Rollins Volunteer Fire Department · Rollins, Montana

Software Subscription

A recommendation for grant writing and day-to-day operating efficiency, put to the board as its own decision.

Prepared 22 July 2026 Cost $56 / mo Term monthly, cancel any time

What is being recommended

Board decision

Three seats on Claude, the flagship AI from Anthropic, licensed at nonprofit rates. This is separate from the hardware budget and nothing in that budget depends on it.

Nearly everyone pictures a chat box. This one works on the computer itself.

Ask around and the answer is always the same: AI is a box you type a question into that types an answer back. You still copy the answer out, paste it into the real document, and do the work yourself. That is what most of the public has seen, and it is the smaller half of what this subscription buys.

What most people picture A chat window

You ask, it answers, the work stays yours. Every file goes in by hand, one at a time, and every result gets carried back out the same way.

What is actually included Claude Cowork

You hand it a folder on the department computer. It opens the files in that folder, does the work, and saves the finished results back into it. Nobody retypes anything.

  • It opens the real files Excel workbooks, Word documents, PDFs, scanned run reports. The actual files on the machine, not copies pasted into a chat window.
  • It carries out multi-step work You give it the objective, not the keystrokes. It plans the steps, works through them, and stops to ask only when something is genuinely unclear.
  • It sees only what it is handed Access is granted one folder at a time. Point it at the grant folder and the rest of the computer stays out of reach.
  • It reaches the systems already in use Microsoft 365 and Excel directly, plus anything sitting in a folder synced down from the department's Google Workspace drive.
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Told once: “Go through the scanned run reports in this folder and build a five-year call summary by incident type and response time.”
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It opens every report, pulls the figures, builds the spreadsheet, and leaves it in the folder finished. What that replaces is a volunteer, a stack of paper, and an evening.

What it does for the department

  • Answers questions about the books Reads a multi-tab workbook and traces any figure back to the exact cell it came from.
  • Finds why it will not reconcile Follows dependency chains and debugs formula errors. An evening's work, done in minutes.
  • Fills applications from real data Turns call volume, response times, and equipment history into the figures a grant asks for.
  • Handles the routine writing Meeting minutes, letters, reports, and policy drafts, in a fraction of the volunteer hours.

Every application asks the same questions: how many calls, what type, what response times, what equipment and how old. That data already exists in the department app, and today it gets re-typed by hand by volunteers working evenings. A shared workspace means the reporting is built once and available to everyone who needs it.

The alternative is one volunteer holding all of it

This automation can be built without the subscription, but it would run as code that Shawn writes, hosts, and is the only person able to fix. Every grant cycle would route through one volunteer's availability. The subscription removes that: the treasurer and grant writer work through an ordinary chat interface, in plain language, without touching code or waiting on anyone. The capability without the single point of failure.

$672 Annual cost, all three seats, nonprofit pricing
7.4× Years covered by one $5,000 award
1 Additional successful application justifies the year
$1,428 Saved each year against standard pricing

Seats and cost

Recurring
Treasurer

Works the books inside Excel. Reconciles accounts and pulls the figures applications require.

$8 / mo · Standard
Grant Writer

Drafts and submits applications, pulling call volume, response times, and equipment history from department records.

$8 / mo · Standard
Technical

Builds and maintains the automation feeding app data into applications. Five times the usage of a standard seat.

$40 / mo · Premium
Seat Qty Monthly Twelve months
Standard seat Treasurer · Grant Writer 2 $8.00 $192.00
Premium seat Technical · five times standard usage 1 $40.00 $480.00
If approved $56 / mo  ·  $672 / yr

The nonprofit rate is less than half the standard price. A standard seat lists at $25 a month and a premium seat at $125, which would put these same three seats at $175 a month. The department pays $56 for the identical product and the identical features. Nothing is withheld at the nonprofit rate.

Billed monthly. No contract, no annual commitment. Give it a few months, and if the department is not getting real use out of it, cancel it and the cost stops that month. The board is not locked into the $672. That said, the expectation is the other direction entirely: one additional successful application pays for it many times over, and the treasurer's and grant writer's hours come back either way.

Notes

01
The Excel integration needs a Microsoft 365 subscription. Without one, the treasurer uploads the workbook directly, which needs no Microsoft licence. Both paths are included in the plan.
02
Seats can be added or dropped month to month. The department could start with the two standard seats at $16 and add the premium seat only when the automation work begins.
03
Pricing shown is the nonprofit rate, less than half the standard price. Standard seats list at $25 a month against $8 here, premium at $125 against $40. Both tiers include the full feature set, Claude Cowork included. The premium seat differs only in how much usage it allows before limits apply, not in what it can do.
Hardware is budgeted separately. The office technology purchase is presented in its own document and stands on its own. This recommendation can be approved, deferred, or declined without affecting it.