114 – Create Non-Profit Apps without Coding with Dan Hafner

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David, and today we’re exploring no-code software solutions with Dan Hafner. Dan Hafner is a no-code software expert and the founder of Dapper No-Code, which is dedicated to helping organizations build custom apps and software. Dan provides budget-friendly digital solutions, especially valuable for non-profits.

Dan, thank you so much for jumping on the show with us today and looking forward to talking.

Dan Hafner: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, David. I’m really excited to be here.

David Pisarek: Yeah.

So let’s just, I guess, start with some fundamentals so everybody kind of knows what we’re talking about here: no-code, what is it?

Dan Hafner: Yeah, it can be a generic term. When you just say no-code, people assume, well, that means that there’s no-code inside of the things that I build. That’s not exactly true.

Think about it in terms of visual building. A lot of us are familiar with maybe you’ve built a website using something like Wix or GoDaddy, or ClickFunnels, one of those platforms. It’s the same thing. Whereas you’re not actually coding. You’re not the one having to do HTML or JavaScript and learn all those languages. You’re visually building things.

So, hey, there’s a button I need here, there’s a headline I need here, there’s a paragraph I need here. We’re all familiar with that. If we’ve done online business, that is.

So there’s code underlying the platform, but you, yourself, as the builder, are not doing that. And that’s a huge advantage for people in our positions, or business owners, or whoever, because we don’t have time to learn to code.

Like, when I was getting into this, I didn’t know how to learn to code. I wanted to learn to code. And it was like, I can’t figure this out. You know, I was full-time employed. It was not working out. And so when I discovered these platforms, I was like, wow, this is amazing. It levels the playing field, it allows you to move so much faster. You don’t have to learn these things. It’s amazing.

David Pisarek: Yeah. Way back in the day, I’m talking 30-plus years ago, when I started web, I started using Notepad, right? And just like bare bones, no helpers. Dreamweaver wasn’t a thing there, Macromedia home site, or whatever it was called before Adobe bought it, there was nothing. So, really, you needed to get a clear understanding from the ground up. And then come along, all these built. You have Squarespace, Wix, and you have those in WordPress land. You also have Divi and Elementor, which are probably the two biggest ones. And then you’ve got a variety of other ones that have been in the space for 10 to 15 years.

So anybody that’s listening to this, I mean, even Mailchimp, Constant Contact, when you build those emails, you’re not coding those. You’re dragging and dropping boxes, modules, and this and that. And so that’s a no-code thing.

So I would imagine that almost everybody who’s listening to this has interacted with it at some point.

Dan Hafner: Yeah, and that’s the beautiful part about it, is when I talk about no-code, like what I specifically do is software and app development. So they’ve built a lot of these platforms to be very user-friendly. The UX and UI are very easy to pick up quickly because you’ve used other tools like Mailchimp, as you mentioned, or similar ones. So when you get in there, there’s a little bit less of a learning curve if you’ve used some of those other platforms because they’re simplified. There are ones that I’ve talked about. It’s almost like the Apple of no-code platforms. It’s just very simple, very easy to use. It’s just intuitive, and yeah, it allows you to just pick things up and go faster.

David Pisarek: I think through the lens of non-profits, charities, NGOs, community organizations, that type of thing; how do you see the interaction between the no-code tools and how it can benefit those types of organizations?

Dan Hafner: Yeah, so I’ve worked with a couple in the past, which is kind of what interested me in coming on the show and talking with you. Because there are, at least from the people that we’ve worked with and the people that I’ve seen, they’re kind of limited for time; budgets can be limitations, grants, those types of things as well, in certain circumstances. And you might not have the team or the resources to bring on like an entire development team.

For example, we’re currently working with a new client who has already set up their entire website and platform; but, the solution that they had didn’t have a interactive feature or they wanted to show where their members are and the toolbox that they had wasn’t fitting the bill, it just wasn’t available inside of it. So, long story short, they went down the path of having someone custom-code this and build it into the system, but he found out later that it was only desktop-friendly. You couldn’t even use it on a tablet or a phone, which is where most people use things. And it was a waste of time and money. And that was so incredible to see.

