Lugredu Foundation Digital Foundation for Sustainable Growth

The Challenge

The Lugredu Foundation was established in 2022 by Lukas Gregor Duraj with a clear mission: to reconnect people with nature and promote active environmental conservation. The non-profit organization focuses on the restoration of traditional orchard meadows, preserving heritage apple varieties, and environmental education programs in the Gießen region of Germany.

As awareness grew and initial planting campaigns gained traction, the foundation faced a critical question: How does a young non-profit organization with a limited budget create a digital presence that builds transparency, educates stakeholders, and attracts supporting members—without getting lost in technical complexities?

The foundation needed more than just a website. They needed a strategic partner who understands that in non-profit projects, every euro counts and every feature must deliver measurable value.

Agile Fixed Price - Budget Security Meets Flexibility

For the Lugredu Foundation, we chose the Agile Fixed Price contract model—a methodology that offers crucial advantages especially for non-profit organizations.

What is Agile Fixed Price?

Unlike traditional fixed-price contracts where requirements are set in stone at the project start, or Time & Material models where costs are difficult to predict, Agile Fixed Price combines the best of both worlds:

• Budget security: Fixed price from the start—no risk of cost overruns
• Flexibility: Requirements can be adjusted during the project
• Business value first: Features are prioritized by business impact
• Transparency: Regular releases make progress visible and tangible

How it worked in practice:

After an initial requirements analysis and user story prioritization, we worked in 2-week sprints. Weekly calls kept us aligned on current status and next steps. Each iteration delivered working software that could go live immediately.

For the Lugredu Foundation, this meant: After just a few weeks, the first version of the website was online. Instead of waiting months for the “big launch,” the foundation could immediately begin informing supporting members and presenting their work.

The continuous dialogue enabled priority adjustments when requirements changed—without renegotiations or additional costs. The foundation paid a fixed price and received maximum business value in return.

Strategic Prioritization - Greatest Value First

The art of Agile Fixed Price lies not only in the process but in strategic prioritization. Together with the founder, we identified the features that would deliver the greatest impact for the foundation:

Phase 1: Build transparency and trust

• Information pages about mission, goals, and approach
• Team introduction with personal connection
• Blog/news system for updates on planting campaigns and projects
• Mobile-first design for optimal usability

Phase 2: Enable member acquisition

• Supporting membership information pages
• Contact forms and calls-to-action

Phase 3: Digitize donations

• PayPal integration for one-time donations
• Subscription system for recurring contributions

Each phase delivered standalone business value. After Phase 1, the foundation could already inform prospects. After Phase 2, they could acquire members. After Phase 3, they could receive donations.

Technical Implementation - Foundation for Sustainable Growth

Next.js - Performance Meets SEO

The decision to use Next.js as the framework was strategic: An environmental foundation needs to be found through search engines. Next.js provides server-side rendering and static generation for optimal SEO performance—while enabling rapid development cycles for iterative releases.

Prismic CMS - Autonomy for the Client

Particularly important to the foundation was the ability to manage content independently. With Prismic as a headless CMS, the team can autonomously publish news articles, update projects, and adjust content—without technical dependencies.

This autonomy wasn’t an afterthought but part of the strategic planning from day one. A non-profit organization needs the flexibility to respond spontaneously to events.

PayPal Integration - The Technical Breakthrough

Implementing donation functionality was a milestone: Both one-time donations and recurring contributions via PayPal subscriptions were integrated.

The technical challenge wasn’t just the integration itself, but the entire workflow:

• Secure payment processing
• Automated confirmation emails
• Transparent presentation for donors
• Subscription management

The result: The first donation subscriptions were successfully set up and received—a concrete, measurable success for the foundation.

Backend Architecture - Solid and Scalable

The technical foundation was built with long-term maintainability in mind:

• Prisma ORM: Type-safe database design for members, donations, and content
• NextAuth: Social login for simplified registration
• API Routes: Custom endpoints for PayPal integration and form handling
• AWS Infrastructure: Deployment and hosting with Pulumi as Infrastructure as Code

The infrastructure needed to remain performant even as the foundation grows—without manual scaling interventions or expensive migrations.

Results - Measurable Impact for the Mission

After approximately two years of project time with pauses and iterative expansions (August 2021 to August 2023), the Lugredu Foundation could rely on a fully functional digital platform:

• Transparency established: Comprehensive information about mission, team, and projects
• Supporting members acquired: The foundation now has 36 supporting members
• Donations digitized: Successful implementation of one-time and recurring donations
• Autonomy achieved: The team manages content independently via Prismic CMS
• Performance delivered: Mobile-first, SEO-optimized website on AWS

But the most important success was different: The foundation could focus on its core mission—planting trees, providing environmental education, connecting people with nature—while the digital infrastructure worked reliably in the background.

What Makes the Difference - Process Over Code

This case study demonstrates a fundamental truth about software development: Anyone can write code. Choosing the right process, setting strategic priorities, and delivering continuous business value—that’s the real challenge.

Agile Fixed Price enabled:

Risk minimization for the client - Unlike the Time & Material model where cost risk lies with the client, Agile Fixed Price offered budget security from the start. For a non-profit organization with a limited budget, this was a deciding factor.

Strategic partnership instead of development service provider - Regular calls and continuous prioritization meant technical decisions were always made in the context of business goals. Not “What’s technically possible?” but “What delivers the greatest value to the foundation?”

Continuous value instead of waterfall - Instead of waiting months for the big launch, the foundation could use its digital presence after the first sprints. Each iteration brought real, measurable progress.

Trust through transparency - The founder particularly appreciated the transparency: In every call, he could see, touch, and understand the current state. No black box, no technical guessing games.

Technical Stack

For those who want to know exactly:

• Frontend: Next.js (React) with TypeScript
• CMS: Prismic (Headless CMS)
• Backend: Next.js API Routes
• Database: Prisma ORM
• Authentication: NextAuth (Social Login)
• Payments: PayPal Integration (One-time + Subscriptions)
• Infrastructure as Code: Pulumi
• Hosting: AWS
• Project Management: Agile Fixed Price with 2-week sprints

The stack is deliberately pragmatic: Modern enough for performance and development velocity, established enough for long-term maintainability.

Conclusion - When Process and Technology Go Hand in Hand

The digital transformation of the Lugredu Foundation proves that the right project management approach is just as important as technical implementation. Agile Fixed Price gave the foundation the security it needed and the flexibility that a growing non-profit project requires.

Today, the Lugredu Foundation plants trees, preserves heritage fruit varieties, and educates people in environmental conservation—with a digital platform that grows as sustainably as their orchard meadows.

Interested in a strategic partnership that combines budget security and flexibility? Let’s talk about Agile Fixed Price and whether it’s right for your project.