The QWU Tool Shed

We run a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on 48+ tools. This page is a transparent look at every single one of them… what we use, why we chose it, and what kind of company is behind it.

Most review sites ask “How good is the product?” We ask a different question: “How good is the company… and will this tool still be here in 5 years?”

That question led us to build the QWS Scorecard — a scoring framework that evaluates the soul of a company, not just its features. Because mission-driven organizations can’t afford to bet on a tool that gets acquired by private equity and gutted next quarter.

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How We Score: The QWS Scorecard

Every tool is scored across 4 categories, 14 metrics, each rated 1-5.

Category	What It Measures	Weight	Key Metrics
Soul	The company behind the tool	30%	Heart (nonprofit support), Owner Involved, Child or Investment, Ear (listens to users)
Character	How the company operates	25%	Roots (funding), Door (data portability), Backbone (incident handling), Shelf Life
Fit	How well it works for nonprofits	25%	Hands (docs/learnability), Neighborhood (community), Value, Bridge (integrations)
Craft	The product itself	20%	Quality, Reliability, Stars (aggregated ratings)

Soul gets the highest weight because that’s what makes this different. A beautiful product from a soulless company is still a risk.

Two scores are called out in every table below:

• Heart — Does this company show heart toward nonprofits and social good organizations?
• Child/Inv — Is this product the founder’s life work (a “child”) or a venture built to flip (an “investment”)?

Scores marked ? mean we need more research. We only score what we can defend with evidence.

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Tier 1: Star Content

These tools have the broadest audience appeal, strongest stories, and highest QWS scores. They’re the tools we’d recommend to any mission-driven organization.

Tool	Category	Heart	Child/Inv	QWS Est.	Why We Use It
Obsidian	Productivity	4	5	4.9	Our entire knowledge base, daily operations, and this transparency site run on it. Bootstrapped, founder-led, free for personal use, local-first data ownership.
Supabase	Database/Backend	5	4	4.6	Powers 8 projects across QWF. Open source, strong nonprofit support, active founder (Paul Copplestone).
BetterStack	Monitoring	5	?	4.5	Uptime monitoring and status page for all QWF services. Generous free tier, founder-led, loves nonprofits.
n8n	Automation	4	4	4.4	50+ workflows automating everything from meeting prep to daily operations. Self-hostable, open source core, founder still active.
Stripe	Payments	3	5	4.2	Processes all QWF donations. Patrick Collison still CEO, rock-solid, universal.
SuiteDash	CRM	4	5	4.2	Our family portal (family.quietlyworking.org). Bootstrapped, founder active in community, lifetime deal roots, all-in-one.
Cloudflare	DNS/Security	4	4	4.2	DNS and security for every QWF domain. Incredible free tier, public company but not PE.
Claude / Anthropic	AI	4	4	4.0	Primary AI for all QWF operations. Safety-focused mission, Dario Amodei founder-led.
Claude Code	AI/Dev Tools	?	4	4.0	The agent that literally runs our backoffice. This page was synced by a script it helped build.
Lovable	AI/Frontend	4	5	4.2	Builds our web apps (HQ Command Center, Quietly Spotting, and more). Founder (Anton Osika) deeply involved, early stage, genuine heart — 20% NPO discount, Valentine’s Day 50% off credits, and 24 hours of free usage for everyone on International Women’s Day 2026.

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Tier 2: Strong Content

Engaged communities, good stories, solid vendor partnership potential.

Tool	Category	Heart	Child/Inv	QWS Est.	Why We Use It
Let’s Encrypt	SSL/Security	5	5	5.0	Free SSL certificates for everything. Nonprofit (ISRG), free forever, changed the internet. Perfect Heart score.
OpenRouter	AI Gateway	?	?	4.2	One API for all AI models. Founder-led, great developer experience.
EmailDelivery.com	Email/ESP	?	5	4.2	Self-hosted email platform. Open source, MIT license. Our ESP runs for $35/year.
Docker	Infrastructure	3	2	3.5	Containers for n8n, ESP, and local services. The technology is foundational even if Docker Inc. has had ownership drama.
Vista Social	Social Media	?	?	?	Daily social media management. Needs research on company.
RackNerd	Hosting	?	?	?	Budget VPS hosting. Our ESP runs on a $35/year VPS that actually works.
Amazon SES	Email Delivery	2	1	3.0	Email sending at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. AWS is the opposite of founder-led, but unbeatable value.
Twilio	Communications	5	2	3.5	SMS and voice for all QWF communications. Twilio.org provides tools AND grant funds to nonprofits… we’ve never paid a penny. Their nonprofit program is EPIC.
GitHub	Development	3	1	3.3	All our repos including this transparency site. Microsoft-owned, but the free tier is generous.
VS Code	Development	4	1	3.7	Primary code editor. Microsoft-owned but fully open source, incredible community.

