Pizzza Bros - CDCW

We built a simple mobile app for CDCW to track unique guests and items given out with no personal data. Guests get an anonymous 8 digit ID or NFC card, enabling private, trusted impact analytics.

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Project Story: CDCW Impact Tracker

What Inspired Us

During this hackathon, we partnered with CDCW, a homeless shelter serving people in need every day. One of their biggest challenges was surprisingly simple but deeply important:
they had no reliable way to track how many unique guests they were helping or what resources were being distributed.

Right now, much of the process is done through handwritten notes and scattered paper records. That makes it difficult to measure impact, manage inventory, or understand community needs over time.

At the same time, privacy and trust are essential in this environment. Any solution had to work without collecting names, birthdays, or personal identifiers.

That balance between data and dignity inspired our project.

What We Built

We created a fully functional React Native mobile app that works on both iOS and Android, designed for volunteers to use instantly with minimal training.

The app allows volunteers to:

  • Register a new guest in seconds
  • Generate an anonymous 8 digit unique ID
  • Optionally write that ID to an NFC card for easy return visits
  • Log what items were given out (meal kits, hygiene kits, etc.)
  • Track overall service impact without storing any personal information

Each guest remains completely anonymous, but CDCW can still understand trends in usage and outreach.

How We Built It

Frontend

We used React Native to ensure the app is cross platform and accessible on any volunteer phone.

The interface was intentionally simple:

  • Login
  • New Guest Signup
  • Existing Guest Lookup
  • Item Distribution Logging

Backend

We connected the app to Supabase, a free cloud database that provides:

  • Secure data storage
  • Real time updates
  • Easy export for analytics dashboards

This makes it possible for CDCW to later build reporting tools and visualizations such as:

[ \text{Monthly Unique Guests} = \sum_{i=1}^{n} 1 ]

or item usage trends over time.

Designing for Privacy

Our biggest challenge was building something useful without collecting sensitive data.
We had to rethink what identification means and focus only on anonymous uniqueness.

Low Barrier Usability

Shelter volunteers need speed, not complexity. Every extra click matters, so we spent time simplifying the flow to make it usable in real world conditions.

Forgotten IDs

Guests may lose cards or forget numbers, so we designed a fallback workflow that allows creating a new anonymous ID while still preserving accurate counts.

What We Learned

This project taught us that good technology is not just about features, it is about respecting the people it serves.

We learned how to:

  • Build a complete mobile product quickly
  • Integrate Supabase with React Native
  • Design systems around trust and anonymity
  • Create tools that support nonprofits in meaningful ways

Most importantly, we learned that impact driven software must be built with empathy first.

What’s Next

Future improvements could include:

  • A web analytics dashboard for CDCW staff
  • Inventory forecasting tools
  • Automated monthly impact reports
  • Expanded NFC support

This hackathon showed us that even a small app can make a big difference when built for the right purpose.

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