Volunteer Skill Share

CST499-30_SU19: Directed Group Capstone

Christopher Buckey

Patrick Gonzalez

Christopher Holmes

Michael Loeser

2019
 Volunteer Skill Share 1

Executive Summary

Nonprofit organizations have never been as necessary as they are now. With the current

climate of changing regulations, push to cut costs, and the complexities of promoting and

seeking donations, organizations today have many challenges in fulfilling their stated mission.

The growing need in the corporate market for people with specific skills adds pressure and raises

the cost for nonprofit organizations, making it more difficult than ever to find people to fill skills

gaps in their own teams.

Nonprofit organizations are limited to using job boards that don’t cater to a volunteer

market or word of mouth introductions to find volunteers with the skills they need. This adds

additional tasks and another layer of confusion to their agenda. Similarly, volunteers have a

difficult time sifting through many organizations to find one that fits their needs and has projects

where they can apply their skills and experience. The need for a platform to help both parties is

evident due to the number of volunteers and organizations that are out there.

Team Betawares’ Capstone project is to build a web-based application, called Volunteer

Skill Share, that allows volunteers with specific skills and experience to find opportunities and

match with non-profit organizations that have project needs aligned with those skills. The

purpose of this project is to allow non-profit organizations and volunteers to find each other in a

controlled environment. The target audience of this project spans both individuals who are

seeking to provide services to their community and nonprofit organizations that impact the

community in a social or political way. Our team will provide a website that offers a mix of job

board and matchmaking service allowing potential volunteers to assist non-profit organizations

that require specific skills and experience for volunteer projects.

Volunteer Skill Share 2

Table of Contents

I. Part I

A. Introduction

B. Project Goals and Objectives

C. Environmental Scan/Literature Review

D. Stakeholders and Community

E. Approach/Methodology

II. Part II

A. Ethical Considerations

B. Legal Considerations

III. Part III

A. Project Scope

B. Final Deliverables

C. Usability Testing/Evaluation

D. Team Members

IV. References

V. Appendix
 Volunteer Skill Share 3

Volunteer Skill Share

Matching Skills and Needs

Introduction

While working with the non-profit partners on the Service Learning project, it became

clear that there was a need in many non-profit organizations that was not being met. The

organizations have limited funds for staffing and many in-demand skills are unavailable. These

non-profit groups have varying missions and a wide array of unique needs and are forced to

spread staff across responsibilities that require specific skills and experience, often leading to

unsuccessful outcomes. Team Betawares will build a web-based application, called Volunteer

Skill Share, that allows volunteers with specific skills and experience to find opportunities and

match with non-profit organizations that have project needs aligned with those skills. The site is

a mix of job board and matchmaking service allowing potential volunteers to find and assist

non-profit organizations that require specific skills and experience for volunteer projects.

There are two main user groups that will be the focus of the application, volunteers and

nonprofit organizations. The volunteer with specific skills, who will provide a form-based job

history and experience profile as part of their enrollment, and can look for a non-profit

organization with a set of projects to devote their time. The second is the non-profit

organization, who will post projects and define specific skill requirements and can make

connections with potential volunteers who have listed the skills they need.
 Volunteer Skill Share 4

Project Goals and Objectives

The Betawares Capstone project a short list of long-term goals. These are more than can

be met within the time of the project but represent the focus for the application if it were to

continue on as a public application.

Goal 1:​ Attract a large number of nonprofit partner organizations and become the primary tool

used by nonprofit organizations to list projects and skills needs and contact potential volunteers

to meet those needs.

● Short-term objective:​ Testing and Demo will be done using test partner organizations,

scripted and inserted into the site. This will provide a small content set with which we

can show the application functionality.

○ Delivery:​ Capstone demo date

● Medium-term Objective:​ Betawares will focus on nonprofit organizations local to the

team members (Bay Area, Southern CA) to build a small base of partner orgs. These

organizations will assist in building a small base of real projects, validating the existing

functionality, and help to test new features.

