Volnet: Volunteer Networking App

Inspiration

Our duo came from strong leadership backgrounds in volunteering with Hanah Shih holding a position on the Key Club District Board and Cecilia Pham as the president of Interact Club. Through our experiences, we found it difficult to find volunteer opportunities for our combined 350+ club members. We realized that there was no specific platform that addressed this issue, which inspired us to create Volnet as a way to find these opportunities easily and allow for larger-scale volunteering projects.

What it does

Volnet is a centralized volunteer networking platform, allowing users to find and discover new volunteering events nearby and sign up for them. Nonprofit Organizations, charities, and clubs post these events on the Volnet app, to find volunteers for their events, which otherwise may not have enough available workers. These go on the events and explore page where volunteers can find these opportunities, save them, and attend these events.

How we built it

We created a prototype of the app using Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Although we had our winning idea, we struggled to execute our ideas since we have limited knowledge in ios and android app development as beginning hackers. However, after attending the "Intro to Prototyping" webinar, we learned about Figma and how to use it to showcase what our app would look like and its functionality. Since Figma was so user-friendly, we were able to create the prototype of Volnet.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating a functional demo and prototype of Volnet and bringing it to fruition. We are also proud of the user interface and design of the app, and how our idea of Volnet has the potential to become the next social good networking platform for youths and in local communities.

What we learned

Throughout this weekend, we learned about all the different programs and resources that are available for beginners and ones that allow us to collaborate. We learned how to create a functional prototype of an app using Figma. Beyond technical abilities, we learned how to pitch our projects to others, especially investors with the Contrary pitch workshop and competition.

What's next for Volnet: Volunteer Networking App

In the future, we hope to be able to advance our features in the app, such as adding a year-end wrapped feature where users will be able to see all their analytics of volunteer hours, favorite events, and so on. We also hope to add sponsored promotions for certain companies to put their events first to boost the social image of their company. Lastly, we would like to create an algorithm that allows smarter recommendations for events that involve user interests, career, and past volunteering experiences.

Built With

• figma