About Empathy Works
We're a software firm with one focus: the certifications, assessments, and standards that make an association the authority in its field. We've spent years building exactly this kind of system — so rather than do a little of everything, we've chosen to do this one thing well.
Why we focus on associations
Empathy Works started, in 2017, as a general-purpose software consultancy. We built a lot of different things for a lot of different people — and along the way, the work that kept finding us was the hardest and most particular kind: the programs that make an organization an authority. The certification that says a building meets a standard. The assessment that turns deep expertise into a repeatable product. The submission tool that turns a published standard into clean, usable data.
We built that work for years — for the Green Building Initiative, for JLL, and for others — and we got good at it. Good enough to realize it deserved our whole attention. So we narrowed. Today we build for associations and the organizations that act like them: groups that don't just manage members, but lead a field by setting and upholding the standards of it.
A focused firm is a more useful partner than a generalist one. When you've built the same kind of system a dozen times, you stop discovering the hard parts on your client's budget — you already know where the spreadsheets break, where the manual review eats your team's week, and where the data needs to go next. That's the difference we're choosing to be.
The empathy in Empathy Works
The name isn't a slogan about being nice. It's about understanding the work from the inside.
We didn't arrive at this from a whiteboard. We've spent years in the unglamorous, essential machinery of real programs — helping define what makes a building sustainable, what makes it resilient, what makes a workplace a good place to be. We know this work because we've done it: the spreadsheet wrangling, the manual reviews, the standards trapped in PDFs, the members who never submit data the same way twice, the assessor leaving feedback on version eleven of a submission.
That experience is what lets us build software that fits the work instead of fighting it. We understand the shape of an assessment that takes days and a dozen contributors, the politics of a certification that has to be applied consistently every time, the relief of a member who finally has one login instead of six. We build for the people doing that work because we've been in their seat — and that's the empathy in Empathy Works.
How we work
A handful of principles, earned over years of building software, shape every project we take on.
Planning is the most important step
The most important step in the creation process comes before the code. We routinely spend more than half a project in planning.
Launch early and keep costs low
Big projects get broken into smaller, manageable chunks — so you have a usable tool at the end of every step, not a bill for features you'll never use.
Measure your data and iterate on it
The web offers a unique chance to understand how people actually use what you build. We design to take advantage of it.
Use third-party tools whenever possible
The most expensive solution is always custom code. Where an existing tool will do the job, we use it.
Design is more than a visual thing
Purpose, flow, and intent matter more than polish. We design around what a thing does before how it looks.
Don't make your clients hostages
We build on mature technology and leave guidance for whoever comes next — so you're never trapped by the people who built your software.
Think we might be the right partner for your program? Let's talk.
Tell us about your certification, your standard, or your members, and we'll walk through where we can help.
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