Get Together with GatherPack

GatherPack started as a tool created by a FIRST mentor & team members to support their FIRST programs.

And now we want to share what we've made with all of you to help you manage the operations of your programs in one place, too.

We are currently seeking beta testers for GatherPack! If you're interested in learning more, get in touch!

Organization

Make GatherPack your single source of truth for who's who and what's what.

  • Keep track of everyone's important information - contact info, dietary restrictions, shirt sizes - in one place that people can update themselves.
  • Define relationships between people so you can, among other things, keep track of which parent belongs to which kid.
  • Organize your people into teams
    • Create sub-teams (and sub-sub-teams)
    • Assign managers to teams that can manage content, events, and people on their teams
    • And, coming soon, create titles & org charts for your teams, events, and your entire organization.
  • Grant people badges to track accomplishments and achievements

Communication

GatherPack helps keep your team members, parents, and mentors connected and informed.

  • Post scheduled announcements for individual teams or for everyone in your organization
  • Send out regularly scheduled personalized announcement & activity summaries via email
    • Or, send notifications immediately when publishing a new announcement
    • And, coming soon, send notifications about most anything via text, mobile push notification, Discord, Slack, etc.
  • Create content pages to share important information and resources

Events

Let GatherPack track events, activities, and important dates for your team.

  • Post events to your team's calendar
    • Let people RSVP to your events.
    • Define custom fields to track hotel room assignments, transportation methods, and whatever else you need to know.
    • And, coming soon, track attendance at specific checkpoints during events.
    • Also coming soon, set requirements that people have to meet before checking in to an event.
  • Keep track of all your team members' birthdays
  • And, coming soon, display your GatherPack calendar with your Google Calendar or other calendar tools.

Time Tracking

GatherPack tracks meeting & volunteer hours.

  • Create time clock periods to track and report on different activities.
  • Use the time clock kiosk to let people clock themselves in & out.
    • Use PIN numbers, a barcode scanner, an RFID reader, or other methods to let people clock in & out at the kiosk.
    • Trigger custom tasks from the kiosk, like automatically clocking everyone out at the end of a meeting.
  • Managers can manually review, categorize, create, and update time clock entries.

Finances

Keep an eye on your team's finances with GatherPack.

  • Handle your organization's books with our simple financial ledger system.
    • Add tags to transactions for budget tracking.
    • Upload receipts & invoices to keep everything organized.
  • For those of you with access to non-school-based banking, accept online payments & donations.
    • Accept credit cards, bank transfer, and dozens of other payment methods via Stripe.
    • And, coming soon, PayPal & Venmo support.
    • Also coming soon, automatically pull transactions from your bank account into GatherPack.
    • And, maybe coming to our hosting service eventually, a fiscal sponsorship model that will provide online payment support for those of you without an independent bank account.

Host GatherPack yourself, or let Sledgehammer Infosystems deal with that, and several paid service integrations, for you - with a significantly discounted hosting fee* for FIRST teams.

* We're still working out pricing for our hosting service as we're doing our beta test roll-out. Sledgehammer Infosystems is hosting FIRST teams "at cost," more or less. Right now that's looking like about $20-30 a month, but will get cheaper as more organizations come on board.

We are currently seeking beta testers for GatherPack! If you're interested in learning more, get in touch!