Back
A custom platform pairing companies with volunteers for a non-profit's social projects
Project goal
To build the platform behind a non-profit's bridge strategy: one place where young people find volunteering worth doing, build a record of it and become visible to the employers looking for exactly that.
Our scope
UX/UI design
Development
Project duration
January-October2024
Technologies used
Laravel
Backpack CMS
Next.js
Client
Order of Malta Estonia
A non-profit trying to build a bridge, not just a volunteer list
Order of Malta Estonia wants to become the leading force in volunteerism in the country. The ambition behind that is sharper than it sounds. The foundation set out to bridge two groups who need each other without ever quite meeting: young people looking for a way into meaningful work, plus employers looking for people who are skilled as well as decent. Volunteering is the bridge. Our job was to build the thing that carries the traffic across it. We designed and built the platform end to end.
We picked up the designs that existed, then took them the rest of the way
There were already some mockups when we arrived. We went through them, refined what needed it and designed every page the platform was still missing, which turned out to be most of it. The structure went through five rounds of wireframes before anything was polished. Then came the design system, the responsive work, the documentation and the specs, handed over with the thinking already done. It is not the glamorous part of a project. It is the part that decides whether the rest goes smoothly.
For a volunteer, one place to find something worth doing
A volunteer signs up and gets a profile that is more than a name. They fill in their motivation, education, skills, languages, working experience, availability and a CV, then decide how much of it the world can see. From there they browse what OME has going: trainings to learn the work, projects and events to do it. Signing up takes a click. Everything they have done accumulates on the profile they can preview exactly as an outsider sees it.
Volunteering levels, which is what makes the bridge hold
Here is the clever part. It is the whole reason the platform works. Every volunteer carries a level, earned by turning up: Novice at the start, rising as their involvement adds up against thresholds the foundation sets itself. It is a small badge that does a big job. For a seventeen-year-old with no work history, it is proof of a track record. For an employer, it is a filter that separates good intentions from a habit of showing up. Volunteering stops being something you claim on a CV. It becomes something the platform can vouch for.
For an employer, a talent database worth opening
Companies come at it from the other side. They register, then search a database of volunteers, filtering by volunteering level, by skills or by the languages someone speaks. They read a full profile, download a CV and get in touch by email. They can also post jobs, watch applications land against each post and read every applicant's profile before replying. Because a volunteer applies with the profile they have already built, there is no form to fill in twice.
A job board the foundation keeps its name on
OME's name is on every job that appears, so the platform does not just let companies publish at will. A new post lands in verification, where the foundation's team approves or declines it, straight from the list, with the applicant count next to it. Staff can post on a company's behalf when it is easier. A company decides whether a post is public and can preview it as the world will see it. It keeps the board useful and keeps the foundation's reputation intact.
Donations that work the way Estonians actually pay
The foundation runs on support, so donating had to be simple. We integrated MakeCommerce, the Estonian payment gateway, pulling in the payment methods people there already use and letting someone give to a specific project or to the organisation as a whole. A failed payment does not dead-end: the donor can start again or pick up the session they had. There is a quick option for a small one-off gift, for the people who want to help without thinking about it too hard.
Mailchimp doing the follow-up so the team does not have to
A foundation this size cannot chase every application by hand. So the platform talks to Mailchimp. Volunteers and company users go into separate audiences, which lets OME speak to each in its own voice. Apply for a training or a project and you are added to that opportunity's list automatically, which fires the follow-up emails without anyone lifting a finger. Newsletter sign-ups go through double opt-in. The team picks the right list from inside the CMS when setting an opportunity up.
Estonian first, English close behind, each on its own schedule
The platform is bilingual, with a wrinkle worth explaining. Estonian is the language the team writes in, so English arrives by automatic translation as content is created in the CMS. The catch is that a translation may need a human eye before it goes out, while the Estonian original is ready now. So visibility is controlled separately per language: publish the Estonian immediately, hold the English until someone has read it. Small decision. It is the difference between a bilingual site and a bilingual site nobody trusts. Russian followed later, once the platform was live.
A CMS the foundation runs everything from
Behind it all sits the admin the team lives in, built on Laravel with Backpack, paired with the Next.js front-end the public sees. They manage trainings, projects, stories and their categories, publish with custom slugs and handle media with alt text on every image. They administer volunteers and companies, send password resets, suspend an account when they must and record a volunteer's involvements, which is what feeds the levels. Admins manage skills, the levels themselves and the CMS users, with roles deciding who touches what. Even the site's own copy is editable, down to individual strings.
Outcome
The site went live and has been growing since. What we like about this one is the shape of it: a young person turns up wanting to help, does the work, earns a level for it, then finds that the record they built is the thing an employer was searching for.
Visit orderofmalta.ee
Let's talk about your project idea!
Tell us about your project. We’ll help you plan the architecture, scope, and execution.
© Webalize 2026
