BridgeBC

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  logo

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  Our scoring system finding best fit orgs with suggested volunteer team

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  Our scoring system finding good- fit orgs and similar volunteers

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  detail views of any organizations.

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  aggregated view of all positions from all organizations, sortablle by urgency.

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  Our real-time alert system noticing volunteers for new volunteer oportunities

Inspiration

We were inspired by the idea that no one who wants to help should be left out, and no community need should go unmet. Seeing how nonprofits struggle with limited resources while many people are willing to contribute made us realize the real issue is connection. BridgeBC was created to make those connections more meaningful, so people can find where they truly belong and make a difference.

Features

1. Smart volunteer–opportunity matching BridgeBC includes a scoring-based recommendation system that analyzes a volunteer’s skills, interests, availability, language, and experience to recommend nonprofit opportunities that best match their strengths. Instead of browsing through hundreds of postings, volunteers receive ranked recommendations that highlight where they are most likely to make a meaningful impact.

2. Volunteer team suggestions In addition to matching volunteers with organizations, BridgeBC compares volunteers with one another using a similarity scoring system. This allows the platform to suggest groups of volunteers who share similar skills, interests, or availability, helping nonprofits build balanced teams and enabling volunteers to participate alongside people who are a good fit to work with.

3. Real-time opportunity alerts BridgeBC includes a real-time alert system that notifies volunteers as soon as a new opportunity is posted that closely matches their profile. By monitoring new postings and comparing them to volunteer profiles, the system can quickly surface relevant opportunities so volunteers can respond early and organizations can fill urgent roles faster.

How we built it

Frontend: React, Vite, Tailwind CSS Backend: Node.js, Express Database: PostgreSQL API/data flow: REST APIs connecting the React app to the backend and database

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was designing a matching system that could meaningfully compare volunteers with organizations. Volunteers and nonprofits describe their needs and capabilities in many different ways, so we had to normalize and structure fields like skills, languages, and availability to make them comparable. Another challenge was building a scoring system that produced reasonable recommendations without being overly complex. We also had to ensure the backend and database worked smoothly with the frontend so that recommendations, volunteer profiles, and organization data could update and load reliably during the demo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we were able to build a working platform that goes beyond a simple job board. Instead of only listing opportunities, BridgeBC actively recommends organizations to volunteers based on their profiles. We also implemented volunteer similarity matching to help suggest teams of volunteers who might work well together, which adds another layer of value for nonprofits. Bringing together the frontend, backend, and database into a cohesive system that demonstrates these ideas within a limited hackathon timeframe was a major accomplishment for our team.

What we learned

Through building BridgeBC, we learned how important good data structure and normalization are when creating recommendation systems. Small inconsistencies in how data is stored can significantly affect the quality of matches. We also gained experience designing REST APIs and connecting a React frontend to a backend service and database. Beyond the technical side, we learned how to scope a project for a hackathon, focusing on the core features that best demonstrate the idea instead of trying to build everything at once.

What's next for BridgeBC

Next, we want to keep improving how BridgeBC connects volunteers and nonprofits. Right now, our main focus is helping people find stronger matches based on things like skills, interests, availability, and language. In the future, we want to build on that by identifying groups of similar volunteers and using those patterns to suggest even better matches for organizations. We also want to make the platform feel more meaningful by showing the impact volunteers can have in their communities. Our goal is to make BridgeBC a tool that not only improves matching, but also helps people feel more connected to the causes they care about.

Built With

• apis
• express.js
• frontend:-react
• postgresql
• react
• tailwind-css-backend:-node.js
• vite