The project started with a clear ask: help onboard volunteers, but it didn’t take long to see that the real challenge was bigger. Key information was spread across slide decks, documents, and videos with no single place to land. Without a central hub, volunteers struggled to understand the organization’s mission and work, leading to repeated questions, mixed messages, and a disjointed experience for people who genuinely wanted to contribute.
Exploring Options Within Real Constraints
To address this, I began prototyping solutions that balanced two priorities:
1. A better experience for new volunteers
2. A sustainable setup the organization could maintain long-term
One thing was clear early on: no new tools. Volunteers didn’t need more logins. They needed a space that worked with the systems they already used.
That led me to explore two main paths:
Squarespace, which hosted the public website and was familiar to the founder
Microsoft 365, the platform already in use for internal emails, documents, and operations
A Strategic Shift: Building on What Already Worked
As I worked through these options, it became clear that the need wasn’t just about onboarding; it was about communication, collaboration, and shared ownership.
The organization had outgrown its informal systems. Information often flowed through the founder, which created bottlenecks. What they needed wasn’t just a resource, it was a digital home. A shared space that could grow with them, connect people across roles, and reduce friction for everyone involved.
That realization pointed to SharePoint, which was already integrated into their Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It offered secure access, centralized content, and the flexibility to adapt as the organization evolved.
I chose SharePoint not because it was perfect, but because it made sense for how the team already worked. From there, the scope shifted: I wasn’t just building a resource; I was building the foundation for something bigger.