Beyond WhatsApp: The Nonprofit Coordination Gap

How do you coordinate across multiple organizations when services are complementary, resources are limited, and needs change faster than your teams can capture, update, and communicate? For nonprofits working in coalitions, especially those providing essential support to highly vulnerable communities, what often stands in the way of demultiplied impact is inadequate communication platforms.

​​Around Paris, France, dozens of organizations work together to provide support to asylum seekers and migrants living in makeshift camps. Their work is urgent and they operate in highly volatile and extremely precarious environments: the situation of a camp can be relatively stable one week, then change dramatically overnight due to extreme weather, rampant illness, or forced displacement. Needs are high, and they change every day.

Of widely varying size, operation model, resources and priority, these organizations provide complementary services. Some provide food, others material support, medical care, and legal assistance. Their teams move swiftly across the city and try to bring support in the right place at the right time, but with limited visibility to where they can be most needed. 

This is hard, unforgiving and relentless work, and we want to give a shoutout to Utopia56, la Croix-Rouge Française, Médecins du Monde and la Fondation Armée du Salut for being out there everyday.

A makeshift camp built and inhabited by migrants in Avenue de Flandres. 📸 Credit @ The Times

The over-reliance on personal networks

For years, coordination between members of the collective relied on personal networks: a volunteer would visit a site, see an urgent need, then message someone they knew (often via WhatsApp) in another organization. It worked, but it wasn’t efficient. One volunteer leaves, and a key communication channel can be closed overnight. The collective needed:

• A shared, up-to-date view of what is happening across locations

• A consistent way to report and interpret needs across multiple organizations

• A workflow that match their reality with volunteers on the ground, time pressure, and limited admin

• A system designed for highly sensitive information, where access and data security are high priorities

  
  

It’s important to note that nothing should replace direct, interpersonal communication. The goal wasn’t to rule out one-to-one contact, but add a new layer of reliable, real-time data sharing.

Utopia56 is one of the biggest nonprofits providing material, informational and legal support to migrants in the city. 📸 Credit @ Utopia56.

Building a safe data-sharing framework

This work was sponsored, mandated, and led by Data for Good, an incredible volunteer collective of data scientists, engineers, and builders who donate technical time and skill to mission-driven initiatives. North Arrow joined the effort to offer assistance in designing and building the platform.

Our priorities were:

1. To help teams capture information without slowing them down

2. To visualize the data seamlessly into a shared dashboard accessible to team leads

3. Translate observations into a shared structure (so different organizations can act on it)

4. To make the output immediately usable for planning and coordination

5. To protect the data and the people connected to it

A Centralized Map to Optimize Program Resources

We built a centralized map of camps in and around Paris, powered by online surveys that volunteers fill out after site visits. Those surveys feed directly into a secure platform, creating a shared operating picture across participating organizations.

How it works:

• Each dot on the map represents a migrant camp

• Dots update based on field reports submitted through standardized surveys.

• Organizations can browse recent reports, filter by location and need, and plan visits more effectively.

  
  

A simple color system helps teams quickly understand severity:

• Grey: needs not assessed yet

• Light green: relatively stable (still precarious, but lower urgency)

• Red: critical needs requiring immediate attention and intervention

  
  

This doesn’t replace direct communication but makes it more efficient and impactful. Instead of relying only on who knows whom, organizations can collaborate through a shared system that makes urgency clearly visible and easier to act upon. 

Over time, aggregated reporting also supports broader goals: helping organizations visualize patterns, illustrate the dreadful reality of migrants' living conditions, and strengthen advocacy and fundraising with clearer evidence of what’s happening on the ground.

Security and sensitivity

This platform supports life-saving work, and it operates in a context where the wrong access can create real harm.

From day one, the project required enhanced safeguards to ensure the platform could not be used by hostile actors. Access controls are intentionally stricter for the platform than for the field-reporting forms, and the system is designed around careful permissioning and secure handling of sensitive location-based information.

Impact

While the day-to-day work will always remain incredibly challenging, the value of the platform is practical and immediate:

• Faster coordination across organizations offering different services

• Better prioritisation of outreach based on current, shared information

• A common reporting structure that reduces reliance on informal networks

  
  

A shared platform for advocacy, with aggregated metrics and granular reports

What's Next

This is the kind of infrastructure that grows with the community using it. As more teams contribute reports and refine shared practices, the map becomes a coordination layer, a way to reduce fragmentation, respond faster, and make frontline knowledge easier to act on.

📣 A shoutout to all the volunteers that were involved at different stages of this ongoing project : Jean Delpech, Ludivine le Floch, Frédéric le Roux, Félix At & Victor Halgand