Frequently asked questions

Yes, and it is the most common reason organizations call. We built the Volunteer Impact System with the Greater Baltimore Urban League for exactly this. Reporting that used to take days now takes minutes, because the numbers assemble themselves as the work happens instead of being rebuilt by hand when someone asks. The free System Mapping Session prices what your current reporting cycle costs you before you commit to anything.

A system that captures the data once and produces the report on its own. That is a two to three week build in most cases. We mapped this pattern at Morgan State University, where a campus program left spreadsheets behind and every request is now tracked in one place. Recurring manual reporting usually costs a team four to eight hours a week, which is the number we measure first and grade the finished system against.

A real portal that your staff and the people you serve both log into, with every request tracked from submission through resolution. The Institutional Portal we built for a Morgan State University program is live in production doing this today. You own the code and it ships into accounts you control, so it is real software rather than another stack of subscriptions.

An intake system that triages before a human ever opens the message. Our Intelligent Operations Hub sorts what arrives, routes it, and surfaces only what actually needs a person. It runs daily and gave that team their mornings back. Inbox and intake overload typically eats six to twelve hours a week, so it is often the fastest payback of anything we build.

One record per person, one place, with every other view generated from it. Scattered data usually costs four to nine hours a week in reconciliation and lookup, plus the decisions people get wrong because two files disagreed. We consolidate first and automate second, because automating on top of scattered records just makes the wrong answer arrive faster.

Yes. Connecting two audiences is its own build pattern and we have shipped it. The Community Giving Platform for Destined for Success is live in production, pairing donors and mentors with students, with trust and safety designed in from the start rather than bolted on. Hand matching tends to consume five to ten hours a week and quietly caps how many people you can serve.

Publishing that does not depend on anyone having a free afternoon. The Automated Content Engine turns one research session into a full week across five channels, and it runs daily. We built the same pattern for commerce, where a storefront publishes itself one product a day with zero ad spend. Inconsistent publishing is the single most expensive pain we measure, at eight to fifteen hours a week.

A system that owns the follow up instead of a person remembering it. Dropped follow ups cost most teams three to six hours a week and an amount of revenue nobody is tracking, because the loss is invisible by definition. The Intelligent Operations Hub chases what has gone quiet and escalates only when a human is genuinely needed.

With Continuous Decision Architecture, which is our core methodology. Decide, Record, Grade, Adjust. Every decision your organization repeats gets recorded, graded against what actually happened, and improved. We run our own firm on it. Loch Raven Capital is our internal fund and it is graded against the S and P 500 daily, in public, so you can inspect the methodology working before you buy it.

Because a tool is not a system. Buying a subscription hands your team one more thing to log into, while the work still flows the same way it did before. We redesign the flow first and then automate it, which is why every engagement starts from your bottlenecks and a measured baseline instead of a feature list. The software is the output. The operating capability is the product.

It depends on what you want to own at the end. A developer ships an app and leaves. An AI consultant usually leaves you a strategy deck and a tool recommendation. We install a working system, measure what it saved against a baseline mapped in week one, train your team to run it, and hand you the code in accounts you control. If we part ways the system keeps running without us.

Guardrails you set, and a human yes before anything outbound moves. Our methodology is Continuous Decision Architecture. Decide, Record, Grade, Adjust. The system drafts or makes the call inside your guardrails, journals its reasoning rather than just the outcome, gets scored against what actually happened, and tunes itself to be more careful exactly where it has been wrong. You can audit every decision it made and why.

Because we run our own firm on them in public. Loch Raven Capital is our internal AI run fund and it is graded against the S and P 500 every day where anyone can inspect it. The Intelligent Operations Hub and the Automated Content Engine run daily on our own operation. We do not sell a capability we have not already put into production against our own numbers.

That is most of what we do. The flagship systems were built with the Greater Baltimore Urban League, Morgan State University, and Destined for Success. Mission driven organizations tend to have the most manual reporting and the least slack to absorb it, which is exactly where measured automation pays back fastest. Published fixed pricing that starts at $2,450, with the full ladder and the monthly vendor cost shown before you commit, means it does not require a corporate budget to start.

Whatever is costing you the most hours with the least judgment involved, which is almost never the thing people guess. Run the assessment on this site to get a first answer in your browser with no account, or book the free 30 minute System Mapping Session and we will price what each bottleneck actually costs you. You leave with the two or three systems that would pay for themselves fastest whether or not you hire us.