○ Delivery:​ 3-6 months after Capstone demo

● Long-term Objective:​ Work with our sponsor organization, Hands On Bay Area

(​www.handsonbayarea.org​), an organization connected with more than 280 other Bay

Area nonprofits to source additional nonprofit partners. Also begin direct nonprofit

partner outreach outside the Bay Area by contacting organizations through searches and

recommendations from other reference sites.

 Volunteer Skill Share 5

○ Use HoBA’s experienced marketing and communications team that is in regular

direct contact with the nonprofit organizations to assist in promoting the site as a

helpful resource.

○ Delivery:​ 6-12 months after Capstone demo

Goal 2:​ Support and attract a significant volunteer population to the site, allowing them to search

for volunteer opportunities and connect with nonprofit organizations where they can apply their

skills and experience.

● Short-term Objective:​ Testing and Demo of the site will be done using mock volunteer

profiles that are scripted and inserted to the site. These will provide enough data, skills

selections, and content to show the application functionality.

○ Delivery:​ Capstone demo date

● Medium-term Objective:​ Work with nonprofit partner HoBA to source volunteers from

the hundreds of projects they organize and thousands of volunteers they source each

month for Bay Area technology, financial, and services corporations, who have the

specific skills nonprofits need. HoBA will also display content and links in prominent

areas of their website, bringing in potential volunteers directly to VSS’ mission overview

and the volunteer enrollment process.

○ Delivery:​ 3-6 months after Capstone demo (and ongoing)

● Longer-term Objective:​ Work with HoBA to enable partnership with the Points of Light

Foundation (​www.pointsoflight.org​), which supports more than 200 very large nonprofit

affiliates in 41 US states and 36 other countries globally and manages hundreds of

thousands of volunteers.
 Volunteer Skill Share 6

○ Delivery:​ 6-9+ months (and ongoing)

Goal 3:​ Create a funding mechanism to support the development, maintenance, and operational

elements of the website and its staff.

● Medium-term Objective:​ Add site-based revenue generators such as Google Ads,

Amazon referrals, dynamic tracking pixels, etc. and work with HoBA to determine

possible funding sources from corporate partners or nonprofits.

○ Technical concerns, such as migrating the site to stable hosting, and operational

roles, such as nonprofit status application, content validation, partner outreach,

data cleansing, site maintenance, and corporate messaging are necessary to

expand features and attract partners and users.

○ Delivery:​ 6+ months

● Long-term Objective:​ Add functionality to allow volunteers, corporate partners, and

nonprofits to donate directly to the site. The site will be registered as a nonprofit and will

have the ability to take tax deductible donations so we will allow users and partners to

help fund to keep the site running. This requires a lot of additional technical elements

(accounting, connection with payment processing, site enhancements, etc.) so is not

possible within the initial phases of the site.

○ Delivery:​ 12+ months

 Volunteer Skill Share 7

Environmental Scan/Literature Review

According to Thom Patterson in his article, Stats Reveal How Many Americans

Volunteer and Where, on CNN.com, “The data, from a survey released by the US Bureau of

Labor Statistics in 2016, the most recent year available, shows that about one-quarter of

Americans, or 25 percent, take the time to volunteer.” As many American participate in some

form of volunteering a need to streamline volunteer connections with organizations that need

them. There are many sites that help volunteers to seek out organizations that are looking for

people with particular skills. Although a majority of them are all one-sided in that they cater to

the organizations by allowing them to post for the skills or jobs they are seeking to fill. Websites

such as ​www.nationalservice.gov​, providing volunteer opportunities nationally, only provides a

search engine for volunteers to look up opportunities near them. This one-sided approach lacks

the trend of volunteer work that is rising.

In her recent study on how generation Z is impacting nonprofit organizations, Gloria

Horsley stated in her article, ​Gen Z: What You Need To Know About The Newest Generation Of

Donors And Volunteers, on Forbes.com that, “The newest generation is called Generation Z, and

it has many differences to address in marketing, communication and engagement when

compared to previous generations.” Volunteering has grown drastically from participating in

food banks and helping the elderly. While these forms of volunteering still exist today the

category of what is sought after and the skills that people have is branching into more areas. A

worthy comparison of what this project is meant to project is that of Volunteermatch.com.

