HiFive - Bringing Communities Together

Inspiration

Volunteers are the critical backbone of community-based nonprofits. Not only do volunteers help to save money, but they can provide better service to clients, increase contact with the greater community, make available better expertise, and reduce costs of services.

HiFive is a community volunteer mobilization platform designed to help organizations recruit, train, and retain volunteers for initiatives for their community. The platform is uniquely built with organizers and volunteers in mind, powering meaningful collaboration in the communities they serve. The platform partners with local businesses to provide rewards for volunteers that increase traffic and positive brand association for the establishment as well as incentivize volunteering.

What it does

The app fosters an ecosystem of mutual benefit between local businesses, volunteers, and nonprofit organizers.

Volunteers benefit by easily finding and participating in events in their community that match their interests. Through the use of big data, our algorithm matches volunteers with community events that are similar to their past interests.

Organizers benefit by simplifying the logistical workflow of managing an organization dependent on volunteers. Instead of using 5 different applications to schedule and execute events, organizers are able to notify, recruit, schedule, train, and reward volunteers all on the same platform. In addition, through DocuSign’s innovative e-signature platform, organizers are able to keep track of paperwork and liability waivers signed by volunteers.

The businesses benefit by an increase in traffic, interest, and positive brand association within the local community. Rewarding volunteers is a great way for businesses to meaningfully give back to their community while increasing sales and awareness about their establishment.

How I built it

The platform is built using React Native to make its services accessible on all devices, regardless of operating system.

We build the backend in Go and MongoDB, with it being hosted locally and tunneled it to an https server using ngrock.

We built the frontend in React Native, with Storybook.js being used to develop individual UI elements.

We implemented push notifications with Twilio

We implemented data analysis in Python

Challenges I ran into

Our entire team was not familiar with React Native. We struggled the first day implementing basic component UI/UX designs because we couldn’t figure out how to compile it on external devices using Expo. Luckily, Expo had a 9am workshop on the use of snack tool to compile React Native in an online IDE. We were able to design our entire frontend in React Native (with the help of Google) thanks to the folks at Expo.

What I learned

I learned how to better communicate as a team to build a cohesive, Multiplatform software product. In addition, I learned how to work with Expo and React Native.

What's next for HiFive - Bringing Communities Together

HiFive plans to integrate itself into PoS(Point of Sale) systems to make it easier for small businesses to be part our platform. In addition, an in-app messaging system is planning to be implemented.