Praxis

One ongoing relationship, and five ways to buy into it.

> Productized packages rather than open-ended solutions. Prices are indicative and published up front, because the organisations Praxis works with have to justify every euro to a board, a membership or a funder.

// the_core_offer

Praxis is mostly one thing: the engineer an organisation would hire if it could justify the salary, available for a fraction of one. Everything further down this page either feeds into that relationship or is a piece of it sold separately.

Core offer · 01

Retainer & fractional tech lead

€500 – €2,000 / month

Rolling, 3-month minimum

A named engineer who already knows your systems: keeping them running, automating the next repetitive thing, and answering the question before it turns into a procurement round.

what you get

  • A named person who knows your stack and answers on a predictable schedule — not a ticket queue and not a bot
  • Routine automation delivered continuously: the small things that quietly eat a day a week each
  • Maintenance, monitoring and support of what is already running, whether Praxis built it or inherited it
  • Fractional tech lead — vendor selection, architecture calls, and reading other people’s proposals before you sign them
  • Access reviews, and offboarding that actually happens on the day somebody leaves
  • Small builds and changes inside the monthly envelope, without a new quote each time
  • Campaign-season surge capacity, agreed before the season rather than during it
  • A standing migration plan — what could move off US-owned tooling, in what order, at what cost — carried out only if and when you decide to

best for Organisations carrying real infrastructure with no in-house engineer, which is nearly all of them.

note This is where most engagements settle. The diagnostic and the build below are the two usual ways in, and both work perfectly well as one-offs.

// what_the_work_is

The two things organisations in this sector ask for most often. Both run inside a retainer as part of the monthly envelope, and both can be bought as a scoped project if that is all you need.

Workstream · 02

Routine automation

€1,500 – €6,000 / project

1–4 weeks, or inside a retainer

The repetitive work your staff currently does by hand every week, moved into scripts and flows that run on the tools you already pay for.

what you get

  • Forms that write straight into the sheet, the CRM or the database instead of into somebody’s inbox
  • Approval and sign-off flows that leave a record of who approved what, and when
  • Data moved between systems on a schedule — the end of the monthly export-and-reimport ritual
  • Google Apps Script, Microsoft Power Automate, or plain scheduled jobs where those are the wrong tool
  • Reporting that assembles itself before the board meeting instead of during it
  • Documentation and a walkthrough, because an automation nobody understands is a liability rather than an asset

best for Any organisation where a named person spends a day a week copying things between two systems.

note Usually the first thing a retainer does, and the cheapest way to find out whether the working relationship fits.

Workstream · 03

AI adoption & governance

€2,000 – €6,000

2–4 weeks, or inside a retainer

Getting the useful part of AI into your operations without granting a third-party vendor standing access to everything your organisation has ever written.

what you get

  • Triage of what people are actually asking for: what is a deterministic script, what genuinely needs a model, and what should not be automated at all
  • Least-privilege access design — a scoped service account against a named folder, rather than a broad OAuth grant across the whole workspace
  • A short written AI-usage policy your staff can follow and your funders can read
  • Data-handling rules: what may go into a prompt, what may not, and where the Article 9 line sits for member and supporter data
  • Pilot builds of the two or three uses that survive the triage, with the monthly cost written down before you commit
  • A review of the AI features your existing vendors have already switched on inside your tenancy, which is usually news to somebody

best for Organisations under pressure to adopt AI that would prefer to do it without an incident.

note Frequently runs alongside an access-control clean-up, because the honest blocker turns out to be permissions rather than models.

// ways_in

Three ways to start without committing to anything ongoing. Each is a complete purchase on its own terms — the report is yours, the build is yours, and nobody is obliged to continue.

Entry point · 04

Diagnostic & audit

€1,500 – €3,500

1–2 weeks, fixed price

A fixed-price look at your stack, your data flows, your access sprawl and your GDPR exposure, ending in a plan you can act on with or without us.

what you get

  • Digital operations audit — tools, subscriptions, integrations, what overlaps and what is quietly costing money
  • Data map: where supporter, member and staff data actually lives today, including the copies nobody meant to make
  • Access review — who can see what, and who can still see it after leaving
  • Automation candidates, ranked by hours saved against effort to build
  • GDPR exposure review, including Article 9 special-category handling for political opinions
  • Written report and a walkthrough call, yours to keep

best for Organisations that know something is wrong with their digital operations but cannot yet name it.

note The usual route into a retainer. It also stands alone — plenty of organisations take the report and act on it themselves, which is a legitimate outcome.