Websites such as Volunteermatch.com one and this project will embrace both the idea that
 Volunteer Skill Share 8

volunteering has grown to other areas, but also the fact that the current generation is more

technology inclined. A more robust volunteer site includes categories and subcategories of skills

that are not only needed but skills that organizations would not have thought of as a need. While

there are many sites that have only a one-sided approach to how volunteers can find

organizations to work with, a more modern design now has the ability to allow volunteers to

advertise their skills in order to allow organizations to now search for help. Both of these new

implementations are more pleasing to the newer generation of volunteers and will allow the trend

of volunteering to grow at a more rapid pace.

Stakeholders and Community

This project is designed to affect two groups of the non-profit community, the volunteers

and the organizations seeking volunteers. The stakeholders will be the organization who will be

investing their time posting and searching through the volunteer database created by this project.

The non-profit community is comprised of many different types of organizations that work

towards various goals from animal cruelty to human rights. With so many organizations to

choose from it can be challenging for volunteers to choose an organization to work with. These

non-profit groups have varying missions and a wide array of unique needs and problems that

attract a specific type of person into nonprofit work. Nonprofit employees are normally required

to work for less money than they would make in a corporate equivalent role and contribute their

skills while focusing on a number of different tasks and initiatives in order to further their

organization's goals. When spreading the focus and responsibility for many different tasks

(wearing many hats) to one person, it creates gaps in skills and experience. This leads to
 Volunteer Skill Share 9

inefficient or incorrect work processes on a semi-successful project or the complete failure on

unsuccessful projects. Non-profit organizations need a way to source these specific goals within

their local volunteer population and engage them for very specific projects. This project will

allow volunteers with specific skills and experience to find opportunities and match with

non-profit organizations that have project needs aligned with those skills. The site is a mix of

job board and matchmaking service allowing potential volunteers to assist non-profit

organizations that require specific skills and experience for volunteer projects.

Approach/Methodology

The Betawares project includes a number of highly technical working elements, secure

data requirements, and two unique user groups with separate application flows. To ensure the

team is able to work together in building these elements and keeps a combined vision of the site

and the development process, we will incorporate the Agile development methodology. The

team will identify an online project management tool (the team has experience with JIRA, Target

Process, Rally, and others) and use this to document standard Agile project artifacts and manage

the required ceremonies. Each member of the team has a git repo and is familiar with git as a

source control tool. A centralized repo with each team member as an owner will be created for

this project.

Each team member will be assigned specific areas of the system responsibilities list of the

project that they will own as primary developer and architect, but all team members will work on

all areas of the site. The development cycle is very short and we must use all of our technical

abilities in an efficient manner. This will mean breaking up work tasks so that team members
Volunteer Skill Share 10

will more experience or interest in an area will take more of a specific type of task across the

work streams.

Technical responsibilities:

● Database design and schema management

● Core data connection and system logic design and development

● Application integration and communication design and development

● Web platform design and development

● Website design, styling, and navigation

● Content and assets creation and management

● Page development

● Integration and functional testing

● Application deployment and configuration

System responsibilities:

● Database Schema

○ Volunteer profile and contact info / Nonprofit project post and skill

request

● User authentication and security

● Volunteer profile management workflow and skill selection

● Nonprofit skill request, project posting, and contact info management

● Nonprofit project, skill search, and results display

● Volunteer profile search and results display

● Volunteer contact request and Nonprofit approval

Volunteer Skill Share 11

● Contact request notifications

The team will focus on defining the framework elements. A number of pre-built web

platforms are available for free use. To reduce the time and complexity of the development and

put more focus on the page and feature development one of these platforms will be chosen.

In parallel with this effort, we will be building Epics and Stories to define the features in

the project management platform. We will use minimal documentation to reduce the time before

we move to the development of items.