Yes, and those are the organizations the flagship systems were built with. The Greater Baltimore Urban League, Morgan State University, and Destined for Success are all live deployments. Systems by Design LLC is based in Alexandria, Virginia, we come to Baltimore and the wider DC, Maryland and Virginia corridor whenever being in the room is worth it, and we work remotely everywhere else. Pricing is fixed and published: $2,450 for a shared log that costs nothing to run, $4,950 for the hosted program most organizations buy, so a small budget is not a barrier to starting.

Because we measure the baseline in week one and grade the system against it. The assessment tool on this site does the first pass yourself, in your browser, with no account. You pick your bottlenecks and it returns annual savings, return on investment, and payback period. The free System Mapping Session then prices what each bottleneck really costs and tells you the two or three systems that would pay for themselves fastest, whether or not you hire us.

A developer ships an app and leaves. We redesign how the work flows, install a system that measures its own results, and train your team to own it. The app is the output. The operating capability is the product. That is why every engagement starts from your bottlenecks and a measured baseline, never from a feature list.

Nonprofits, universities and institutions, and small to mid-size organizations. The flagship systems were built with the Greater Baltimore Urban League, Morgan State University, and Destined for Success, and Morgan State’s Division of Student Affairs has retained us through the 2026-27 academic year. If your operation runs on spreadsheets, inboxes, and repeated manual steps, there is measurable capacity to reclaim.

A focused automation ships in 2 to 3 weeks. A full portal or platform takes 3 to 6 weeks to a first working version. You see working previews in days, not months, and the baseline we map in week one is what the system is graded against.

Three published prices. The Log is $2,450 and costs nothing to run. The Program is $4,950 and is what most organizations buy. The Program Plus is $7,400. Each step up names the capability it adds and the vendor cost that forces it, so you are never paying for a figure you cannot account for. On top of the build you pay your own vendors about $67 a month at their list prices with no markup from us, and an optional care plan is $1,450 a year if you would rather we held those accounts. Multi-system platforms are scoped after the first system has proven itself on your operation. The full breakdown is on the services and pricing page.

That is the normal starting point. The System Mapping Session charts how work flows through your team today and prices what each bottleneck costs you. You leave with the two or three systems that would pay for themselves fastest, whether or not you hire us.

The assessment never leaves your browser. Your picks and the case studies you have opened live in your own device’s local storage, and there are no accounts and no tracking pixels anywhere on this site. The one exception is the contact form: what you type there is emailed straight to Patrick so he can reply to you, and it is not written to any database, analytics tool, or mailing list.

Your team gets a runbook and a training session, and everything ships into accounts you control. The system keeps grading itself against the baseline we mapped. An optional monthly care plan covers monitoring and improvements, and you can cancel it any month. The care plan exists for convenience, not dependence.

You do. Everything ships into accounts you control, with documentation and a training session. If we part ways, the system keeps running without us.

Least-privilege access from day one: role-based permissions, validated inputs, audit logs, and no credentials in code. We ask for the minimum access needed and document everything we touch.

Custom code where it matters, proven services where they save you money. Everything in the gallery runs on production stacks like Next.js, Python, and PostgreSQL, so you own real software, not a stack of subscriptions.

Yes, and most of the work is remote by design. Mapping sessions, working previews, and training happen over video, and you see running software at every step rather than a status report. Systems by Design LLC is based in Alexandria, Virginia, and we come on site anywhere in the Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia corridor when being in the room is worth it. The live deployments at Morgan State University and the Greater Baltimore Urban League were both built this way.

Fixed scope cuts the risk: you approve a working preview before launch. If something misses the mark inside scope, we fix it. That is part of the price, not a change order.

Yes. Systems by Design LLC is a Virginia limited liability company, and that exact name is the payee on the invoice and on the W-9, which we furnish on request before your first payment. We accommodate purchase order numbers, vendor registration, and net terms. Tell us your accounts payable cycle on the first call and the invoice dates get written backwards from it, so a payment you need in November is signed in September rather than chased in December.

For a hosted tool of this size, about $67 a month, and you pay it to the vendors directly at their published prices with no markup from us: application hosting at $20, a managed database with daily backups at $25, transactional email at $20, and the domain at about $2. Those services bill by usage above an included allowance, so that figure assumes a normal band of roughly 250 active accounts, 25,000 emails a month, and 50 gigabytes of transfer. Above the band the bill rises, and each vendor can change its own prices. If you hold the accounts you simply pay what they bill and we neither control it nor profit from it. If we hold them under the care plan, the plan moves by the amount the vendor bill actually moved, at cost, with the invoice shown, on thirty days written notice, and it moves back down when usage falls.