Product Designer
ROLE
1 PM
1 EM
2 Designers
5 Developers
TEAM
January - April 2025
16 weeks
TIMELINE
TOOLS/SKILLS
Figma, FigJam, Notion, Adobe Creative Suite; UX Research, Developer Collaboration, Scalable Design, Client Project
OVERVIEW
AARF & ZAMI NOBLA exist to support their communities — so why are they buried in disconnected tools?
AARF (Atlanta Animal Rescue Friends) and ZAMI NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging) are Atlanta-based nonprofits dedicated to strengthening their communities through care, advocacy, and connection. For over 20 years, AARF has supported cat adoptions across Atlanta through a volunteer-driven model, while ZAMI NOBLA builds power for Black lesbians aged 40+ through community engagement and support.
Problem Space
Currently, AARF and ZAMI NOBLA rely on a collection of manual tools to manage volunteers and members. However, as both organizations continue to grow, how can we design a centralized platform that supports distinct user groups while reducing time spent on repetitive administrative work?
Solution & Impact
An expanded, role-based nonprofit management platform that enables administrators to automate events, tracking, and communication, while giving volunteers and members a clear, centralized place to stay engaged with their organizations.
USER RESEARCH
Understanding nonprofit workflows through 1:1 administrator and volunteer interviews
To ground our design decisions in real organizational needs, we conducted 1:1 interviews with 8 administrators and active volunteers from both AARF and ZAMI NOBLA. These conversations focused on understanding day-to-day workflows, pain points with existing tools, and places where time and effort were being lost.
AARF
"Right now, everything lives on paper (sign-ups, hours, tasks) and I spend hours every month transferring it just to generate reports."
"If someone cancels last minute, I usually have to cover the shift myself because there’s no easy way to fill the gap."
"We need a system that just tracks hours and tasks automatically so we can focus on the cats."
Administrators
Administrators spend approximately 5 hours each month transferring this information into spreadsheets to generate required reports. With 86 volunteers and daily shifts that must be covered, even a single last-minute cancellation creates significant strain.
Volunteers
Volunteers wanted a simpler way to sign up for shifts and communicate availability changes without relying on informal or last-minute messaging. They also valued clarity around expected tasks for each shift, especially when signing up for fundraisers or special events.
ZAMI NOBLA
"Renewals, welcome emails, and reminders are all manual right now, which takes a lot of time."
"Member information is spread across spreadsheets, email groups, and different platforms. It’s hard to keep everything consistent."
"Most updates come through emails or social media, and it’s easy to miss important information."
Administrators
ZAMI NOBLA administrators described managing memberships across multiple platforms as inefficient and difficult to maintain, particularly when tracking renewals, onboarding new members, and segmenting communications by chapter. They highlighted automation — especially for renewals, approvals, and welcome emails — as a top priority.
Members
Members wanted a centralized place to access organizational information, receive announcements, and understand their membership status without searching through emails or external platforms. They also expressed interest in feeling more connected to the organization through clearer onboarding and consistent communication.
While the interviews surfaced distinct needs across both nonprofits, they also revealed a consistent theme: these workflows could not be supported by VolunTrack’s existing features.
However, meeting these needs required more than surface-level UI changes. We conducted a feature-level analysis of VolunTrack to assess how its current architecture, permissions model, and workflows aligned — or failed to align — with the requirements uncovered in research.
EXISTING PLATFORM BREAKDOWN
The existing VolunTrack platform was not designed to scale to complex user needs.
The existing VolunTrack platform was originally built to support a single nonprofit with a narrow volunteer workflow. While functional for basic event sign-ups and basic participation tracking, its structure did not account for role-based permissions, approval states, or organization-specific customization. The following screens highlight where core workflows broke down for both administrators and volunteers/members.
Administrator View:
Limited Control & Automation
From an administrator perspective, the platform lacked the tools needed to manage operations at scale. Event creation was manual and one-off, with no support for recurring events, task differentiation, or approval workflows. Administrators also had limited visibility into registration activity, relying on external communication to track changes or cancellations.