Additionally, one member of the team will be designing the initial version of the database

design. This database will be an enabling element steering the direction for the project so must

have many of its schema elements created early to enable rapid site development.

Another member of the team will be working on a site tree and navigation. This will

require a number of reviews and adjustments and is necessary before page development begins.

A significant amount of work will go into this as it provides the map for all page development so

must be started early to provide time for iterations.

Next in the development priority list is the site authentication. There will be 2 separate

user groups and potentially additional roles for site administrators and nonprofit organization

content creators and approvers. A successful login will generate a time-sensitive session token

that will be validated on each page. The token will enable specific functionality within the site

including identifying the user group and adjusting the navigation. Pages not aligned to the user

group will not be visible in navigation and will redirect the user back to the landing page if the

user goes to them directly.

Volunteer Skill Share 12

Development will move on to building reusable elements such as the header, navigation,

and footer. These elements will be reused for all page templates.

Last in the project development cycle is individual page development. The features are

broken up between the two user groups so the team is likely to split the development across the

group lines, using standardized elements for styling to ensure a consistent look and feel and

reusable templates to reduce the code and testing. The pages will be recorded as stories in the

project management system and the team can self-assign as needed.

Peer reviews and testing will be necessary as part of the development process. The

developer will be responsible for testing their feature as part of the development. To keep

development moving but ensure all features have been tested, the team is likely to set up a

review process where a developer reviews his work with a peer before moving code into the

main project branch. This process can be supported with features in git requiring a sign-off but

will likely be managed as a good practice for now. Development to customize code repos or

enforce rules on check-ins will require additional time and take away from feature development.

Ethical Considerations

Some of the ethical concerns regarding our site, Volunteer Skill Share, include the

following; content validation, ethical funding, and data management. Additionally, this is a

service made available through the internet, which will limit the audience.

First and foremost, it will be imperative that we validate content. The content on the

Volunteer Skill Share site is user provided, either by volunteers or nonprofit organizations,

which leads to a potential for inappropriate or incorrect data to be submitted as part of the
Volunteer Skill Share 13

volunteer bios or the nonprofit projects and skills requests. Inappropriate and incorrect data

could quickly lead to a lack of trust or interest in using the site. If there is a lack of trust in the

site, users will not want to use the site. This lack of users will make it hard for Volunteer

Skillshare to operate as users are the primary source of content. Validating and removing

inappropriate content must be a maintenance task handled as an ongoing process. In later

versions of the site we may build content validators to ensure inappropriate words, content

patterns, or images are submitted. A crawler would also be helpful to notify and suppress

inappropriate content that passes by initial screening. Validation of the volunteer skills will be a

longer-term process and may involve some form of matching with job profiles, a requirement to

link to job profiles, such as a LinkedIn profile, that would be visible by the nonprofits, or a

system allowing a nonprofit to give feedback or a rating on a volunteer.

Securing funding to the site can also pose some ethical concerns to Volunteer Skill Share.

Volunteer Skill Share does not plan to be a commercial website at this time, but the matter of

funding the website will still need to be considered as there will continue to be operating costs

associated with running, maintaining, and adding features to the site. The idea of being a

nonprofit for tax purposes can be seen as posing some ethical concerns. A 2008 Brookings

Institution survey found that about one third of Americans reported having “not too much” or no

confidence in nonprofit organizations, and 70 percent felt that nonprofit organizations waste “a

great deal” or a “fair amount” of money. To address these issues, Volunteer Skill Share plans to

be as transparent as possible in all matters, including making all of its funding sources and

expenses visible to users of the site.

Volunteer Skill Share 14

Lastly, Volunteer Skill Share will need to make sure that user data management is

handled appropriately. The site be requesting multiple elements of data considered as Personal

Identifying Information from its volunteer members and over time will amass a large set of

critical information as the site grows its user base. Volunteer Skill Share will make sure to

continually provide up to date legal terms and conditions to all users to allow users of the site to

be assured that their data is being handled appropriately, helping to continually build trust in the

platform. Additionally, the site will secure data by encrypting necessary fields and ensuring to

prevent data breaches and tampering through applying standard web application security best

practices.

