The short version, so the rest is optional: run Laney Belle and Bailey and Beach on separate stacks — Moxie for your client work, Airtable plus Google Workspace plus Jotform for the foundation. Keep Wave and Plann exactly as they are. Build the account inventory this week, before you and Misa decide who's leaving.
The two decisions only you can make: whether your remit includes Humanity Capital, and whether you want the wall between these organizations to exist structurally or just be configured. Everything else follows from those.
| What you said you need | Shared Spine one stack under LBI | Separate Houses each org its own | Built Layer custom agents on top |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fewest systems | 4 subscriptions | 6 subscriptions | +1 to 2 more |
| Single source of truth | One base, two workspaces | One base per entity | Same, kept current for you |
| Relationship management | Airtable linked records | Airtable linked records | Plus automatic follow-up drafts |
| Ops · projects · comms | Good for both, ideal for neither | Right tool for each shape | Right tool, plus a daily brief |
| Intake & large surveys | Airtable Forms + Jotform | Airtable Forms + Jotform | Plus triage and synthesis |
| Contracts & invoices | Google eSign + Wave | Moxie (LBI) · Google eSign (B&B) | Plus renewal watch |
| Account inventory | 1Password + Airtable | 1Password + Airtable | Maintained by the Registrar |
| Google, not Microsoft | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clean separation | A setting you maintain | Structural — holds by itself | Inherits from below |
| Monthly cost | ~$100 | ~$95–130 | +$40–110 |
| Time to working | 3–4 weeks | 3–4 weeks | 6+ months |
| Tool | Does | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Moxie | CRM, proposals, contracts with e-signature, invoicing, time tracking, scheduling — flat rate, no per-seat charge | $12–25 |
| Wave | Accounting and invoice sending. Unchanged. | $0 |
| Plann | Social. Unchanged. | existing |
| 1Password | Your own credentials | ~$3 |
| Total | $15–28 |
The work moves in a line — enquiry, proposal, contract, deposit, delivery, invoice. That shape is a solved problem and an all-in-one does it better than a database you configure yourself. Alternative worth a look: Agiled, whose free tier genuinely includes CRM, contracts, invoicing and a client portal.
| Tool | Does | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Airtable | Every person, project, contract and cohort as linked records. Intake forms native. Dashboards for Misa without giving her the machinery. | $24–40 |
| Google Workspace Business Standard | Docs, Drive, Calendar — plus native contract signing with audit trail | $6–12 |
| Jotform | Public surveys, high-volume applications, payment collection, bulk signature sends | ~$25 |
| 1Password Teams | The org's credentials, shared with Misa | $25 |
| Total | $80–102 |
The work moves in cycles. One person is an applicant, then a participant, then an alumna, then possibly a referrer or donor — carrying years of history. Nothing off the shelf holds that shape; a relational database does.
| Considered | Genuine strength | Why not |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | The best free CRM available for one or two people, and 40% off for nonprofits | The free tier changed. Two users, 1,000 contacts, 2,000 emails a month, no multi-step automation, and HubSpot branding on every form, email and meeting link. Removing the branding costs $20/seat — before there's a list to email. |
| SuiteDash | Flat price, unlimited users, genuinely everything in one login | Reviewers report 20+ hours of setup, and running unrelated businesses in one workspace causes data to bleed between them — exactly the boundary you need protected. |
| monday.com | The most visually legible platform of the group | The CRM is a separate subscription from project management, and both carry a three-seat minimum. |
| SmartSuite | More included out of the box than Airtable, cheaper per seat | Three-seat minimum. You'd pay for a person who doesn't exist. |
| Notion | Documents and databases in one surface, with agents that write back to databases | AI requires the $20/seat tier plus usage credits, and it slows as records grow. Its strength is writing, not records. |
| Smartsheet | Serious approvals and reporting | No free plan, and built for project management offices rather than two people. |
| Zoho One · Bitrix24 | Forty-plus apps under one license; Bitrix24 free for unlimited users | Both are designed to replace Google Workspace rather than sit beside it. |
| SurveyMonkey | The strongest analytics and benchmarking in survey software | Three-seat annual minimum — roughly $1,080 a year floor. You'd buy three seats to use one. Jotform covers the same research for about a quarter of that. |
| Typeform | Conversational format measurably lifts completion rates | Bills per response with a hard ceiling. Worth it for one specific campaign, not as a standing tool. |
| Submittable · SurveyMonkey Apply · Award Force | Purpose-built for cohort application and review | They go quiet the day the cohort is announced — each stage creates a fresh respondent pool matched to the last by name and email, losing records at every match. Airtable has no matching step. Award Force starts at $3,125/yr; the others don't publish pricing. |
| PandaDoc · DocuSign · Concord | Real contract lifecycle management with negotiation and approval chains | Contract tracking is a database field. Contract signing is now free inside Google Docs and Drive. Neither half justifies $19–399 a month. |
A for-profit holding company and a 501(c)(3) sharing systems is not the same as two of your own things sharing systems. Money, staff time and services moving between a private foundation and its funder's holding company are exactly the transactions examined by auditors and by anyone doing diligence before a large gift.