I was like, wow. For instance, if you had gone down this route of something like a no-code solution or a mobile app idea, that would have all been avoided, right? So, it allowed them to take that idea that they had or this resource that they needed to put out to their people and not have to dump time and money into something, and then have a product that wasn’t usable or was just a waste. So that was really incredible. And you know, talking about integrating the existing payment and donation platforms that they had was a big deal as well because, obviously, that’s a funding source, that’s a revenue stream, so that’s a very, very key. So there’s just a lot of applications for that.

David Pisarek: Yeah.

And something inherently that’s built into a lot of the platforms is responsiveness. That’s what you’re talking about, being able to have something that works seamlessly on mobile, tablet, and desktop. And one of the neat things that you can do in a lot of these no-code environments is you can actually go into some of the settings all through an interface, a GUI, whatever you want to call it, and adjust font sizes, right?

So, if you’re building a web page, for example, you want your header to be larger, but you don’t want it at that size on a mobile because words are going to break, and it’s going to be weird. You can go in really easily and adjust that type of stuff. Ultimately, this enables organizations to save time, money, and stress, ultimately reducing headaches.

Dan Hafner: Yeah. I mean, how many sites have you seen in the NGO space or even just all over the place?

There’s a certain industry I’ve worked in where it looks like every single website was built in the same way as when I was a kid in like the 90s. On a phone, you’ll see the desktop version of it, and the font is like tiny, tiny, tiny size. And yes, you have to pinch in. It’s like, holy moly, it’s 2025, people. Like, we gotta get this together. So that’s a huge, huge benefit because at some point it’s just like, okay, we gotta get ourselves with the current.

David Pisarek: Yeah.

So, I would encourage anyone listening to this to open up your website on your phone. How easy or hard is it to navigate with? You can do your own little kind of mini audit, and then you can get support or go, oh, my goodness, this isn’t great. This is why we’re seeing a dip in funding.

COVID definitely kind of rapidly sped up what I’m about to say. But, before COVID, people were using their phones, sitting on the couch, walking around wherever and navigating that way. However, if you don’t have analytics on your site, add them now. But if you do have analytics, take a look. I would bet that at least 35 to 40% of your traffic is coming from mobile devices. People are couch surfing, they’re sitting around, they’ve got their phones, and it’s there, it’s here, it’s been here for a while. So, yeah, you need to level up and work on that.

Dan Hafner: To share a quick story, speaking of that, you mentioned COVID: One of the quick responses that happened when COVID first hit was that the city of New York had to, actually, figure out a way to coordinate all of the response stuff, the vaccination things, like all of this stuff. And when they went to put a software together, they were actually able to build and launch their solution within one week. Within one week, they were able to do that. And that was thanks to a no-code platform.

I was reading through the article about it the other day, and kind of refreshed myself on this. I was like, this is a great story for this because there was an urgency there, you know, from the top levels of government, probably, to get that thing done. However, they were saying there was no way this could have been possible with a custom-coded solution. It was thanks to these quick, interactive environments that we were able to accomplish this within a week. And that’s just like a really, really powerful story that I love is just like; that’s what this is for.

David Pisarek: Absolutely. Save the time.

You would have multiple people working on it together collaboratively and deploy in a relatively short period of time. So, thinking through that, in terms of non-profits, charities, what do they need to think about when they’re designing a digital platform so they can engage and encourage donors, and volunteers, and even people in the community?

Dan Hafner: That’s a good question.

When it comes to that, again, you don’t want to build something that is not needed. That’s like the worst thing to do in software. You know, you probably experience this as well. You know, is this something that’s needed and is going to benefit not only us, as the business, but also the end user? Is it helping solve a problem?

And then, one principle that I always like to live by whenever we build stuff is the KISS method. Keep it simple, stupid. I’m not sure which order it goes in, but simplicity wins the day. You hear this all the time. I remember when we got into the marketing world around people that said, you know, you can have these super complex, super highly designed funnels, and then you can have the simple ones. And the simple ones outperform the super expensive, well-designed ones all the time. So, what are you trying to accomplish? And how can you keep it simple to achieve the result you want? It can really be that simple.

