Sample Discovery plan

Example Community Pantry serves families from two locations with three staff and about 120 volunteers. Donations, distributions and volunteer hours are tracked on paper and in four spreadsheets. The monthly board and food bank reports take about two days to assemble. This plan proposes a first module for intake and stock, with distributions and reporting to follow.

• Donations are weighed and written on a clipboard at the back door, then typed into a spreadsheet on Fridays.
• Each location keeps its own stock sheet. Neither knows what the other has.
• Distributions are tallied by hand on paper sign-in sheets.
• Volunteers sign up through a free sign-up tool; hours are added up by hand each quarter.

• About 6 staff hours a week go on retyping paper records.
• Stock runs out at one location while the other has plenty.
• The monthly report takes about 2 days and the numbers do not always match the food bank’s.
• Expired stock is found by accident, usually too late.

Time to produce the monthly report: from about 2 days to under 1 hour, measured a few months after launch and reported in writing at Outcomes.

In scope

• Intake on a phone at each door: donor, item type, quantity, weight and expiry date
• Stock levels by location, with low-stock and expiry alerts
• Moving stock between locations
• Accounts for 3 staff and shared volunteer logins at each door
• Export of monthly intake totals to a spreadsheet

Not in this module

• Distributions and client visits (module 2)
• Board and food bank reports (module 3)
• Volunteer scheduling (stays in the current tool for now)

The first module stores donations and stock only, no personal information about the families served. Hosting and accounts are set up in the pantry’s name. How we handle client data.

• Poor signal in the back storeroom. Intake works offline and catches up when it reconnects.
• Volunteers who use it once a week. Three screens, big buttons, no typing beyond numbers; tested with real volunteers in Build.
• Two years of old spreadsheets. Current stock is moved in at Deploy; older history stays in the spreadsheets for now.

Discovery ($1,500) has already been paid, so the project comes to $8,000 in all. Hosting is estimated at $50 to $200 a month, paid directly to the provider. Anything not in section 5 is quoted separately, in writing, before any work.

• You decide whether to go ahead. You can stop here and keep this plan.
• If you go ahead, Build starts, with a new working version on your own devices usually every week.
• Modules 2 and 3 are priced the same way when you are ready.

• One person who can make decisions
• An hour with door volunteers at each location during Build
• The current spreadsheets and paper forms