Why this exists

Ministry leaders get sold software constantly, and the free alternatives are a maze of half-maintained GitHub repos with no honest signal about which ones are safe to adopt. Refinry exists to close that gap: a daily-updated, evidence-cited public index of open-source projects that a church, ministry, school, mission, or Christian nonprofit could realistically run. Whether you choose software for an organization, serve as a missionary, or build tools for all of the above — with or without technical experience — this index is for you.

Every review is grounded in observable evidence — code, releases, licenses, docs — and every score carries its own caveats on the surface, not buried in a footnote. We flag what we find; when a tool touches sensitive people-data without clear safeguards, we withdraw the review until it’s resolved. The full rubric, formula, confidence handling, provenance, and rule history live on the methodology page.