I know that’s a very broad answer to kind of what you’re asking, but you know, for example, like, you know, the funding thing on our site is not great; okay, what can we do? Do we need to make the button bigger? Do we need to make it stand out in a different colour? How many clicks does it take for someone to actually donate? Does it take 40 clicks? That’s a huge point of friction. Like, think about Amazon. Amazon has “Buy Now” with one click, right? They literally have that built in. Now I know that’s a dangerous thing to do, and it requires very specific things to be in place, but could you do it in three screens? Could you do it in three clicks?

You know, again, you just talked about a self-audit. Like, look through your structure. If it takes someone a lot of clicks to go through things and a lot of screens, there’s always a drop-off at each stage. So, that’s one thing that I really encourage a lot of people to think through. Even myself, I have to do that with my things as well. I’m not immune to this. You know, I’ll be drinking my own Kool-Aid here, but that’s one thing that I really think is a good, actionable piece of advice.

David Pisarek: Yeah, and to your point about the donation piece, I’ve mentioned this on a number of different episodes over the last couple of years.

You don’t need to get everybody’s entire life history for a donation. What are the minimal pieces you need? You need a name, phone number, email, and credit details. Like that is it. You can build out their profiles later. If somebody wants to make a $5 donation, don’t make it hard for them to give you their money. They’ve seen and they want to engage with you, and they want to help your organization. They’ll make it a 25-question form. Could you potentially have a one-click donation option that accepts PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay, where you don’t even have to ask for their name and email because it will automatically submit the information with their payment through those processes. Maybe that’s something you can do. Just super simple.

Dan Hafner: Yeah, that’s the beautiful thing about it, is if you’re a creative thinker, if you’re willing to think outside the box a little bit and you’re also willing to kind of roll up your sleeves and do a couple of things, you never know what you can do. That’s precisely the story.

When I was building my very first app inside of no-code that I got down to, it was in the running and fitness space, but that was the mixture of it. I had an idea, something I wanted to implement, but I didn’t know how to code and didn’t have a lot of money to build it. I eventually figured out a way to do it, despite trying and failing numerous times, and eventually got something up and running.

And that’s kind of how it goes a lot of times, like it’s just like running any kind of business. So it has to be that outside-the-box creative thinking.

David Pisarek: Amount of. I don’t like to call them failures, I like to call them lessons, right? Frames it like a little bit more positively. But the amount of times, like learning coding in the raw HTML, the raw PHP, whatever that I’m building in, the amount of times that things broke along the way, right? It happens, and that’s okay. That’s where you actually learn.

Making mistakes is what actually improves your brain function, right? Because you’re trying to, then, figure out.

All right, I’m totally getting off topic here. But there are good things that come out of these issues that come up as you’re working on stuff, and you need to dedicate time to actually working on it. So, like open up your calendars and find a half an hour tomorrow, next week, next month that you can dedicate towards it. Over time, if you set aside time to do it, you will actually accomplish something, as opposed to just thinking about doing it.

Dan Hafner: Yes, 100%.

I was just talking with one of my mentors the other day, and he told me the story about there was a class where they said there was one group of people who had to build one pot by the end of the semester, and it had to be the best pot ever. It just had to be absolutely perfect because that was what they were graded on. The other group was graded strictly on quantity; you will be graded, and you must build as many pots as possible during the semester. And long story short, at the end of the semester, the people who just built one were not as good as the people who built one and iterated and iterated and iterated and iterated. They were both of higher volume and higher quality than those who did only one.

So I love to share that story. I know there are a lot of iterations you could probably apply that, like all kinds of different things. But it proves the point of what you were just saying. Just lesson-iterate, lesson-iterate, lesson-iterate, you know?

David Pisarek: Yeah. And, you know, I think putting the time and effort is obviously very important, certainly from a business perspective, right? Like, Dan, your business, my business. We have to work, we have to evolve. We have to see the new things play, touch, break, right? And I think a lot of organizations are very hesitant to do any of that and spend any time with that because they don’t have enough time in the day, right? So let’s try to help them, a little bit. Mistakes: Sometimes, we can make mistakes when we get into web design or app development.