Running all of it from one account paid by your consultancy makes that story harder to tell. Under an expanded remit, separation stops being a preference.
One more Google Workspace — roughly $28 a month for two users — plus an allocation line in B&B's books. Total across three entities lands around $125–160 a month against $95–130 for two.
The services agreement, the cost-allocation method, and how your own compensation flows across entities are questions for your CPA and counsel. The point here is only that the architecture should follow that structure rather than quietly invent one — which is what happens when subscriptions get bought on whichever card is nearest.
| Question to settle | What it decides |
|---|---|
| What is your role, and at which entity? | Which entity holds the licenses, and whether a services agreement is needed at all. |
| Does Laney Belle contract with either entity, or are you employed? | Whether LBI must stay at arm's length in the systems as well as on paper. |
| Who is leaving, and what can they currently access? | The urgent one. See the next slide. |
| Which roles are internal versus contracted out? | Employees need paid seats. Contractors need scoped guest access with an expiry date — which is free in Airtable if you design for it. |
| Who owns each system? | One named person per platform, responsible for access and renewal. Two-person organizations skip this and then can't answer who added whom. |
| What does Misa want to see? | Founder visibility is a design input, not an afterthought. Interfaces can give her a real dashboard without exposing the base — but only if you build knowing what belongs on it. |
| What is Humanity Capital actually holding? | Whether the umbrella needs its own workspace or a handful of tables inside the shared one. |
You said you couldn't name every account created for Bailey and Beach off the top of your head, and that some are registered to personal addresses rather than the organization.
That's an inconvenience while everyone is staying. It becomes something else the week you decide who goes. Offboarding someone you can't fully offboard is how small organizations end up with a former contractor still holding a domain registrar login nobody remembered existed.
The vault — 1Password Teams, flat rate to ten people, shared with Misa. Credentials only.
The register — an Airtable table holding everything about each account: owning entity, purpose, registered email, who has access, cost, renewal date, linked documents. Searchable and filterable in a way a spreadsheet of passwords never is, and safe to share.
Then the migration. Every account registered to a personal address moves to an organization address — starting with anything the IRS, the state, the bank, or the domain registrar sends mail to. That list is short, and it's the one that matters.
An agent is a set of written instructions that runs on a trigger, reads from your systems, does one job, and then either acts or stops and waits for you. The entire risk lives in that last clause — so none of these can send, publish, sign, pay or delete. Not as a policy you'd enforce, but as a capability they were never given.
| Agent | Job | Hard limit |
|---|---|---|
| The Registrar | Every account, registration, domain, filing and renewal across all three entities. Answers "who is the IRS contact for B&B" instantly. Build this one first. | Catalogs that credentials exist — never touches them |
| The Intake Officer | Reads, tags and routes every application; checks against existing records so nobody enters twice; flags what's missing | Never contacts an applicant |
| The Steward | Watches relationships going quiet — a sponsor at ninety days, an overdue alumna check-in — and drafts the follow-up in your voice with context attached | Drafts only; nothing sends without approval |
| The Clerk | Expiring contracts, unsigned agreements, auto-renewing vendor terms, entity filings, 990 deadlines, board notice requirements | Notifies and drafts; never signs or alters terms |
| The Analyst | Turns survey and application stacks into structured briefs; tracks outcomes across cohorts over time — the asset that turns proof of concept into something fundable | Internal drafts with reasoning shown; nothing publishes |
| The Chief of Staff | The one that exists because there are two of you. A shared daily brief: what changed, what's waiting on Misa, what's waiting on you, what's slipped, what needs both. Build this one last. | Reports and surfaces; never assigns or decides |
Read only. Agents observe, tag and flag. They cannot write anything unasked. Run a month; watch what they catch.
Draft and queue. They write follow-ups, reminders, briefs — all landing in a queue you approve, edit or discard. This is where the time savings appear, at near-zero risk.
Narrow autonomy. Only actions proven safe over months and trivially reversible. Internal tagging, record updates, scheduling. Never external, never financial.
The prerequisite isn't technical. The base has to be real, used daily and clean for a few months before any agent touches it — which puts this roughly two cohort cycles out, built one agent at a time.
Running cost once you get there: $40–110 a month on top of the foundation — an approval-gated platform like Relay.app, which is free to 200 steps a month, plus usage-based model access. Nothing here is urgent, and that's the point.
The shared-services structure, the cost-allocation method, and how your compensation flows across entities are questions for your CPA and counsel rather than anything in this deck.