As members and leaders of nonprofits, we have always noticed the necessity of the support of people from diverse fields to ensure our success. While there are a wealth of talented people looking to impact the world with their skills and experience, nonprofits cannot always find the right people for their needs. Introducing VolunteerIN, an intelligent volunteer marketplace that empowers nonprofit organizations to "shop" for volunteers across various industries and skill sets.
VolunteerIN is a full-stack web application that matches volunteers with specific skill sets to nonprofit organizations that need support in specific industries (i.e., a software engineer could get matched to a nonprofit that needs technology support). We take a nonprofit-centric approach by enabling nonprofits to specify their needs and empowering them to choose volunteers that would be the best fit for them. In doing so, we assist nonprofits in precise recruitment while allowing people to leverage the full extent of their skills for the greater good of humanity.
VolunteerIN was built via a rigorous and thorough process to ensure the most robust and high-quality software possible, from design to testing. To develop VolunteerIN, we used the following tools and frameworks:
- Figma: Prototyping, Designing, and Wireframing
- React.js: Frontend Logic
- Next.js: Routing, Server Side Rendering + Logic
- CSS: Styling
- Firebase: Authentication
- MongoDB: Database
- Nodemailer + Zoho Mail: Email Operations
Orchestrating the development of such an extensive full-stack web application with a diverse tech stack has its challenges. Here are a couple of the challenges we faced:
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Frontend / Backend Coordination: To create a smooth development process and ensure all of our members were on the same page, we needed coordination between the frontend and backend teams. Initially, when starting development, our frontend and backend teams developed independently; however, after some discussion (and confusion), we decided it would be best to determine a unified schema system for our data models. By taking a step back and adding additional planning to our process, we ensured a better development experience and product overall.
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Technical Knowledge: We wanted to take this project on as an opportunity to experiment and integrate with new technology stacks. In doing so, a large portion of the hackathon was spent learning and debugging our code to ensure it worked as intended. For example, this project was the first time we used custom HTML mailing templates with Nodemailer and Zoho mail. As a result, we had the chance to learn a wide variety of new technology while making ourselves more resilient developers and creators.
Building VolunteerIN in 36 hours was no easy feat, especially considering that we wrote over 3,000 lines of code together! One aspect of this project we are incredibly proud of was the extensiveness and overall quality of the work we created. Despite not having a team member specialized in every area of the full-stack development process, we were willing to learn and create an incredible product. For example, while none of us were exceptionally skilled at UI/UX design, we based our designs on our intuition for what looked "good" and, as a result, were able to create modernesque designs that looked like graphic designers created them with years of experience. We believe this willingness to go beyond our limits has made us a special team that was able to create something noteworthy.
Saying this project was a learning experience would be an understatement. By pursuing VolunteerIN, we experienced a multifaceted and diverse development lifecycle. More than just the physical project itself, we learned what it means to communicate well, be good teammates, and develop our general interpersonal skills. From learning new technology stacks to gaining a better understanding of how developers collaborate in teams, this project served as a foundational step for us to create even bigger and better projects in the future.
We believe VolunteerIN is an idea worth pursuing because it genuinely acts as a facilitator for the greater social good in the world. With this in mind, we plan on expanding VolunteerIN and applying advanced recommendation-based machine learning models to cater volunteer recommendations to organizations better. We also hope to expand the member base by onboarding additional nonprofit organizations and individuals passionate about social good. In doing this, we hope to maximize the social impact of VolunteerIN and ultimately lead to a better world.