Most NGOs aren't short on heart. They're short on systems.
I'm building Salesforce automation for an NGO that connects caregivers who need support - meal prep, respite, home visits, emotional check-ins - with trained volunteers who can show up for them. I'll be documenting the build here, one piece at a time. Consider this post one.
Where it started
Before automation, matching a caregiver with a volunteer meant a Google Form, a manual email, and a coordinator acting as a human router for every single request.
The first build: the request pipeline
The goal was simple: get requests out of an inbox and into a system that could actually act on them.
Small build. Big relief for a team that used to do all of this by hand.
The real win isn't the automation itself - it's the time, and trust, it gives back to people doing work that actually matters.