Get Together with GatherPack

GatherPack's journey began with a FIRST Robotics Competition team running on spreadsheets and sticky notes. All of the critical information about meeting attendance, fundraising progress, and team logistics was scattered across multiple files, desks, and brains. This fragmented system made it challenging for volunteers, team members, and parents to keep track of everything they needed to know without going around and asking multiple people. Getting new people "on the list" was a multi-step process, and it was easy for people to fall through the cracks and miss important information.

One of the volunteers with the program, a web developer by trade, decided to fix this with a simple little web application. And over the next several years, that little web application grew into a full-fledged platform that has become the single source of truth for the team's operations. But over the past decade, the organization behind that team has basically quadrupled in size & scope - and that original tool has started to show its age and inability to keep up with some of the ways that the organization runs now. That same volunteer and a few of the students on the team decided to build a new tool from the ground up, built to be more flexible, capable, and robust to handle not only their needs, but the needs of other teams and organizations that have been looking for a tool like this to help keep their groups more organized.

GatherPack is the result of that effort. It is designed to be flexible enough to handle the needs of a wide variety of groups, from small teams to large organizations. And it is being built with the goal of making it easier for people to work together, stay organized, and get things done.

If you've got technically-inclined people in your organization, you can run GatherPack for free on your own servers. If you don't, we offer affordable hosting and support services through our founder's company, Sledgehammer Infosystems. We also offer onboarding support, consulting, and custom development services to help you get the most out of GatherPack and tailor it to your organization's specific needs.

* Some of these features are still in development and will be available soon!

GatherPack is shaped by the experiences and feedback of real teams, volunteers, and organizers who rely on it every day. Instead of being designed in isolation, its features and workflows are continually refined by people who understand the challenges of managing dynamic, people-powered groups. This community-driven approach ensures that GatherPack remains practical, intuitive, and responsive to the evolving needs of organizations of all sizes.

Unlike many tools that focus on static membership lists or simple communication, GatherPack is built to support the complex needs of more active organizations: tracking participation, managing finances, coordinating events, and empowering leaders. Its flexibility means it adapts as your group grows or changes, rather than forcing you to fit into a rigid mold.

The platform is free and open source, so anyone with technical skills can deploy and customize it for their own group. For those who prefer a turnkey solution, hosting, support, and custom development are available through our founder's company, Sledgehammer Infosystems. Whether you're a small club or a large nonprofit, GatherPack is built to help your community thrive.