Connect@Heart

submitted for NUS DSC's Hack-for-Good Hackathon

Problem Statement: Develop a cost-effective system for volunteers to enroll, manage activities, and request certificates, while enabling nonprofit administrators to efficiently handle forms, attendance, and generate detailed reports.

Our Solution: Connect@Heart is a comprehensive volunteer management platform designed with the mission to streamline and enhance the interaction between volunteers and the non-profit organization, Big at Heart. With Connect@Heart, volunteers gain access to a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of finding meaningful opportunities, managing schedules, and tracking their contributions effectively. Meanwhile, Big at Heart benefits from a robust set of tools that enable them to recruit, coordinate, and communicate with volunteers effortlessly. With this app, we endeavor to bring about a seamless and frictionless user experience, which we hope may greatly contribute to connecting registered volunteers in their activities and provide value to the community.

Current problems

Volunteering is a meaningful and rewarding way to contribute to society and make a positive impact. However, many volunteers and NPOs face challenges in managing their volunteering activities, such as:

Volunteers have to deal with clunky and outdated platforms that make it hard to find and book suitable volunteering opportunities, track their hours, and request certifications.
NPOs have limited manpower and budget to handle administrative tasks such as creating and updating forms, managing attendance, and generating reports.

Our Solution

Connect@Heart is designed to solve these problems by offering the following features:

A familiar and user-friendly interface that allows volunteers to browse and book volunteering opportunities based on their preferences, location, and availability.
A dashboard that shows volunteers their past and upcoming activities, as well as their total hours.
A checking attendance system that enables volunteers to check in and out of their activities, and automatically updates their hours and attendance.
A one-tap request for certifications that verifies their volunteering hours and skills, and can be shared with employers, schools, or other organizations.
A web-based platform that allows Big at Heart to easily create and edit forms, manage volunteers and activities, and generate detailed reports and insights.

How to use

To use Connect@Heart, you need to register as either a volunteer or admin of Big at Heart. You can do so by clicking on the “Sign up” button on the homepage and filling in the required information.

As a volunteer

Before registration, the user is displayed the explore page, where they can register a new account or log in to their already-existing account.

Once they are registered as a volunteer, they can:

Browse and book volunteering opportunities by clicking on the “Explore” tab and filtering by category, date, location, or keyword.
View their past and current activities by clicking on the “Activity” tab and scrolling through the list.
Submit feedback and reflection for each activity by clicking on the “Feedback” button in the information page of each activity.
Check in and out of their activities by scanning the QR code provided by the NPO/activity coordinator at the start and end of each volunteering session/event/activity.
Request certifications for their volunteering hours and skills by clicking on the “Certificate”button in the “Past Activities”.
A “Certificates”section displays each user's past volunteering activities.

As the NPO

The administration of Big at Heart only requires signing-in to the app, as their data is already integrated into the database by the admin of the server.

Certain features allow the NPO to:

Create forms for your volunteering opportunities by clicking on the “Manage” tab and choosing the “Create Activity” option.
Approve certificate applications by selecting “Certificate Requests”and choose “Approve”or “Reject”for each application. If a certificate is approved, the NPO must provide the certificate by uploading a PDF file containing the certificate.

Upcoming Features

As this is currently a prototype version, we have certain features we would love to incorporate in this app:

Admins can generate reports for each volunteering activity. Such reports may include the details, status, and attendance of each volunteer or activity.
Admins can edit forms and edit details for each volunteering activity.
Implement AI functionality to visualize data of volunteers and volunteering activities.