By nature of this being an online application, those without easy internet access have the

potential to be an underprivileged group that will not have the ability to access the platform.

Those without easy internet access that want to volunteer would not be able to check the

platform often and have the chance to miss out on volunteer opportunities that they want to be

involved in. To support these users, Volunteer Skill Share will ensure that nonprofit

organizations provide multiple means of contact (email, phone, address, etc.) and that contact

information is easily found and displayed prominently. This ensures that even when a potential

volunteer is unable to track upcoming projects through the site through regular views, they may

contact the organizations they are interested in through offline methods.

Legal Considerations

The Betawares project website will enable multiple elements that would require legal

consideration under a commerce-based application and would be especially difficult if it were to

Volunteer Skill Share 15

support a customer base outside the US. The Volunteer Skill Share site is not a commercial

website and is currently only planned to support a US audience. This, along with the fact the US

does not have clear and comprehensive set of federal regulations, creates a complex set of

possible laws to comply with.

Since the site is a non-profit and not a commercial platform, it does not fall under many

privacy and communications regulations targeted at commercial sites for customer tracking, data

retention, and marketing related messaging. Before reaching a wide release, the content,

features, and data of the site should be evaluated by proper legal council to provide clear

instruction on how to manage legal considerations. Fines and penalties for mismanagement or

failure to handle complaints can be severe.

The list below describes the major items of concern and information on management.

Personal Information Management and Security:

The site will have a process for enrollment, taking Personal Identifying Information, PII

as defined by the from volunteers who sign up to use the service. This data is not to be used for

commerce, so does not bring it specifically under data privacy laws like the Federal Trade

Commission Act (FTCA), but it would be prudent to support these regulations. The FTCA

provides a set of guidelines for how to personal data should be secured, managed, and deleted

(after the user has terminated their account) and governs the practices and use within online,

offline, and mobile applications. These guidelines are enforced by the Federal Trade

Commission in the US and are the most relevant set of regulations to consider in the Betawares

project (FTC, 2017).

Volunteer Skill Share 16

Additional regulations that Volunteer Skill Share must comply with are specified in the

EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which began enforcement in May of 2018.

GDPR enforces management and handling requirements for data from European Union citizens

in applications globally. These laws provide a base for all EU countries to use but some

countries have created additional regulations that supercede GDPR. This complex mix of

regulations is described on the GDPR website at eugdpr.org (GDPR Online, n.d.).

Authentication and Data Security:

The site will manage authentications and will be required to secure and enforce password

management. This information is not personal identifying information and is not listed as

protected data under the FTCA as described above. A group of additional “best practices” have

been well defined by the software industry and more recently, state-specific laws are

incorporating username and password management into their secure data requirements. For

these reasons, and the changing requirements around authentication management in the US,

Betawares will develop secure management and storage of the authentication process and data.

Direction on legal requirements and guidelines is provided by Thoren-Peden and Meyer’s article

“USA: Data Protection 2018”.

Email Notification and Messaging:

The Volunteer Skill Share application will not immediately support notifications and

messaging, but this is planned in the future to allow volunteers to send messages to nonprofit

organizations they are interested in. Nonprofit organizations will also be able to send a message

to potential volunteers whose profiles match their needs to request assistance. Messaging

requires the support of specific regulations on tracking and managing customer opt-ins and
Volunteer Skill Share 17

preferences. The user must provide their confirmation through acceptance of terms relating to

the messaging. At any point they must be able to update this acceptance through the site and a

link to manage the acceptance must be provided through an “unsubscribe” link in any messages

delivered on behalf of the application (Angel, 2017). Guidelines and management of these

regulations are provided by the CAN-SPAM Act (FTC Online, 2009).

Project Scope

The Volunteer Skill Share project build includes multiple technical elements and many

development tasks. Below is a detailed schedule for how the initial project phases required for

the Capstone demo will be scheduled and delivered. Since we are working in Agile, the project

will be broken into Sprints of 1 week duration to match the class Module schedule. Each task

defined within a Sprint will have an owner. Tasks for past and next Sprint are assigned. The

team will assign the tasks for the coming sprint near the end of the current, or as tasks are

completed.

