College students are worth their weight in gold when it comes to lending their skills to organizations that need help but operate on a tight budget.
And Samra Kanwal knew it.
Kanwal, a sophomore at UNC Charlotte, founded Volunto last September alongside Lareb Khan, director of technology and a student at the University of South Carolina, and Megan Lemon, director of nonprofit partnerships and UNCC alumna.
The early-stage startup is a platform that digitally facilitates connections between nonprofits and skills-based volunteers from local colleges. The platform allows volunteers to donate technological skills, giving nonprofits the opportunity to grow and sustain operations.
Kanwal said the concept for Volunto stemmed from what she called a nonprofit "starvation cycle" during which an organization remains underfunded because they're not properly investing back into the infrastructure that will allow them to grow, scale and increase their resources. She said she began to research and, in the process, spoke with more than 30 nonprofit leaders to find out what problems they faced and how Volunto could help solve them.
"Looking at these problems, I realized there needed to be meaningful ways to get collaborations out there and make some positive impact on both sides," she said. "This led me to the blueprint for Volunto."
Through the platform, nonprofit leaders can find college students who posses certain skills, which will allow for growth and expansion without financial hardship. In turn, the student volunteers will gain experience as they prepare to enter the job market, Kanwal said.
Students are able to visit the company website and register as a volunteer using their .edu email address. They're asked to fill out an application that documents their skills. This profile is what nonprofits will see when choosing which volunteers they want to work with. Kanwal said the nonprofits are required to reach out directly to Volunto and complete an interview with the startup team to demonstrate it is a credible organization.
"We've discovered that the majority are absolutely amazing places to give your time, though there always tend to be a few actors to be aware of, so we vet everyone properly," she said.
The nonprofits then register, choose what types of projects or problems they need help with and request to speak with potential student volunteers based on their profiles. Students can also search for projects based on their skills and interests and reach out to nonprofits.
The platform is still in the development phase, and Kanwal said the team is planning to complete two trials in the spring before a widespread launch to the public.
"We have already sourced six nonprofit partners ... And we're going to partner with specific departments at Cornell, UNCC and USC to make sure the kinks are ironed out," she said. "We'll eventually expand our trial group of nonprofits to 50 and broaden the number of student users."
"We want to make sure the site, on the tech side, can handle the traffic, and we have to make sure everything we're doing is credible and 100% what we want," Kanwal added.
Volunto participated in UNCC's Ventureprise Launch National Science Foundation I-Corps program over the summer, which provided the startup with $5,000 in NSF funding for prototype development, conference and customer interview travel and materials and supplies related to customer identification.
The founders are building out the platform themselves and plan to continue applying for various grants as they prepare for beta testing and a full product launch.
"At this stage, our strategy is not to scout investments," Kanwal said. "We want to build out the platform and verify that it's feasible; then we'll work to get investors."