What worked:
Centralized event creation and volunteer sign-ups
Basic visibility into who registered for events
What needed to evolve:
Support for recurring and templated events
Task-level selection within registrations
Event approval and moderation workflows
Automated notifications for registration changes
Volunteer & Member View:
Passive & Fragmented Experience
For volunteers and members, VolunTrack functioned primarily as a static listing interface. Users could view and register for opportunities, but had little context about the organization, limited feedback after registration, and no centralized place to receive updates or connect with others.
What worked:
Easy-to-understand event listings
Low barrier to registration
What needed to evolve:
Visibility into registration or approval status
Organization context and onboarding information
Centralized notifications and updates
Member discovery and connections
IDEATION & PLANNING
Feature mapping helped us move from qualitative insights to concrete product decisions.
To manage two nonprofits with distinct workflows on a shared platform, we created a feature map that organized requirements by user role, permission level, and organizational context. This artifact served as a systems-level blueprint for aligning research insights with feasible product scope.
DESIGN PROCESS
Prioritizing high-impact, feasible features and designs.
Rather than redesigning from scratch, we adapted current patterns to support new workflows for event management, approvals, notifications, and membership management.
Administrators
EXPANDED FEATURE
Reorganized event form to prioritize scheduling, recurrence, and task configuration
Introduced a recurring event workflow that auto-populates the calendar
Added task creation within events to support task-level volunteer sign-ups
This expansion reduces administrative overhead for recurring volunteer shifts, improves clarity around volunteer responsibilities, and enables downstream features like task-based registration and approval workflows.
Administrators
NEW FEATURE
Introduced a centralized portal for reviewing volunteer registrations
Added approval and denial states to event registrations
Enabled admins to manage participation before events are finalized
This feature allows nonprofits to better prepare for shifts, respond to unforeseen circumstances, and ensure volunteers are appropriately assigned without relying on manual follow-ups or external tools.
Volunteers
EXPANDED FEATURE
Reduced navigation between disconnected views
Surfaced key event information at the point of registration
Combining these screens minimizes cognitive load, reduces errors caused by missing context, and streamlines both administrative oversight and volunteer sign-up flows.
Volunteers
EXPANDED FEATURE
Reorganized content to prioritize current engagement before historical data
Reduced navigation and duplicated information across screens
This consolidation improves visibility into volunteer progress, lowers navigation overhead, and creates a clearer mental model of how volunteering activity is tracked over time.
Volunteers
EXPANDED FEATURE
Enabled faster access to participation history within the calendar
Reduced visual clutter by narrowing event visibility
Time filters help volunteers understand their history and plan future involvement more efficiently, supporting clearer mental models around progress and availability.
Administrators
NEW FEATURE
Organization-scoped About page creation that can be enabled or disabled by administrators
Rich content editing with support for styled text and embedded media (images and video)
Allows admins to update or reorder content without affecting platform-wide layouts
This feature strengthens organizational identity within VolunTrack and ensures members and volunteers have access to accurate, up-to-date information in one place.
Administrators
NEW FEATURE
Application builder that supports custom titles, sections, and multiple question types
Organization-scoped application forms that can be enabled or disabled per organization
Structured storage of application responses for administrator review and decision-making
This feature allows nonprofits to tailor onboarding to their specific requirements while reducing manual follow-ups and off-platform data collection.
Administrators
NEW FEATURE
Centralized portal for reviewing pending volunteer or member applications
Detailed application view that surfaces all submitted responses in a structured format
Approval and denial actions that gate user access to organization-specific features
By centralizing application review and surfacing responses in context, administrators can make faster, more informed approval decisions while maintaining consistent onboarding standards.
Administrators
NEW FEATURE
Creation and scheduling of single or recurring notifications with custom delivery times
Centralized notification history showing scheduled and previously sent messages
Configurable birthday notifications that can be enabled or disabled with a custom message
This feature consolidates communication workflows into the platform, reducing reliance on external tools while giving administrators greater control and visibility into member outreach.
