Background

As a volunteer in the era of COVID-19, it's harder than ever to connect with political campaigns and nonprofit organizations.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of these organizations. Without volunteers, it wouldn't be possible to turn out voters, organize actions, or have an impact on communities.

With fewer in-person activities, it's difficult for campaigns and organizations to engage volunteers. Even beyond the pandemic, more people than ever want to support their favorite causes from across the country and around the world, and still others are prevented from volunteering for accessibility reasons.

The Problem

Campaigns & organizations have tried to solve this problem alone, and as a result, volunteers are faced with a dizzying array of new, digital tools. More time is often spent educating volunteers on how to set up and use technology than how to make an impact.

Not every volunteer is tech-savvy, but digital tools that aren't designed for volunteer organizations require technical knowledge or training. As a result, volunteers become frustrated and leave.

The Solution

We're solving the challenge of volunteering in the digital age by building the first digital volunteer office. 

By organizing onboarding, internal communication, training, and apps in one central hub, we will make it fast and easy for volunteers to connect with campaigns and organizations - and easy for organizers to lead those volunteers.

Our solution will be designed for campaigns initially, but will also support nonprofits, unions, and other types of organizations.

Introducing Shire

Shire will be a web-based software platform, with several important features:

• Social Channels. Shire's chat system will have the power of Slack for tech-savvy users, with the ease-of-use of social media for less experienced volunteers.
• Seamless app launcher. Using single sign-on from Shire, volunteers will be seamlessly signed in and taken to other apps with a single click.
• Super fast onboarding. Volunteers can sign up, share their interests & skills, sign necessary documents, and be connected with a team right away.

Additional features include:

Design

Here are some early product designs! Keep in mind that these are subject to (a lot of!) change.

The Home Page

The Home will highlight the most important information a campaign or organization wants to present - from upcoming events, to social media content, to the volunteer's schedule.

A condensed chat widget will make it easy for volunteers, especially volunteers with less experience using Slack & similar applications - to talk to organizers, ask for help from their team, etc.

Events, threads, and posts can all be dynamically 'promoted' to the home feed from elsewhere in the application.

Chat

The chat system will be designed to be as powerful as Slack for power-users and organizers, complete with advanced views, a desktop client, etc. - but very easy and accessible for non-power users and volunteers.

In 'simple' mode, volunteers will only see what they need to see: Using advanced routing from onboarding & robust permissions, channels are simplified and only what is relevant is displayed.

Events, threads, and content from elsewhere in the ecosystem can be seamlessly shared in the chat. Deeplink buttons will allow people to directly join video calls, go to 3rd-party applications, etc.

Events

The events module will be a clean, lightweight application that is customizable for campaign needs.

Volunteers will see what events they are scheduled for - and events that are more relevant to their interests will be floated to the top of their feed.

Events will contain advanced shift management functionality to highlight which shifts need more volunteers, and give proper visibility & easy confirm processes to organizers.

The Waitlist

We've already attracted attention - some of the largest political campaigns, nonprofit & advocacy organizations in the nation & around the world are already considering adopting Shire once the project is complete. Here are some that expressed interest in joining as early adopters, are a part of the open advisory group, or joined our waitlist.

We are building the future of volunteering. Our project will help countless volunteers & organizers across the country. Please consider making a contribution today.

To see more early designs, background, financial information and more, check out our full pitch deck here.