How Glitter built a citywide street cleaning platform for 1,000+ blocks

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The Problem

Philadelphia-based Glitter started with a simple idea: help neighbors take ownership of keeping their streets clean.

Founder Morgan Berman, then president of her local civic association, had been organizing volunteer cleanups—but she knew the approach wasn’t sustainable or scalable. Her vision was a model where residents could pledge to fund block cleanings, and local workers would be paid fairly and held accountable to do the job.

The model quickly gained traction, but the system behind it proved challenging. Adding a new city block to Glitter’s website meant manually collecting pledges, creating a new page, uploading images, and managing updates by hand. It took hours each week just to keep the site current, and the lack of visibility made it harder to build trust and onboard new neighbors. 

“There was no good way to present data to people in an interactive way,” said Tim LaRosee, Glitter’s program manager. “It was all static. Customers had to email us to update anything. We were buried in support requests, and we couldn’t focus on the product.”

The team migrated to Airtable to centralize their subscriber and block data, but they still lacked a frontend that felt modern and easy for residents to use. Airtable Interface Designer didn’t offer the branding or interactivity they needed, and custom development was too slow and expensive.

They needed a tool that could:

• Build directly on top of Airtable data (their source of truth)
• Be managed entirely in-house, without a steep learning curve
• Give residents a way to log in, manage their pledges, and see real-time updates for block status and funding

The Solution

The Glitter team discovered Softr through online creators. Within days of testing it themselves, they had a working proof of concept—and over the next six months, they launched a fully functional platform without custom code.

At the heart of the system is the Glitter Members Hub, where neighbors can see who else has pledged on their block, check cleaning status, and manage their own contributions.

The platform includes:

• Templatized city block pages: Instead of manually creating new pages, a single template dynamically pulls in Airtable data for all 1,000+ city blocks on Glitter’s platform, including block details, pledge totals, and cleaning service status.
  
• Resident self-service tools: Neighbors can log in, adjust their pledges, update billing details (via a Stripe integration), and view their contribution history. Softr’s secure user permissions ensure residents can only access their own pledge and billing data, protecting privacy while keeping the experience personalized.
  
• A polished, branded experience: The hub looks and acts like a custom-built app: mobile-friendly, clean, and easy to use. Team members even demo it on their phones during field visits.

Because the backend (Airtable) and frontend (Softr) were built in parallel, the team could move fast and adapt quickly. Any changes to the data instantly updated the frontend, creating a smooth experience for both users and staff.

The Impact

Since launching in 2021, Glitter has grown from cleaning 30 city blocks in its first quarter to over 1,000, including neighbor and grant-funded blocks.

This growth wouldn’t have been possible without the operational gains Softr enabled:

• Block pages that once took hours to build now launch instantly 
• Changes made to the block page template are applied instantly across all 1,000+ pages, saving hours of manual updates
• Residents can self-serve to manage their accounts, reducing support tickets and freeing up staff time
• The team can now onboard new neighborhoods quickly and at scale

The improved user experience has also helped drive word-of-mouth growth.

“A lot of folks are remarking on how intuitive the platform is, how easy it is, how attractive it is,” said Brandon Pousley, Glitter's CEO. “People see the real-time status of their blocks and feel more confident sharing the platform with others.”

Glitter plans to expand its neighbor-funded model beyond cleanups into services like sidewalk repair, food distribution, lighting, and tree planting.

“People were giving up on the city,” Morgan said. “We wanted to build something that made them feel like their block was worth fighting for—and Softr helped us do that.”