Volunteers
NEW FEATURE
Organization-scoped About page creation that can be enabled or disabled by administrators
Rich content editing with support for styled text and embedded media (images and video)
Allows admins to update or reorder content without affecting platform-wide layouts
Centralized notifications ensure important communications are visible and retrievable within the platform, reducing missed messages and dependence on email or text alone.
Volunteers
NEW FEATURE
Explicit opt-in consent flow that controls whether a user’s profile appears in the directory
Filterable directory view that allows users to narrow results by member attributes
Ability to pin and save favorite profiles for quick access across sessions
This feature enables community-building while respecting user privacy, allowing organizations to encourage connection without exposing member information by default.
USABILITY TESTING
We conducted moderated, task-based assessments with admins and volunteers from each nonprofit.
Administrator Tasks
Create a new event with a recurring schedule and multiple tasks.
Review and approve a pending volunteer registration.
Create a custom volunteer application.
Review a submitted volunteer application and approve or deny them.
Create a scheduled notification and view it in the notification history.
Enable and customize birthday notifications.
Edit the organization’s About page.
Volunteer Tasks
Create an account and complete the required volunteer application.
Browse available events and register for and event with a task.
View the status of a pending or approved event registration.
Review upcoming events and past participation.
Filter the event calendar to view only past or upcoming events.
Review recent notifications from the organization.
Browse the Volunteer Directory, filter profiles, and pin a profile.
To clearly distinguish interactive elements from static text, we standardized the link styling, added hover and focus states, and reduced the use of colored text for non-clickable content.
We included an explicit success confirmation state, such as a confirmation message, updated button states, and immediate reflection of the registration in the user’s event status.
SHIPPED DESIGNS
FINAL PRODUCT FEATURES
VOLUNTEERS
Personalized Onboarding
Volunteers are guided through account setup with organization-specific context, including required applications and opt-in preferences, ensuring access is tailored before they enter the platform.
Centralized Communication
Volunteers receive timely, organization-driven updates in one place through scheduled and recurring notifications, reducing reliance on external tools and missed information.
Event Discovery & Registration
Volunteers can browse upcoming and past events, filter by time, review detailed event information, select tasks, and register with clear confirmation of participation.
ADMINISTRATORS
Custom Configurations
Administrators can tailor the platform to their organization by creating events, forms, and informational pages, allowing workflows and content to reflect their specific operational needs.
Approval Systems
Administrators review and manage event registrations and member applications through centralized approval portals, maintaining oversight while supporting controlled access to programs and events.
Notifications Management
Administrators can create, schedule, and manage one-time or recurring notifications—including automated birthday messages—to communicate with volunteers and members at scale.
IMPACT & NEXT STEPS
We deployed the updated VolunTrack platform for both AARF and ZAMI NOBLA.
The deployed features extend VolunTrack’s core data models, permissioning, and workflow logic to support multiple nonprofit use cases within a single platform. These updates provide a stable foundation for Bits of Good to develop VolunTrack 3.0, where future teams will expand the platform's customization and configuration capabilities.
Reflections & Takeaways
Scalability Comes From Shared Foundations
Designing for two nonprofits revealed that scalability isn’t about adding more features, it’s about creating flexible foundations that multiple organizations can adapt without changing the core system.
Research Clarifies Tradeoffs
User interviews didn’t just surface pain points, they helped clarify where the platform needed to prioritize flexibility over simplicity, and automation over manual control, guiding more intentional design decisions.
Clear Feedback Builds User Trust
Small moments of feedback (like confirmations, states, and consistent patterns) had a positive impact on user confidence, reinforcing that usability is as much about system transparency as it is about interface design.
This project reminded me how much strong design depends on collaboration and trust. Working closely with designers, engineers, and nonprofit partners pushed me to communicate more clearly, stay open to feedback, and design with real constraints in mind. Watching our ideas turn into features that organizations could actually rely on was especially meaningful, and it reinforced why I care about building thoughtful, people-centered systems with others.