VolunTech Connect

Dashboard for Admins to Manage Opportunities
GIF
Volunteers can download certificates directly!
Admins can view overall demographics of volunteers, and statistics about their opportunities and attendance

Quick Links

Note that the presentation version of the pitch deck is simply the MP4 obtained when exporting the slides from Canva. It includes all the videos, which makes it easier for the the user to follow along :) We highly recommend you watch that! 😄

Unfortunately, the PDF version does not play the videos, but it does contain links to the product prototype, as well as the user guide, for your reference.

Inspiration

We've always been interested in harnessing tech for good. Naturally, the problem statement by Big At Heart about building a scalable volunteer management system intrigued us :)

Admins at Non-Profit Organisations have to do _a lot of manual work to manage volunteers, create opportunities, track attendance, create certificates, etc. All that takes away time and energy from increasing the reach and impact of their activities. So, we empower them to do what they do best, and we'll handle the rest!

Moreover, volunteers want a simple way to browse through opportunities, sign up for them, and track their personal volunteering history (which would motivate them to continue volunteering!). And this is exactly what we do: make it as easy as possible for volunteers to sign up and start their volunteering journey 🚀

What it does

VolunTech Connect is a platform that helps Non-Profit Organisations such as Big At Heart to effortlessly manage volunteers, create opportunities for volunteers to sign up for, and so much more! 🌟

Say goodbye 👋 to the days of manually managing volunteers and opportunities. VolunTech Connect is here to help you automate and streamline the process. 🚀

You can find our detailed user guide here

Features

The core features can be divided into 2 categories, from the point-of-view of:

an admin and,
a volunteer.

Admin

Create Opportunities
Approve Volunteer Registrations
Archive Opportunities
Delete Opportunities
Manage Volunteers
View Volunteer's Details and History
View Summary Statistics ⭐️

Volunteer

Sign up and Create Profile
Register for Opportunities
View Personal Volunteering History
Download Certificates ⭐️

How we built it

Our tech stack consists of:

Frontend

React
TypeScript
Vite
Material UI

Backend

NestJS
TypeScript
Prisma ORM
MySQL
PlanetScale

In particular, we use Clerk for authentication. Clerk is a third-party service that provides authentication and user management, along with integration with popular identity providers such as Google, Facebook, and more. This means that we never have to worry about the security of our authentication system, and we can focus on building the core features of our application. It also means that we also don't store any passwords in our database, which is a huge security win!

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we were overwhelmed by the number of features our application had to have. We quickly scoped down the project to contain a core set of features, and started working on it. Prioritisation was key.
Understanding the workflow from the point-of-view of the admin as well as the volunteer was always crucial
From a technical standpoint, 2 of the most "complex" features would be to dynamically generate the certificate, and display the report charts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Having a complete set of features by the end of 2 weeks
Learning new technologies along the way

What we learned

How to prioritise features while building a not-so-small application
How to manage academics, doing an internship, and working on this project
(Learning how to center a div :O)

What's next for VolunTech Connect

We hope that this project grows beyond this hackathon, and is actually adopted by Big At Heart!

Also, we're planning to add some more features:

Allow volunteers to write reflections after attending an opportunity
Generate PDF of the report based on the charts (similar to downloading certificates)