A small trust with three centres kept carbon-copy receipt books at each one and an Excel sheet at home. Counterfoils went missing, receipt numbers repeated or were skipped, donors kept asking for their 80G receipts, and every quarter the accountant spent days retyping it all.
The volunteers doing the work were aged 20 to 70, mostly used only WhatsApp, and one centre had patchy internet. That's who we designed DaanSetu for.
1. Design for the least confident volunteer
We followed one rule: one clear button per screen. Every receipt fits on one phone screen, touch targets are large, and returning donors fill in automatically from their mobile number. If the least confident volunteer can issue a receipt in under a minute, everyone can.
2. Work offline first
At the counter, nobody can wait for the internet. Entries save on the phone and claim their official number once online, and receipt numbers are checked by the server, so they never repeat, even when entries are made offline.
If your users work in the field, on site or in a busy counter queue, offline isn't an extra. It's the job.
3. Deliver where people already are
Donors don't want another app. Receipts go out on WhatsApp through a private link, as an image or an A4 PDF with the 80G details. Meeting people inside the tools they already use removes the biggest barrier of all: getting started.
4. Speak the user's language
Software words like "record" and "transaction" mean little at a temple counter. We used Devotee and Seva, words the volunteers already use, and offered English, Hindi and Odia.
5. Every organisation wants to feel like itself
Each trust gets its own name, photo, greeting and colours: 12 themes, Glass or Solid, Traditional or Modern. When the app looks like their organisation, people adopt it as theirs.
6. Trust is designed too
Admins choose exactly what each volunteer can use: receipts, vouchers or both. Support can view an organisation's app only after the Admin allows it, for a limited time. And More than 90 automated tests, most of them on the security rules, check that one organisation can never see another's data.
What this means for your product
Whether your users are volunteers, field staff or first-time app users, the lessons hold: design for the least confident person, work offline where the network is weak, deliver through channels people already use, and earn trust with clear permissions.
Replacing paper or spreadsheets in your organisation? Book a strategy call and we'll walk you through how we'd approach it.
- Work offline first wherever the internet is patchy.
- Deliver results where people already are: for many, that's WhatsApp.
- Use the words of the people doing the work, not the software's words.