your name and the maintenance is a separate, cancellable agreement. We would rather have an organisation that comes back later than one stuck in a contract that no longer fits.