PROPOSAL
Office of Ignatian Spirituality — Spiritual Director Catalog
It was great connecting with Nancy, Michelle, and Joe — and honestly, that was one of the more straightforward discovery calls we’ve had in a while, because you came in knowing exactly what wasn’t working and what you needed instead. What follows is our proposal for a custom-built spiritual director catalog and referral platform designed specifically around the way your team operates — not the way a generic platform assumes you do. We’ve been building tools like this for ministry organizations for seventeen years, and we’re confident we can give OIS something that will serve your directors, your seekers, and your staff well for a long time to come.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The Problem With Platforms Built for Everyone
When an organization adopts a general-purpose database tool or a directory plugin, they’re making a quiet compromise: we’ll adjust how we work to fit what the software does. Over time, those adjustments accumulate. Workflows get awkward. Staff work around limitations. Data lives in three places instead of one. Support requests go unanswered or get routed to someone who doesn’t understand the context.
That’s where you are today.
Your current platform wasn’t designed for spiritual direction referrals. It wasn’t designed for the particular rhythm of how Michelle works, how your directors communicate their availability, or how a seeker moves from curiosity to connection. It was designed for generic use cases — and spiritual direction is not a generic use case.
The result: directors filling out an entire Google form from scratch every time they need to update a single line of their profile. Availability changes that require manual back-and-forth. Support that’s slow, impersonal, and disconnected from how your organization actually operates. A referral process that works despite your tools, not because of them.
This proposal is for something different.
What We're Building
A custom web application designed from the ground up for the OIS referral process — the way it actually works, not the way a generic platform assumes it works.
This is not a plugin dropped into a website. It is not a form bolted onto a spreadsheet. It is not a third-party SaaS product with features you’ll never use and limitations you’ll eventually hit. It is a purpose-built system with your 700+ directors, your seekers, your matching workflow, and your administrative needs at the center of every decision.
The application has three sides to it, each designed for a distinct user:
For Directors
A clean, straightforward profile portal where they log in with a single email link (no passwords to forget), see their own profile exactly as it appears to seekers, make changes to any field they choose, and toggle their availability when life demands it. No starting over. No Google forms. No calling Michelle to make a simple update.
For Seekers
A thoughtful, searchable directory that reflects the care and intentionality of Ignatian spiritual direction itself. Filter by location, modality, tradition, language, and expertise. Read real profiles written by real directors. Submit an inquiry that gets to the right person without friction.
For Your Team
An admin dashboard where Michelle and your staff can see everything: incoming seeker requests, director profile changes awaiting review, referral history, availability at a glance, and the data exports you need to track the health of the program. The tools your team actually uses, organized the way your team actually thinks.
The Problem
The Pain Points This Eliminates
Directors updating their own profiles
Today, any change to a director’s profile requires them to refill an entire intake form from the beginning. Every field, every time, regardless of what changed. This creates friction that discourages directors from keeping their information current — which means seekers are working with stale data.
In the new system, a director logs in, sees their existing information, edits only what needs to change, and submits. Changes are reviewed and approved before going live. The record stays intact. The director stays engaged.
Availability management
Right now, when a director goes on sabbatical, reaches capacity, or needs a break, that information lives in an email to Michelle. It may or may not make its way into the database in a timely way. Seekers may still be seeing profiles of directors who aren’t available.
In the new system, every director has an availability toggle on their own profile — Available, Unavailable, On Leave. When they flip it, they disappear from public search results automatically. No email required. No manual database update. No seeker getting connected with someone who can’t take them.
The referral black box
Currently there’s limited visibility into what’s happening in the referral pipeline — how many seekers came in this month, which directors are getting the most inquiries, where geographically your seekers are coming from. That data matters for planning, for reporting, and for growing the program.
The new system logs every seeker inquiry, tracks every referral from intake to match to close, and surfaces that data in a simple dashboard. The kind of reporting that takes hours to produce manually becomes a single screen.
Support that disappears when you need it
The frustration with your current vendor isn’t just about features — it’s about what happens when something goes wrong. Slow response times. Inconsistent help. The feeling that you’re a ticket number rather than a client relationship.
