Catalist — Capital One Gift the Code, Toronto Cat Rescue

Toronto Cat Rescue (TCR) is a virtual network of foster homes for cats, with intakes from many shelters across Toronto. Their challenge: information was arriving via email from many sources, aggregated by hand into Smartsheets, then copied out into Google Sheets. The process often resulted in lost data, incorrect entries, and accidental deletions.

Our solution was an intuitive web interface backed by Google Sheets, letting shelters enter information directly and letting coordinators view and modify it easily — without ever touching the raw spreadsheet. We chose Google Sheets as the backend because the charity was already using it, and because it meant zero migration effort. In the event our application failed, all data remained accessible in the original Sheet.

Built with Python and Flask, hosted on AWS. The project won the Gift the Code hackathon, a Capital One-sponsored event pairing tech teams with Canadian charities.