Are there any kind of common mistakes that you’ve seen with your clients that we can, like, I don’t know, give some insight to the folks listening to, help them avoid those pitfalls?

Dan Hafner: I think one of the biggest mistakes, one of the biggest reasons that new software fails in SaaS, you know, things fail, apps fail, is they miss the target market. They just miss what problem they’re actually solving.

Again, building on what I said earlier, one interesting idea was actually something I personally implemented last year. I wanted to launch a new application inside of the taxidermy industry. Long story short, it flopped. It did not go the way that I thought it was going to go. The reason was that there was no mass demand for it. It was kind of needed on a smaller scale. However, that’s just one personal example that I like to share.

As long as there is a true need for this thing and you’re not failing. You’re actually just moving forward, moving the ball, doing these types of things. Even if it’s not perfect, there are so many people who wait to launch till it’s perfect. And that’s one of my biggest pet peeves. It’s like, just put something out, you know what I mean?

David Pisarek: Yeah. There’s something to be said for, you know, like, this is good enough for now. We will continue to evolve, we will continue to build on. We will continue to iterate, tweak, and modify. For right now, we’ve hit 80% of whatever it is that we needed to do.

And, sometimes, like, I am a perfectionist at heart. I need things to be perfectly aligned, pixel-perfect, et cetera. We’ve recently launched a self-assessment for some organizations, and my team was like: “Oh, we need to reword this.” I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. We’ll deal with that later. Let’s get this out there so that we can start getting people using it, and then we can see how they’re using it. We can look at the data, we can look at the analytics, we can look at the heat maps, we can do all that type of stuff to then make improvements over it. And if you’re going out to market with like a major consumer device like an iPhone, you want it to work, right? When you’re going out with a little function on your website or something, that’s fine, right? You can send it to some friends, some colleagues, some volunteers love that advice.

I think that’s a great perspective for sure, Dan. So, Dan, thank you so much. Your insights have been incredibly valuable. I hope that our listeners can take at least one thing that we talked about today and apply it practically in their digital efforts to enhance and actually move things forward for themselves and their organization.

What I like to do is I like to put, put our guests in a little bit of a hot seat. So, if you were to challenge anybody with one thing that you want them to do in the next 48 hours of listening to this, what would that challenge be?

Dan Hafner:

I would challenge anyone who’s serious about this, who maybe has something ruminating, has maybe heard of this before, or wants to learn more about this: do your research. Just go to use something like Chatgpt, you know, any of those tools that are out there, and look into the various no-code platforms out there. Look into it; it’s called Bubble.io. Also, consider Adalo and Good Barber. There are new solutions out there every single day. But, do your research, you know, think about these things and just kind of get over that. I’ll look into this someday. Just look into it.

You know, I say: ask my best friend Chatgpt. It doesn’t tell you anything you want to know about anything, so that’s what I would say.

David Pisarek: The list of bookmarks that I have of “All right, I’ll get to this later.” It’s, like, you know, it’s crazy long. Just go read what they have to say. Write down a note like, “Oh, this is kind of neat” but at least you’ve investigated it at some point. I love that idea. And thank you. Before we hit record and started, we were talking a little bit. You have a resource; can you tell us about it?

Dan Hafner: Yeah, and that’s a very good place to start because in the resource that I do have, it has a breakdown of those three platforms that I just talked about. So it’s at dappermobileapps.com/resource. Okay, so that basically is a free. There’s a little banner right at the top, so you can download that.

It’s five steps to building and launching your SaaS or app idea using no-code plus AI, which we didn’t even really get to talk about, but the hot topic of the day. So why not include it in there? But it’s five steps. Like, how do I get started from zero in five simple steps? Go through that whole process. And then, like I said, it’s got the platform overviews as well. So dappermobileapps.com/resource.

David Pisarek: Awesome, and if anybody wants to get in touch with you, they can go to the website and connect with you and your team. Dan, it’s been lightning having you on the Non-profit Digital Success podcast. For everyone listening, if you’re looking for the resources or links we just discussed, please visit our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details, and until next time, keep on being successful!