We’re a two-person agency. That means when something needs attention, you’re talking to the people who built it. No account managers. No handoffs. No getting transferred. In seventeen years of business, we’ve never lost a client to turnover because there’s no turnover to have.
the solution
Why Custom Is the Right Call
There are faster ways to get a directory online. You could find a WordPress plugin, configure a Squarespace extension, or sign up for another SaaS platform. Any of those might get you something functional in a few weeks.
But each of those paths puts you back where you started: adjusting your process to fit the software, rather than the software fitting your process.
Custom development means the approval workflow matches how Michelle actually reviews profiles. It means the seeker intake form asks exactly the questions your referral process needs — not the questions a plugin developer thought were probably good enough. It means when you want to add a field, change a filter, or adjust how availability works, that change is made in your system according to your needs, not dependent on a vendor’s product roadmap.
It also means longevity. A well-built custom application on modern infrastructure doesn’t have an expiration date tied to a vendor’s business decisions. The data is yours, in a format you can export, on infrastructure you control. If you ever need another developer to work on it, the codebase is built on technologies that are widely understood and well-documented. You’re not locked in.
The Jesuits have been thinking in centuries. Your directory should be built to last more than a product cycle.
What It Looks Like in Practice
The application lives on its own subdomain — something like directors.ois.org — and is built to match the visual identity of your existing Squarespace site. Same navigation, same colors, same tone. From a visitor’s perspective, it’s a seamless part of your web presence. From a technical perspective, it’s a dedicated system with none of the constraints of your marketing platform.
It’s mobile-friendly by design, because your directors and seekers are frequently on their phones. It’s built with security and privacy as first principles — director addresses are never exposed publicly, location pins go to city level only, and contact information is only surfaced according to each director’s own preferences.
The system is built to grow. Analytics, AI-assisted matching suggestions for Michelle, notification emails, expanded filtering — these are natural next steps on a foundation designed to support them. You’re not starting over when you want to add something. You’re building on what’s already there.
Investment
Proposals are presented in tiers so you can make the decision that fits your current moment, knowing the path forward is clear when you’re ready.
Tier 1
Core Platform
$13,500
Everything you need to replace your current system and eliminate your current pain points.
Includes: Director profile portal with self-editing and availability toggle, email notifications, admin approval workflow, public-facing directory with filters and search, seeker intake form and admin intake queue, admin dashboard, data export, data migration from ClaritySoft, visual match to your existing site.
Estimated timeline: 8–10 weeks
Tier 2
Analytics, Notifications & Smart Filtering
$17,500
Everything in Tier 1, plus:
- Seeker status tracking with internal notes — Michelle can log activity against each referral directly in the dashboard (contacted director, waiting on response, matched, closed). A lightweight but purpose-built workflow tool, not a generic CRM.
- Analytics dashboard — referral volume by month, geographic heat map of incoming seekers, profile view counts, availability breakdown across the catalog. The reporting your team has been assembling manually, surfaced automatically.
- Intake quiz with smart filtering — a short guided experience for seekers that translates their answers into filtered director suggestions, reducing the browse-and-guess approach.
Estimated timeline: 10–13 weeks
Tier 3
Full Platform with AI-Assisted Matching
$20,000
Everything in Tier 2, plus:
An AI-assisted matching layer that takes a seeker’s intake responses and surfaces a ranked shortlist of directors for Michelle to review — reducing the manual scan from 700+ profiles to a focused starting point.
Michelle still makes every referral decision. The AI does the first pass. It saves time, can learn as it goes, and has the potential to spot operational insights we can surface in the analytics layer of tier 2.
Estimated timeline: 12–16 weeks
Ongoing Maintenance
$650/mo
All tiers include an optional monthly maintenance agreement covering platform updates, security patches, bug resolution, and direct access to us when something needs attention. This is how we work with most of our long-term clients — not a support ticket queue, but an ongoing partnership.