Standalone · 05

Build, integrate & migrate

€3,000 – €15,000

3–10 weeks per project

The larger pieces: systems built on top of what you run, integrations between tools that were never meant to meet, and migrations for when you decide to own more of the stack.

what you get

  • Integrations and data pipelines between the tools you already pay for
  • Internal tools on top of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 — the thing the spreadsheet has been pretending to be
  • Supporter CRM setup and data migration — CiviCRM, or an equivalent you can leave with
  • Newsletter and fundraising infrastructure — listmonk, payment integration, consent handling
  • Organisation and campaign websites — Astro, static, fast, EU-hosted
  • Participation platforms — Decidim or Consul, deployed for municipalities, parties and NGOs
  • Migration off US-owned platforms where you want one: staged, costed in advance, and entirely optional
  • Handover documentation written for your staff, not for engineers

best for Organisations replacing spreadsheets, escaping a vendor, or standing up a campaign that starts in weeks.

note Every build can continue as a retainer, and most do, because someone has to keep it running.

Funded · 06

Grant-funded builds

€5,000 – €75,000+

Scoped to the funding call

Open-source tooling built as a funded project, in partnership with your organisation — the work stays public and reusable.

what you get

  • Joint applications to NGI Zero, CERV, Prototype Fund and comparable programmes
  • Technical work packages, budgets and timelines written to survive review
  • Delivery of the build itself, under an open licence
  • Reporting artefacts the funder actually asks for

best for NGOs and networks with a tooling gap that is shared across the sector rather than unique to them.

note Grants fund tools and experiments here — never the running costs of your organisation or ours.

// how_an_engagement_runs

  1. 01

    A call, and a straight answer

    Thirty minutes on what you are trying to do. If Praxis is the wrong fit — too big, too small, or genuinely a job for a product vendor — you get told that on the call, along with who to talk to instead.

  2. 02

    A scoped proposal

    Fixed price, fixed deliverables, named dates. Not an open-ended day rate. If the scope is genuinely unknowable, the proposal is for a diagnostic that makes it knowable.

  3. 03

    Contract and DPA

    A standard contract plus a data processing agreement, signed before any data moves or any account is shared. For political and membership data this is not paperwork — it is the thing that keeps you lawful.

  4. 04

    Build, in the open

    Weekly written updates. Working software you can look at rather than status decks. Changes to scope are priced when they come up, not discovered in the invoice.

  5. 05

    Handover that actually hands over

    Documentation for your staff, credentials in your accounts, code in your repository, automations running inside your own workspace. You can end the relationship and keep everything working. That is the point.

  6. 06

    The ongoing part

    Most organisations continue on a retainer, because the next request is already forming and infrastructure needs someone who knows it. Some take it in-house instead. Both endings are fine, and neither changes the handover — which is what makes choosing freely possible.

// the_stack

why_these →

Two lists, and the order matters. Praxis starts from whatever your organisation is already running — that is where the automation and the access work happen. The second list is where some organisations decide to end up, at their own pace.

// works_with

Where the work starts: what your organisation already runs, already pays for, and already knows how to use. Nothing here has to change for Praxis to be useful.

Google Workspace

Where most of it already lives

Apps Script, Drive and shared-drive permissions, admin console

Microsoft 365

The other half of the sector

Power Automate, SharePoint permissions, Entra ID groups

Sheets / Airtable / Notion

The database pretending not to be one

Kept where it works, replaced only where it has stopped

Your current CRM

Whatever you are already on

Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho — made to work before it is ever replaced

Node / TypeScript

Pipelines & integrations

Where the custom engineering happens

Git

Everything, versioned

Handed over to your organisation, not held hostage

// migrates_towards

Where organisations go when they decide to own more of it — including off US-owned platforms entirely. Staged, costed before anything moves, and optional in every direction: plenty of clients never take this list up, and the retainer works the same either way.

