Charities and foundations fund the studies their supporters care about, and then need to know the money produced trustworthy data. Capture gives funded teams and in-house research programmes a single study platform with Part 11-aligned controls, so reports to trustees come from the same record the regulator would inspect.
Free sandbox · No credit card · 21 CFR Part 11 aligned
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Free sandbox
What charities and foundations should look for
Roles
Most medical research charities fund work rather than conduct it. They run a competitive grant round, award money to an investigator at a university or hospital, and receive progress reports. In that arrangement the institution is usually the legal sponsor of the study, and Good Clinical Practice duties sit with the sponsor and the investigators. Some foundations go further and run studies themselves or commission them, in which case the foundation takes on sponsor duties and needs a system that stands up to inspection. The difference matters when choosing software, because the person who has to use it daily is the study coordinator, while the person who needs the summary is a programme manager reading a quarterly report.
For a funder, the risk is not that a study fails; failure is expected in research. The risk is that a study ends without usable data: eligibility was judged inconsistently, values were overwritten without a record, or the dataset cannot be reconstructed. A shared platform reduces that risk. When every funded team captures data in a system with a field-level audit trail, a data dictionary and queries, the foundation can ask for the same standard from each one without dictating how the science is done.
Capture is a self-serve platform, so a funded team can start without an enterprise sales process. The study is built in the free sandbox, tested with fake participants, and only then moved live. That order is helpful for charities because the build and test work can be done during the grant application or the ethics wait, before any spending on a live system. Capture does not currently advertise a nonprofit price, so use the pricing page for plans and discuss any specific need in a demo.
Applicants usually need a line for data management. The EDC budget line item for grant proposals page shows what to include, and the EDC cost calculator gives a first planning figure from your own study size.
What the funded team needs
Investigator-initiated studies are the typical charity grant: a single or few sites, a few hundred participants at most, a research nurse who also runs clinics. The workflow is well covered by the investigator-initiated trial EDC and academic clinical trial EDC pages. The essentials are a case report form built from the protocol, edit checks that catch implausible values at entry, auto-queries when a rule is broken, and electronic signatures on completed forms.
Participants can be reached through eConsent and ePRO without installing an app. This matters to charities with patient communities, because their supporters often want to take part and may live far from the study site. Questionnaire and consent text are written by the study team; the platform handles delivery, reminders and storage.
When the study finishes, the dataset needs to go somewhere. CSV and Excel exports come with an automatic data dictionary, and CDISC SDTM datasets can be exported as SAS XPT with Define-XML if the work is headed for a regulatory submission or a data repository the funder requires. See CDISC SDTM export software.
Need to build
| What the funder or team needs | What it looks like | Where it lives in Capture |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence the data is reliable | Who entered, changed or signed each value | Field-level audit trail; audit trail software |
| Fewer entry errors | Range checks, skip logic, calculated fields | eCRF builder with edit checks and auto-queries; ecrf |
| Participant consent at a distance | Signed, hashed, countersigned consent | eConsent |
| Progress reporting | Enrolment, completion and open queries by site | Status and compliance views; by-site filtering |
| Safety oversight | Adverse events and serious events | AE form and SAE report form |
| Data hand-off | Dictionary plus dataset for repositories or regulators | CSV, Excel, SDTM export |
| Plan the cost | A figure for the grant application | EDC cost calculator and pricing |
Capture does not offer a funder or nonprofit discount. Plans are described on the pricing page.
Funded teams can build their study, test the forms and rehearse consent in the free sandbox, no credit card. Book a demo if you want to walk a programme team through it first.
Oversight without micromanaging
Not every funded study needs the monitoring of a registration trial. Risk-based monitoring means the amount of oversight matches what could go wrong for participants and for the reliability of the results. Source data verification can be set per field in Capture, so a monitor checks the fields that matter for eligibility, safety and the primary endpoint rather than every box. The risk-based monitoring and SDV page describes the approach, and the monitoring visit report template gives a record to keep.
Safety reporting is the area where a charity’s name is most exposed. Adverse events are captured with severity, seriousness and relationship as separate answers, and serious events follow their own form. The study team still decides what is reportable and to whom, in line with the protocol and the ethics approval; the software provides the structure and the timestamps. See adverse event reporting software.
For the ethics submission, Capture exports a blank eCRF PDF with a cover page, a form index and a visit-by-form matrix, so the committee can see exactly what will be collected. That document also helps a funder review panel judge whether a data collection plan is proportionate.
Programme patterns
Each funded team builds its own study. The charity recommends the platform and asks for the audit trail and dictionary at the end of the award.
Read more SponsorThe charity employs a research manager and acts as sponsor of a small registry or pilot trial with academic partners.
Read more CommunitySupporters enrol through a link or QR code and report outcomes between clinic visits.
Read moreBefore the award
The legal sponsor and the data controller are named.
A short data management plan; the template works as a start.
The team has run fake participants through the sandbox.
Enrolment, retention and safety figures the funder wants each quarter.
Dataset and dictionary delivered to the format the funder or repository expects.
Often not. Many charities fund a university or hospital team, and that institution is the sponsor. Some charities act as sponsor for studies they run or commission. Check the award terms and your local regulation; this is not legal advice.
No discount is advertised. The sandbox is free with every feature, and you pay only when a study goes live with real participants. See the pricing page for plans.
Yes. Capture is self-serve: sign up, build the study or upload a protocol for an AI draft, test free, then go live. No enterprise sales call is required to start.
Anyone with the right role can view enrolment, completion and query status, and filter by site. Access is role-based, and coded IDs hide participant names from researchers.
Capture provides 21 CFR Part 11-aligned controls: audit trail, electronic signatures and role-based access. Compliance depends on the sponsor’s validated use of the system.
Keep exploring
Try every feature in the free sandbox. No credit card, and you pay only when a study goes live.