Enterprise teams are used to familiar trade-offs: scope vs. deadline, performance vs. cost. But charities and grassroots organizations play by a different set of rules - no real budget, almost no buffer time, and users who can be harmed (not just annoyed) if a system fails. The usual assumptions about risk, tooling, and process don’t survive that environment.

Working with charitable organizations means solving technical problems under conditions most enterprise developers never encounter. It might mean building for users who are experiencing trauma, who are in crisis, who are using decade-old devices on unreliable internet connections, or who have next to zero digital literacy. It might mean deciding between paying for a service, or paying your own wage. Every single decision about technology, architecture, and implementation has to account for limitations that would make most tech leads want to walk away from a project entirely.

This talk won't just share examples of real things we've shipped for charities (including the ugly workarounds, the uncomfortable trade-offs, and the surprisingly elegant solutions that emerged when the 'usual' options were off the table) - it will give you a fresh perspective on problem-solving that might help you find opportunities and solutions you can apply to your own day job next time you're faced with a seemingly insurmountable constraint.