Hard Costs (all tiers)
$40-60/mo
The platform requires hosting and infrastructure services. These are passed through at cost with no markup:
Hosting and database: approximately $25–$40/month
Any third-party services (email notifications, etc.): approximately $10–$20/month
You own these accounts!
Superlatives
Terms And Conditions
We don’t think web projects need complex contracts. Please let us know if you have any questions!
Warranties by The Sky Floor
The Sky Floor represents and warrants to Client that it has the experience and ability to perform the services required by this Agreement; that it will perform said services in a professional and competent manner; that it has the power to enter into and perform this Agreement. However, the Client will not determine or exercise control as to general procedures, formats or sub-contracting necessary to have these services meet Client’s satisfaction.
Completion Date (When Required)
The Sky Floor, LLC and the Client must work together to complete the Web Design Project in a timely manner. We agree to work expeditiously to complete the Web Design Project no later than 28 days after Client has submitted all necessary materials.
Confidentiality
In the course of the Collaboration under this Agreement, a Party (“Receiving Party”) may learn about or come into possession of “Confidential Information” (as defined below) about the other Party or its affiliated organizations or individuals (“Disclosing Party”). The Sky Floor and Client agree not to disclose any Confidential Information and promise to take all reasonable precautions to prevent its unauthorized dissemination, both during the term of this Agreement and thereafter. The Receiving Party agrees to limit disclosure of any Confidential Information to only those employees and agents of The Sky Floor or Client who have a need to know the information. The Receiving Party also agrees not to use any Confidential Information for its own benefit or for the benefit of anyone other than the Disclosing Party. The Parties acknowledge that all Confidential Information is and remains the property of its owner and that no license or rights in the Confidential Information has been or is granted under this Agreement. Receiving Party agrees to return all Confidential Information to the Disclosing Party upon request. For purposes of this Agreement, “Confidential Information” includes, but is not limited to, all information relating to business plans, financial data and budgets, funding, donors, personnel data, employee compensation and benefits information, trade secrets, details of contracts, pricing policies, operational methods, and marketing or public relations plans or strategies related to the business or affairs of The Sky Floor, Client and/or their affiliated organizations or individuals. “Confidential Information” also means any information that derives economic value from not being known to the general public or to others who could obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, which the owner takes reasonable efforts to protect the secrecy of, and any information that could be embarrassing or detrimental to the owner if disclosed publicly.
Governance
This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Michigan. Any litigation pertaining to this agreement shall be filed and heard only in either a state or federal court located in Michigan and each party here to hereby submits to the personal jurisdiction of any such court.
Copyrights and Trademarks
The Client unconditionally guarantees that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork furnished to The Sky Floor, LLC for inclusion in the Web Design Project are owned by the Client, or that the Client has permission from the rightful owner to use each of these elements, and will hold harmless, protect, indemnify The Sky Floor, LLC and its subcontractors from any liability.
Project Copyright
The client will be provided with source code for web sites developed, and will retain the right to use and modify the source code for their own purposes. Unless otherwise agreed in writing, clients will not have the right to re-sell any web site product developed by The Sky Floor, LLC, or use the source code provided as the basis for development of future products for anything other than the client’s own use.
Timely Payments
Final payment shall be due, upon Client’s acceptance of the deliverable.
Payments are 50% at signing, 50% upon completion unless otherwise noted. In order for The Sky Floor, LLC to remain in business, payments must be made promptly. If an amount remains delinquent 30 days after its due date, an additional 1.5% penalty will be added for each month of delinquency.
A Note on Process
Before development begins, we’ll need a few things from your team: a full data export from ClaritySoft, your complete list of tradition/charism and expertise tags, brand assets from your Squarespace site, and confirmation of a few workflow decisions. We’ll walk through all of it together — this is a discovery conversation, not homework.
Once development begins, you’ll have visibility into progress throughout. We don’t disappear for eight weeks and reappear with something to review. You’ll see it taking shape, and your feedback shapes what gets built.
We’re not the right fit for every client. But for organizations doing meaningful work who need a long-term technical partner rather than a vendor — we’re exactly the right fit.
To get started, we just need an eSigned proposal below and a 50% deposit.