Resourcing:

Team Betawares has 4 experienced developers. Each team member is responsible for

providing their own developer workstation will all required tools and software. Each team

member will run their own local or cloud copy of the project code and development database to

ensure one system failure or testing cycle does not impact another developer. Code will be

retained on a shared Git instance. The project demo will be done on a single developer

workstation or cloud service with all tools, database, and scripted data.
Volunteer Skill Share 18

Sprint Plan and Assignments:

Module Dates Task Owner

0 4/1/2019 - 4/30/2019 - Project Plan Definition All

0 4/1/2019 - 4/30/2019 - Database Schema Design Mike

0 4/1/2019 - 4/30/2019 - Technology Platform Decision All

0 4/1/2019 - 4/30/2019 - Repository setup Chris H

1 5/1/2019 - 5/7/2019 - Web platform setup Chris H, Patrick

1 5/1/2019 - 5/7/2019 - Design page navigation Patrick, Chris B

1 5/1/2019 - 5/7/2019 - Data connection code Mike, Chris H, Chris

B

1 5/1/2019 - 5/7/2019 - Script test data Mike

2 5/8/2019 - 5/14/2019 - Authentication and roles dev Chris H, Chris B

2 5/8/2019 - 5/14/2019 - Page header dev to enforce Mike, Patrick

login

3 5/15/2019 - 5/21/2019 - Volunteer enrollment flow Chris H, Patrick

-- Skill and experience forms

3 5/15/2019 - 5/21/2019 - Volunteer enrollment flow Chris B, Mike

-- Bio management

4 5/22/2019 - 5/28/2019 - Organization enrollment and Chris B

project definition flow
-- Project data forms

4 5/22/2019 - 5/28/2019 - Organization enrollment and Chris H

project definition flow
-- Skills request

4 5/22/2019 - 5/28/2019 - Organization enrollment and Mike, Patrick

project definition flow
-- Bio management

5 5/29/2019 - 6/4/2019 - Search/response page for Vols Chris B

5 5/29/2019 - 6/4/2019 - Search/response page for Org Patrick

Volunteer Skill Share 19

projects

5 5/29/2019 - 6/4/2019 - Vol bio detail page Chris H

5 5/29/2019 - 6/4/2019 - Org project detail page Mike

5 5/29/2019 - 6/4/2019 - Org profile detail page Mike

6 6/5/2019 - 6/11/2019 - Site test plan / testing All

6 6/5/2019 - 6/11/2019 - Additional content scripting Chris B, Chris H

6 6/5/2019 - 6/11/2019 - Partner review Mike, Patrick

7 6/12/2019 - 6/18/2019 - Site and content validation Patrick, Chris B,

Chris H, Mike, HoBA

7 6/12/2019 - 6/18/2019 - Demo prep All

8 6/19/2019 - 6/22/2019 Final Prep and Demo All

Milestones:

Milestones will be met when major blocks of code are testable by the team. With such a

short project timeline these will happen just about each week. Below is a schedule of expected

delivery milestones.

Module Date Feature Completed Functionality

1 5/7/2019 Database is up, content is Validate queries respond with

inserted expected data

2 5/14/2019 Site is up and basic Auth User is able to login with scripted
functions complete account credentials

3 5/21/2019 Volunteer enrollment and User is able to enroll as a volunteer

data forms built and User is able to login with
working new/scripted credentials and
create/edit volunteer profile and
skills data

4 5/28/2019 Nonprofit org enrollment, User is able to enroll as a nonprofit

Volunteer Skill Share 20

project, and skill forms User is able to login with

built and working new/scripted creds and create/edit
organization profile, project, and
skills request data

5 6/4/2019 Nonprofit search, Nonprofit user is able to search for

nonprofit project detail
display, volunteer search,
volunteer bio display
completed
volunteers by skill and location,
see responses, and select to view
profile details.
Volunteer user is able to search for
nonprofit by skill and location, see
project responses, and select to
view project details or nonprofit
bio

6 6/11/2019 Site fully functional Testing complete, scripted data and

minor adjustment elements found
and being resolved

7 6/18/2019 Project Demo and Team has completed demo

supporting documentation materials and is practicing for
completed onsite demo. Members completing
individual deliverables.

