Portfolio

What we've built

Every project below was built for a real organization with real operational needs. These are working tools — not prototypes.

Client

Vancouver Hospice Society

Vancouver Hospice Society is a nonprofit providing end-of-life care, grief counselling, and community support — funded in part by two thrift boutiques and run with the help of roughly 150 volunteers.

Case Study 01 — Scheduling App

Volunteer scheduling for 150 people, with the rollout to match

Vancouver Hospice Society

The challenge

A hospice runs on its volunteers, and VHS coordinated roughly 150 of them across multiple programs and shifts. Scheduling lived in spreadsheets, email threads, and phone calls. Coverage gaps were hard to spot until they happened, sign-up changes got lost, and a meaningful share of every week went to administration. The volunteer base also skewed toward people who were not especially technical, so any solution had to be genuinely easy — not just functional.

What we built

VHS Connect (vhsconnect.org), a custom volunteer scheduling platform. Volunteers could see open shifts, set their availability, and sign up on their own, while coordinators got a single live view of who was covering what. The harder half of the work was adoption, not code. We wrote a plain-language manual and ran training so all 150 volunteers could move off the old system with confidence, and built the interface around the people who would actually use it rather than around the technology.

The outcome

VHS Connect became the day-to-day scheduling system for the entire thrift store volunteer group. It replaced the tangle of spreadsheets and email threads with a single source of truth, cut the coordination burden on staff by an estimated 30 plus hours each week, and gave the organization clear visibility into shift coverage for the first time. The system also handles shift call-outs and sends volunteers bi-weekly reminders of the shifts available to them, keeping open spots filled without staff having to chase people down.

Stack & approach: Custom web application · self-serve scheduling · coordinator dashboard · written manual and live training · designed for a non-technical user base.

vhsconnect.org →

Custom buildVolunteer opsTraining & enablement

Case Study 02 — Counselling Office Calendar

A live room calendar that finally kept up with real life

Vancouver Hospice Society

The challenge

The counselling program needed a dependable way to book rooms and offices for grief and bereavement sessions. Instead, the schedule was printed off once a month. That printout was a rough snapshot from the moment it left the printer, and it could not keep up with the things that actually move a calendar: vacations, cancellations, and last-minute changes. Staff ended up working from a general sense of when rooms were usually taken rather than what was true on the day. The practical cost was empty rooms — space that could have held a session sat unused, simply because no one had a current picture of what was actually free.

What we built

A lightweight scheduling application for the counselling office calendar that stayed current in real time. It gave the team a shared, live view of room and office availability, so a glance showed exactly what was open right now rather than what a month-old sheet had guessed. Vacations, cancellations, and changes were reflected the moment they happened.

The outcome

Scheduling moved off the monthly printout and onto a single live calendar the team could trust. Rooms that used to sit empty because no one knew they were free got booked, the calendar finally kept pace with vacations and last-minute changes, and counselling space was used closer to its real capacity.

Stack & approach: Custom scheduling app · real-time shared availability calendar · built for a small non-technical team.

Custom buildInternal toolsReal-time

Case Study 03 — Item Price Search App

Consistent pricing on the thrift floor, funding care

Vancouver Hospice Society

The challenge

VHS operates two thrift boutiques, HOB Thrift Boutique and HOB Too, and their revenue helps fund hospice care. The floor is run largely by volunteers, and pricing donated goods consistently is surprisingly hard: it depends on judgment, it varies person to person, and it takes time to train each new volunteer to price the way the store intends. Inconsistent pricing means lost revenue and a slower onboarding curve.

What we built

A pricing calculator application that gave volunteers fast, consistent pricing guidance at the point of sale. Instead of relying on memory or guesswork, a volunteer could reach a reliable price in seconds — which made the floor faster and made training new volunteers far simpler.

The outcome

Pricing became consistent across volunteers and shifts, new volunteers got productive sooner, and the stores captured value that inconsistent pricing had been leaving on the table.

Stack & approach: Custom pricing tool · built for quick use by rotating volunteer staff.

Custom buildRetail opsVolunteer-friendly UX

Case Study 04 — Website Rebuild

One website doing the work most organizations buy as separate tools — for a fraction of a $50,000 agency build

Vancouver Hospice Society

The challenge

Vancouver Hospice Society needed more than a brochure website. It needed a site that could actually do things: gather information through built-in surveys and forms, take job applications and send each completed form straight to the recruiter, and show a live counselling waitlist so that people waiting for essential care were kept informed rather than left in the dark. The usual way to get all of that is to commission a web agency for a large custom build, or to stitch together a stack of separate subscription tools, each with its own monthly fee, its own login, and its own gaps where the tools fail to talk to each other.

What we built

A full website rebuild that brought the needed capabilities into one place: custom surveys and forms, job applications routed straight to the recruiter, and a live counselling waitlist to keep people waiting for essential care informed. Rather than buying separate products and hoping they would cooperate, the organization got one coherent site where each piece worked with the others, built and maintained as part of the same suite.

The outcome

The site went live and ran successfully in production for three months, drawing significant public traffic before it was taken offline following a change in organizational direction. Just as important was what it cost to get there. A comparable build commissioned from a web agency, with none of the custom surveys and forms, job application routing, and live counselling waitlist, can run upward of $50,000. This was delivered for a fraction of that, integrated rather than stitched together, and owned by the organization rather than rented piece by piece.

Where it lives now

The build lives on as a Mock Non-Profit site. It keeps the same surveys and forms, job application routing, and live counselling waitlist, so the whole thing can still be walked through end to end as a demonstration.

Stack & approach: Full website build · custom surveys and forms · job application routing · live counselling waitlist · delivered on a lean platform budget · now maintained as a Mock Non-Profit site for demonstration.

View the Mock Non-Profit site →

Website rebuildIntegrated platformCost efficiencyMock demo site

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