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Tier 3: Solid Reviews

Important tools, narrower audience, still worth reviewing honestly.

Tool	Category	Heart	Child/Inv	QWS Est.	Notes
PostgreSQL	Database	5	5	5.0	Community-governed, open source, no corporate owner. The gold standard.
Caddy	Web Server	5	5	5.0	Open source, founder-led, automatic HTTPS. Elegant.
WordPress	CMS	5	5	4.5	Powers 11 QWF sites. Open source, nonprofit foundation (despite 2024-25 Automattic drama).
DreamHost	Hosting	4	5	4.0	Employee-owned, 28+ years, strong nonprofit support. Hosts our L4G site.
Apify	Web Scraping	?	?	4.0	Founder-led, strong community, good free tier.
Redis	Cache/DB	4	3	4.0	Open source (with recent license changes), fast, universal.
Divi	WordPress Theme	3	5	3.8	Nick Roach still leads Elegant Themes. Bootstrapped.
Discord	Communication	3	2	3.5	Internal team communication. Free tier is incredible, community-first DNA.
Circle	Community	?	?	3.5	Founder-led SaaS community platform.
Atlassian (Loom)	Video/Productivity	5	2	4.0	We use Loom for video. As of Feb 2026, Atlassian offers 100% off Jira, Confluence, Loom, and Teamwork Collection for social impact teams (25 seats or less). Previously 75% off. EPIC.
Zoom	Meetings	4	2	3.2	All QWF meetings. 50% nonprofit discount via GoodStack (approved Feb 2026). Eric Yuan still CEO.
Google Workspace	Productivity	3	1	2.8	Great product. Zero soul. We use it because everyone else does.

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Tier 4: Reference Tools

Specialized tools that round out our stack. Narrower audience, less editorial content value.

Tool	Category	Notes
Microsoft 365	Email/Office	We use Graph API heavily for email automation
Azure	Cloud Hosting	Our primary VMs run here (2 servers)
Google Maps API	Geolocation	Powers our local lead research
Google Voice	Phone	Free phone line for a small nonprofit
SQLite	Database	The most deployed database on earth. Powers our local data stores.
DeepSeek	AI (Fast Tier)	Fast and cheap for mechanical pattern matching
Google Gemini	AI (Video)	Video content processing
Whisper (OpenAI)	AI (Audio)	Meeting transcription
Apollo.io	Lead Data	Lead research and enrichment
AnyMail Finder	Email Finding	Email discovery and verification
DataForSEO	SEO Data	SEO research and analysis
Crunchbase	Business Intel	Company research for QWS reviews
Instantly	Email Warmup	Domain warmup and cold outreach
DMARC Report	Email Auth	Email authentication monitoring
Reoon	Email Validation	Bulk email validation
Yelp	Business Data	Local business research
YellowPages	Business Data	Local business directory

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The Numbers

As of February 2026, QWF runs on:

• 48 tools in production
• 8 Supabase projects powering web apps
• 50+ n8n automation workflows
• 280+ Python scripts in the backoffice
• 11 WordPress sites across the multisite network
• 3 virtual machines (backoffice, automation, email)
• 37+ API integrations connecting everything

Total monthly cost for all of this: less than you’d think. Several of our highest-scored tools have free tiers generous enough to run real operations on. That’s Heart in action.

Are you a nonprofit? Check out our Nonprofit Tech Access Guide — a transparent, experience-based guide to every free and discounted tech program we’ve found, with honest notes on what the application process actually looks like.

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What’s Coming: The Quietly Working Shed (QWS)

This page is the preview. The full QWS experience is being built at shed.quietlyworking.org and will include:

• Deep reviews of every tool using the full 14-metric QWS Scorecard
• Versus comparisons (n8n vs Zapier vs Make, Supabase vs Firebase, and more)
• Stack guides (“How a nonprofit runs its entire backoffice from Obsidian”)
• “Tools We Stopped Using” and why… because honest exits build more trust than 100 positive reviews
• Annual Heart Report highlighting companies that showed the most heart toward nonprofits
• Student research as Missing Pixel students learn business intelligence, technical evaluation, and content creation through the review process

The QWS Scorecard weights Soul at 30% because the character of the company behind a tool matters more than its feature list. Features change. Prices change. Ownership changes. The scorecard evaluates the whole picture… the product AND the people behind it.

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Scoring Integrity

A few principles we hold ourselves to:

1. We only score tools we actually use. No paid reviews, no “tried it for 5 minutes” takes.
2. Scores update when things change. Acquired by PE? Score drops. Added a nonprofit program? Score goes up.
3. We show our work. Every score comes with the evidence that supports it.
4. Companies can respond. We publish their response alongside our review.
5. Conflicts of interest disclosed. If a company gives us a discount, we say so.
6. Negative reviews stay up. We don’t remove reviews because a company asked.

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Last updated: 2026-03-09 Tool count and scores are living data. See Home for more about this transparency site.