Risks and Dependencies:

Below is a list of major risks and our plan to mitigate. Each sprint is dependent on the

successful delivery of tasks in the one prior.

Risk Mitigation Plan

Sprint deliveries fall behind, creating
resourcing issues and inability to start next
sprint
** main risk element
Team members will have multiple check-ins
weekly. Team members will also have
communication through google chat, text
message to alert the rest of the team in case of
issues with deliver.
Not much free time built into the schedule so
delivery issues will likely require cut in scope
to catch up.
Volunteer Skill Share 21

Team member unavailable/unable to complete Assignments will be posted ahead of the

sprint so that each team member is aware of
their required tasks.
If a sprint member is unable to complete their
tasks the rest of the team can look at
incorporating into their own deliverables or
cutting scope.
Repeated issues with delivery will require
alerting the professors.

Design issues cause rework
The team has spent a considerable amount of
time up front in the project to ensure design
and execution are going to work as planned.
Later issues with navigation plan, backend
systems, data connections, etc. will likely
require a cut in scope and possibly additional
sprint of development (late week 6, early
week 7) to bring the project back on track for
demo. This will reduce testing and demo
resources so will be assessed if needed.

Final Deliverables

Betawares will be developing a web application using multiple current technologies as a

real-world functional application that could be released to the public in partnership with a

nonprofit organization called Hands On Bay Area (HOBA). Upon completion of this project our

team will have produced a web based application with supporting database, called Volunteer

Skill Share. The application is focused on an issue faced by many nonprofit organizations,

limited personnel resources and limited access to the in-demand skills that they need. The

application will serve two primary user groups, volunteers and nonprofit organizations, and has

separate interfaces specific to their functions.

Volunteer Skill Share 22

The application landing page will contain information about the site and allow the user to

login to an existing account or create a new profile. A successful login presents the user with

either the volunteer component of the web application or the organization component based on

their account type. Storing user login and passwords will allow our team to prove that we have a

clear understanding of security and how we handle storing sensitive information such as

passwords into a user database.

The volunteer flow in the application will allow the volunteer user to create and manage

their profile, job history, and skills and experience list. This profile and skills list is the content

that the nonprofit organizations will be searching to find matches. This information will range

from text box inserts to document uploading capability. The variety of information that a

volunteer enters will showcase the application inserting information into the volunteer profile

database.

The volunteer will also have the ability to search for nonprofit organizations by location

(city or region) and skills requested. The results of the search will be placed in a grid form,

where the volunteer can select either the nonprofit organization profile, by clicking the name, or

see the details of a project including skills and potential timeline, by selecting the project. If the

volunteer feels they have found a match and wants to contact, they will have the ability to view

the organization profile and retrieve contact information, creating the connection that may lead to

the nonprofit moving their project forward. This element allows the team to show our ability to

generate complex queries and show results, as well as repurpose data in multiple displays in

separate user flows.

Volunteer Skill Share 23

The organization component of our website is the core of our web application and

presents the content that volunteers are looking for and will be the second focus area for the

presentation. This portion is where the organization will not only fill out their profile info,

including mission statement and contact info, but also add project information and the list of

skills needed for multiple projects. The organization will also be able to search through the

database for potential volunteers by location (city, region) and by skill to find potential matches.

The org can then see the profile and skill information for these potential volunteers and contact

them if they find a match. These functions will provide definitive and clear understanding how

our team can handle database search filters and complex queries.

Hands On Bay Area (HOBA) will be our test client for the Volunteer Skill Share website.

The organization will work with our team to validate the site features and provide feedback on

both functional and non-functional areas of the application in order to fine tune the use ability of

the interface.

