Bridge

Inspiration

Bridge was inspired by a real gap in BC's nonprofit sector: organizations need people, but the process of finding, organizing, and contacting volunteers is often fragmented, manual, and time-consuming. Many nonprofit teams are small, overstretched, and working without dedicated IT support, so even when willing volunteers exist, the coordination burden can slow everything down.

We wanted to design something that felt practical for the people actually doing this work day to day. Instead of building a complicated platform, we focused on a lightweight tool that helps nonprofits collect volunteer information, understand volunteer skills more quickly, and reach out to the right people from one place.

What it does

Bridge gives nonprofit staff a simple workflow for volunteer coordination.

Volunteers can create a profile by entering a few basic details and uploading a resume. The system then reads that resume to infer useful context such as skills, location, and availability.

Managers can describe the kind of help they need in plain language, review suggested volunteers, generate outreach drafts, and send messages without switching between multiple tools.

How we built it

We built Bridge as a web application using React and TypeScript for the frontend, with Supabase powering the backend, database, and serverless functions.

The workflow includes:

• a volunteer intake flow for profile creation
• resume parsing to enrich volunteer records
• a manager workspace for entering volunteer requests
• AI-assisted outreach draft generation
• email sending for matched volunteers

We focused heavily on keeping the interface clean, clear, and usable for nonprofit staff who may be working with limited time, limited onboarding, and older equipment.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was balancing capability with simplicity. It is easy to add more fields, more controls, and more admin features, but that would make the product harder to use for the exact organizations we wanted to support.

We also tried to integrate LinkedIn but faced too many challenges with their restrictions so opted to use resume parsing instead.

Another challenge was making AI useful without making the experience feel generic or overcomplicated. We had to think carefully about where AI actually helps, such as turning resumes into structured information and drafting outreach, while still keeping human review and control in the process.

We also spent time refining the interface so it felt more thoughtful and more credible for an SAP-related case study. That meant removing unnecessary visual clutter, improving hierarchy, and making the product feel more like a practical operational tool than a concept demo.

What we learned

This project reinforced that good technology for nonprofits is not just about powerful features. It is about reducing friction. The strongest solution is often the one that asks the least from the user while still helping them move work forward.

We also learned how important it is to connect product decisions back to real operational constraints: accessibility, sustainability, trust, and limited staff capacity. Building for that environment requires clarity, restraint, and a strong focus on the core workflow.

What’s next

Next steps for Bridge is to incorporate LinkedIn and include stronger trust and safety workflows, multilingual support, better volunteer preferences, and deeper integrations with nonprofit operations tools. But the core idea would stay the same: help nonprofit teams find and support the people they need with as little administrative overhead as possible.

Built With

• css
• gemini
• mammoth
• pdf.js
• postgresql
• react
• resend
• typescript
• vite