Applications
Membership review
Required-field validation, applicant records, and staff review flows help the Co-op move people from interest to membership with less manual tracking.
Custom software for a member-run cooperative
Brown Street Maker Cooperative
Building an operations platform around how a cooperative actually works.
Context
From off-the-shelf scheduling to an operations backbone
Brown Street Maker Cooperative needed a practical way to manage membership, events, working groups, volunteer participation, internal operations, and communications as the organization moved from idea to launch.
The initial plan was to use Punchpass, an off-the-shelf scheduling and class registration platform. It could handle some basic event needs, but the Co-op needed membership review, household relationships, volunteer expectations, working group coordination, staff review workflows, and evolving governance tools to live together.
Challenge
Many workflows, one organization
Households
Families and dependent members
Household relationships, dependent members, and invitation workflows support real member structures instead of flattening every account into one generic profile.
Orientation
Registration, attendance, and check-in
Orientation signup, cancellation, attendance, and staff check-in tools give the team a clearer path from application to active participation.
Events
Calendars and registration
Members and visitors can browse events, register, cancel, and use add-to-calendar links while staff can review event rosters.
Classes
Proposal and scheduling workflows
Class ideas, schedules, and event structures can evolve inside the same system as membership and operations.
Working groups
Directories and coordinator tools
Working group directories, join requests, coordinator tools, member tables, proposed meeting polls, and CSV exports live together.
Volunteer work
Signup and participation tracking
Volunteer opportunities and participation records help the Co-op understand how members are contributing.
Procurement
Requests and internal approvals
Purchase request workflows give staff and coordinators a structured way to review operational needs before money is spent.
Staff tools
Profiles, rosters, and reports
Comprehensive people profiles, roster reports, and admin views help staff understand member status, participation, and operational context.
Communications
Email preferences and Google Groups
Automated confirmations, notification preferences, and Google Groups sync reduce repeated communication work.
Transparency
Changelog and deployment notes
A public changelog generated from GitHub tickets and deployments helps members see how the platform is evolving.
Design system
Reusable interface patterns
Shared design patterns keep public pages, member tools, and staff workflows coherent as new features are added.
Brownie is nothing short of a minor miracle. I'm not exaggerating when I say this would have taken $300k and at least six months to build with a traditional team.
Seriously, Brownie is a thing of beauty!
Approach
Built around the way the Co-op actually works
Brown Street Digital Services built Brownie as a custom web application centered on BSMC's real workflows. Rather than treating events, membership, and operations as separate systems, the platform connects a person's account, membership status, household, registrations, working groups, volunteer hours, and permissions.
The result is cost-conscious, flexible, extensible, permission-aware software that can start with practical launch-stage needs and keep evolving as the cooperative learns what it needs next.
Outcome
A living platform for launch-stage operations
Brownie has become the operational backbone for BSMC's launch-stage work. It gives staff and coordinators clearer visibility into who is involved, what events are happening, what requests need review, and how members are participating.
Instead of stitching together multiple tools and duplicating data, the Co-op has one system that can reduce tool sprawl, avoid unnecessary recurring software costs, and give the organization long-term control over its digital infrastructure.
Contact
Let's talk
Need software that fits the way your organization actually works?