Usability Testing/Evaluation

Usability testing involves testing the program with users in order to find potential

problem areas in the program, as well as how to adjust the user interface for a better user

experience. For this program, we will be conducting usability testing for individual parts of the

program during the development as well as the program in its entirety in order to promote

continuous improvement.

Usability testing will be conducted using predefined test scenarios. Scenarios will

correspond to user stories, such as signing in to the service, creating an account in the service,
Volunteer Skill Share 24

inputting their skills, searching for volunteer organizations, etc. The user will be given a

scenario in which to test, and the user will perform the scenario as instructed. Scenarios will

cover both the individual parts of the program (such as signing in) to the entire user interface

(creating an account, signing in, entering skills, searching for volunteer organizations).

The results of usability testing will recorded using surveys. End users will be asked to

perform certain tasks with the program, and then fill out the survey, answering questions about

what areas might need improvement and grading certain functionalities on a 1-10 scale. An

additional part of the survey will address what the end user thinks should be done about problem

areas that they found with the functionalities that the end user did not like. Surveys could be

conducted using an online survey tool such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyPlanet.

Having users fill out surveys will give us a general consensus of what our program’s

strengths and weaknesses are in terms of user experience. By improving upon the weaknesses of

our program, we can improve the user experience.

Team Members

Christopher Buckey:

-Project plan and definition

-Page Navigation

-Database Connection Code

-Authentication and Different Roles

-Volunteer enrollment flow

-Bio management
Volunteer Skill Share 25

-Organization enrollment and project definition flow

-Project data forms

-Search/response page for volunteers

-Additional content scripting

-Site and content validation

Patrick Gonzalez:

-Project Plan and Definition

-Web Platform Set

-Page Navigation

-Page Headers to Enforce Login

-Volunteer enrollment flow

-Skill and experience forms

-Organization enrollment and project definition flow

-Search/response page for organization projects

-Site testing

-Partner review

-Site content validation

Christopher Holmes:

-Project Plan and Definition

-Web Platform Set

-Database Connection Code

-Authentication and Different Roles

Volunteer Skill Share 26

-Volunteer enrollment flow

-Skill and experience forms

-Organization enrollment and project definition flow

-Skills request

-Volunteer bio detail page

-Additional content scripting

-Site and content validation

Michael Loeser:

-Project Plan and Definition

-Database Schema Design

-Database Connection Code

-Script Test Data

-Page Headers to Enforce Login

-Organization enrollment and project definition flow

-Organization project detail page

-Organization profile detail page

-Partner review

-Site and content validation

Volunteer Skill Share 27

References

Angel, Melanie (2017, September 9). Email Compliance in 2017: The State of CAN-SPAM.

Retrieved April 15, 2019, from

https://www.unsubcentral.com/2017/09/19/email-compliance-2017/

Federal Trade Commission - FTC Online (2017, January). Privacy & Data Security Update

(2016). Retrieved April 13, 2019, from

https://www.ftc.gov/reports/privacy-data-security-update-2016

Federal Trade Commission - FTC Online (2009, September). CAN-SPAM Act: A Guideline For

Business. Retrieved April 15, 2019 from

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guid

e-business

GDPR Online (n.d.). GDPR Key Changes. Retrieved April 15, 2019 from

https://eugdpr.org/the-regulation/

Horsley, G. (2018, October 31). Gen Z: What You Need To Know About The Newest

Generation Of Donors And Volunteers. Retrieved April 7, 2019, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/11/09/gen-z-what-you-need-to

-know-about-the-newest-generation-of-donors-and-volunteers/#655960342fd6

Patterson, T. (2018, July 20). Stats reveal how many Americans volunteer. Retrieved April 9,

2019, from https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/19/us/volunteering-statistics-cfc/index.html

Thoren-Peden, Deborah, and Catherine Meyer (2018, December 20). USA: Data Protection

2018. Retrieved April 15, 2019, from

https://iclg.com/practice-areas/data-protection-laws-and-regulations/usa