Case study · Boca Raton church · in production since 2026
A Saturday morning, a paper list, and a queue of families.
This is the project NONPROFIT.SYSTEMS started from: a volunteer at the table with a clipboard, watching the same problems return. The system below replaced that clipboard and now runs the church's food distribution twice a month.
What went wrong, every single month.
A paper list works right up until the moment there are more families than places. Then four things go wrong, every single time, and none of them are anyone's fault.
Someone registers twice, under two spellings of the same name, and nobody notices until the food runs out early. A family arrives on the wrong week, because the sheet they signed was for the previous distribution. The queue moves at the speed of handwriting. And at the end of the month, somebody sits down with the sheets and rebuilds the "people served" number by hand for the funder, from handwriting they cannot always read.
Buying software solves none of that. What solves it is deciding the rules once and then letting the system hold them, so volunteers never have to argue about them at the table.
Six steps, and none of them need a volunteer to remember anything.
A family opens the distribution page on a phone — no app to install — and picks a date. The phone number is confirmed by a code over SMS, which is the one step that does the most work: it means a registration belongs to a real, reachable number.
The confirmed registration produces two credentials: a QR code and a six-digit PIN. The PIN matters more than it sounds. A phone camera can fail, a screenshot can be deleted, the hall's signal can drop. With a PIN, the person is still in the system and the queue keeps moving.
When the date fills up, registration for that date closes on its own. Nobody has to notice and nobody has to tell anyone no.
The rules live in the system, so nobody has to remember them.
These are the rules this church settled on. All of them are settings, and your organization will have its own.
- One phone number, one registration — a duplicate is refused while the person is still signing up
- Once a month per household
- Capacity per date, with registration closing automatically when it is reached
- Allergy and care notes visible only to the people who need them
- A printed list and an Excel export always available as a fallback
Names are spelled several ways, especially across Russian, Ukrainian and English. Addresses change. A confirmed mobile number is the one thing a household reliably has one of, which is what makes "once a month" enforceable without anyone being accused of anything.
A volunteer needs one thing: their own phone.
No scanner to buy, no tablet to charge, no new login to forget. A volunteer signs in by email or a PIN, opens the scanning screen and points their phone at the code. The phone vibrates, the handout is marked, and the next family steps forward.
If the camera will not read a code — bright sun, a cracked screen, a printed copy that has been folded four times — the volunteer types the six digits instead. That one fallback is why the queue keeps moving.
Prayer requests and other sensitive notes stay off this screen entirely; in the wider system only pastors see them. Access by role is the part of a system people notice least and miss most when it is missing.
The month-end report writes itself.
Every "handed out" mark is a record with a date. The monthly figure is the sum of those marks, available the moment the last family leaves, and it exports to Excel in the shape a funder asks for.
One warning worth stating plainly, because it decides whether your numbers survive questions: "people served" means different things to different funders. Unique individuals, households, or visits are three different numbers from the same data. The definition is a decision to make once, at setup, and then never argue about again.
A reference from the church team is available during a review call, and we can walk you through the live screens there.
What the same thing costs for your organization.
| What you get | How long | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-up page, SMS confirmation, QR and PIN, volunteer scanning, handout marks, Excel and print | 1–2 weeks | from $450 one-time, or $75/month with support |
| The same, plus children's program and VBS registration: one form per family, age groups with limits, authorized pickup, check-in and check-out | 3–4 weeks | from $1,200 per season |
| The whole system: website, app with push, team tasks, giving, finance and IRS statements, roles, calendar, three languages, training | 6–10 weeks, in stages | from $3,500 plus $120/month |
Starting prices for the scopes described, as of October 2026. Scope, timeline and final price are agreed in writing before work starts.
For the first three organizations we set the first workflow up at no cost, in exchange for a written reference, permission to publish the case, and two introductions — agreed in writing beforehand, both ways.
What you need to bring to a first conversation is small: how people currently sign up, how many places you have per date, and the three situations your volunteers find hardest. That is enough to scope the work.
Questions before you start.
Do families need to install an app?
No. They register in a browser on their phone. The church team can install the organization's own app from the website if push notifications are part of the project, but nothing is required of the families you serve.
What happens if the internet goes down during distribution?
You hand out against the printed list and reconcile afterwards. That is why the list exists. The PIN also covers the smaller failures — a camera that will not focus, a screenshot that was deleted.
Does the QR code contain personal information?
No. It carries a random code that only your system can look up, and a code can be cancelled. Names, phone numbers and notes are never put into the code itself.
Can it enforce a different rule than once a month?
Yes. The limits — per household, per period, per date — are settings agreed with you before launch. The system holds whatever rule your team decides.
We already use church management software. Do we have to replace it?
Not necessarily. We look first at whether what you have can be configured or connected. Custom work is worth it when your sign-up rules, languages or reporting leave a real gap — and distributions are usually where that gap is.
Twenty minutes, free, and if nothing here fits your situation we'll say so plainly.