John Click

Originally published on Medium in May 2020. This is the canonical record in the Blog Posts DB.

All of Project N95's non-profit efforts greatly rely on software tools and technology that facilitate productive, secure and isolated working environments. Since the entirety of our incredibly devoted, yet distributed volunteer team is remote, our collaborative achievements would be nonexistent without the tools that enable us to work together effectively.

And we're not just talking about instant messaging or emailing platforms; helpful companies like Airtable and Zapier work to organize our intense databases and workflows, helping us to connect verified suppliers to the frontline workers that need essential medical equipment. Many platforms are even providing a significant amount of in-kind contributions that allow us to continue to function as a non-profit.

Without these tools, our eight-week old organization would never have even made it off the ground.

The Stack

Airtable — Central data platform organizing a variety of content into a spreadsheet-like environment that allows each team to share data. Airtable provided roughly $40,000 worth of enterprise credits and about 80 hours of support.

Stacker — Layers a user portal on top of an Airtable database for a sleek interface permitting users to create an app to control who can view and edit rows. Stacker sponsored six pro portals, saving Project N95 roughly $2,000 per month.

Intercom — Scalable business messaging platform enabling our team to directly connect with prospective and existing frontline organizations. Comping us almost $9,500 per month.

Zapier & Workato — Automation platforms addressing essential use cases for automating integration services and data movement between our Airtable database and Intercom communications.

Okta — Identity and SSO platform providing secure, centralized authentication across all our tools.

This article was one of the earliest public-facing descriptions of Project N95's technology infrastructure, written eight weeks after the organization was founded.