United Way of Atlanta Portal
The Atlanta chapter ran volunteer coordination, donor tracking, and event management across disconnected legacy systems. Admins spent half their day copying data between spreadsheets. I designed the portal to consolidate all of it — and remove the manual work.
About the Product
United Way of Atlanta connects donors, volunteers, and community partners to critical resources across the city. When I joined, their operations were split across 3 legacy systems with no shared data layer — meaning admins had no real-time visibility into volunteer hours, donation impact, or event status without manually pulling reports from each tool.
Project Specs
The Problem
Fragmented systems meant every report required manual data assembly. Admins couldn't see volunteer hours or donation impact without going into three separate tools — so most decisions were made on outdated information.
The Solution
A unified web portal that consolidated all three systems — giving admins a real-time dashboard, replacing spreadsheet-based event management, and showing donors and volunteers the direct impact of their contributions.
My Role & Approach
What did I do to achieve the goal?
I was the sole designer on a cross-functional team of 2 PMs and 4 developers across an 8-week engagement. I ran research, defined strategy, and took the product from concept through high-fidelity. The PMs owned stakeholder relationships; I owned the design direction and pushed back when technical constraints threatened the core admin workflow we'd validated in research.
User Research and Analysis
To understand the pain points, I conducted interviews with 5 active volunteers and 3 administrators. The analysis revealed a significant disconnect between the administrative needs and the volunteer experience.
Stakeholder Interview
Program Manager
"I spend half my day manually copying data from emails to spreadsheets. We need a system that talks to itself."
Volunteer Feedback
Active Donor
"I never know if my donation actually helped. The current portal doesn't show me the impact of my contribution."
Key Insights
- check_circle Admins spent ~4 hours/day on manual data entry — copying event registrations from email into spreadsheets.
- check_circle Volunteers had no way to see the impact of their hours — making it hard to stay motivated between events.
- check_circle Event managers needed mobile access on-site, but the existing system was desktop-only and required VPN.
Product Strategy
Early briefs positioned this as an admin efficiency tool. Research changed that. Volunteers were disengaging not because the events were bad — but because they never saw what their time actually produced. We shifted strategy from "admin tool" to "community impact platform" that served both audiences.
Ideation
Initial sketches explored various dashboard layouts to balance density with readability.
Mockups
Three core screens — the admin analytics dashboard, the event management tool replacing spreadsheets, and the partner directory. Dark theme was chosen for data density: admins needed to scan multiple metrics at a glance without visual clutter.
Admin Dashboard
Real-time analytics pulling from all three legacy systems into one view — volunteer hours, donation totals, and event status visible without a single manual report.
Event Management
Replaced the spreadsheet-based event registration workflow. Admins could create, edit, and track events in one place — no more copying data from email threads.
Partner Directory
Centralised partner records — contact info, event history, and status — that previously lived across individual admin inboxes.