CiviCRM

Supporter & member CRM

Open-source, self-hosted, no per-contact pricing

listmonk

Newsletters at scale

Self-hosted, your sending reputation, your list

Nextcloud / Collabora

Documents & shared drives

The realistic exit from a US-owned office suite, when you want one

Decidim / Consul

Participation platforms

Used by cities and parties across Europe

PostgreSQL

The data underneath

Boring, durable, portable

Astro

Websites & campaign sites

Static output, nothing to exploit at runtime

Hetzner / OVH

EU hosting

Data stays in the EU, under EU law

// what_is_not_on_offer

  • Ad buying, targeting campaigns, or anything that ends in micro-targeted political advertising.
  • Work for organisations whose politics run against the movements Praxis exists to serve.
  • Proprietary systems you cannot export from — every engagement ends with you holding the keys.
  • Connecting an AI tool to your entire workspace because a vendor recommended the integration.
  • Migrations undertaken for ideological tidiness rather than because they solve something.
  • Open-ended day-rate engagements with no defined deliverable.
  • Anything requiring supporter data to leave the EU.

The positive version of that last one — Article 9, the DPA, sub-processors, what happens to your data at handover — is on the trust and GDPR page.

// questions

Do we have to leave Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

No. Almost every organisation in this sector runs on one of them, and Praxis works on top of what you already have — automation, access control, integrations, internal tools. Moving towards open-source, EU-hosted tooling you own is something Praxis can plan and carry out when you want it, staged and costed in advance. It is an option on the table, not a condition of working together.

What does a retainer actually cover?

A named engineer who knows your systems, on a predictable schedule: maintenance and support of what is running, a steady stream of small automations and changes inside the monthly envelope, access reviews, and the fractional tech lead work — vendor choices, architecture calls, reading someone else’s proposal before you sign it. It runs from €500 to €2,000 a month depending on how much infrastructure there is and how fast you need answers, rolling, with a three-month minimum.

Can you help us use AI without giving a vendor access to everything?

That is the point of the AI adoption work. It starts by separating what is genuinely a job for a model from what is a deterministic script somebody mislabelled, then designs least-privilege access — a scoped service account against a named folder rather than a broad OAuth grant over the whole workspace — and ends with a short written AI-usage policy you can put in front of a funder or a board. Pilots come after that, not before.

How much does it cost to automate something?

A scoped automation project runs €1,500 to €6,000 and takes one to four weeks, depending on how many systems have to be touched and how cooperative they are. Inside a retainer, automations come out of the monthly envelope rather than being quoted one at a time, which is why most organisations end up there.

How much does a supporter CRM migration cost?

A CiviCRM setup with data migration sits in the €3,000–15,000 build range, depending on how many systems the data is coming out of and what state it is in. Most first migrations land between €5,000 and €8,000. The price is fixed before work starts, and if the scope genuinely cannot be known yet, the honest answer is a €1,500–3,500 diagnostic that makes it knowable.

How long does a project take?

Praxis runs at three days a week, and every timeline reflects that rather than a full-time fantasy. A diagnostic is two calendar weeks. An automation project is one to four. A €5,000–8,000 build is four to six. Those dates go in the statement of work, so underpromising on speed is the deal rather than a surprise.

Do you work with political parties, or only NGOs?

Both, plus civil society organisations and independent media. The boundary is political rather than sectoral: Praxis works with progressive movements. That is also why a client can hand over supporter data without wondering who else is on the books.

We do not know what we need yet. Where do we start?

With a diagnostic, or with a thirty-minute call that costs nothing. If the call is enough to answer the question, you get the answer and no invoice — including "this is not a job for us, talk to these people instead".

What happens if we stop working with you?

You keep everything and it keeps working. Code in your repository, credentials in your accounts, hosting in your name, automations running inside your own workspace, documentation written for your staff rather than for engineers. Being able to leave is designed in, because lock-in is not a retention strategy here.

Do you work with organisations outside the EU?

The focus is the EU, and any infrastructure Praxis operates runs on EU-hosted, EU-jurisdiction providers. Organisations based elsewhere but operating in the EU, or serving diaspora communities from the EU, are a normal fit. Anything that requires supporter data to be moved outside the EU is not.

// next_step

Not sure which of these you need?

Most organisations are not, and that is what the diagnostic exists for — and if a thirty-minute call is enough to answer it, that call is free.

Get in touchSee the services