Why We Built It This Way

The design decisions behine The Good Crew, what each one cost us, and why we made them anyway

Every volunteer platform is full of small decisions that nobody sees. Whether a rest warning blocks or advises. Whether a congratulation sends itself. Who can read a volunteer's emergency contact, and whether anyone knows they did.

A demo shows you what software can do. It rarely shows you what the software refuses to do. That second list is where you find out how a platform treats your volunteers.

The Good Crew was designed inside a frontline domestic and family violence organisation, and it has been shaped since by what coordinators and boards tell us about running volunteer programs. In that setting, a badly made decision isn't a small annoyance. It can cost a volunteer their trust, or their place in the organisation.

We made six decisions that shape how the whole platform behaves. Here are two of them.

Rest is a warning. Approved leave is a wall.
If a coordinator rosters someone inside their rest window, they get a warning and are asked for a reason, then they can go ahead. The coordinator knows things the software doesn't. Approved leave is different. Once it's approved, nobody can roster that person on those dates, because it's an agreement already made.
What it costs us: a coordinator in a hurry meets one more prompt. We accept that.

Nothing congratulates a volunteer automatically.
When someone reaches fifty shifts or two years, the platform tells their coordinator and stops. A person decides whether to say something, and records that they did. There are no points, badges or leaderboards.
What it costs us: it only works if a coordinator acts. The software can't do the caring for them, and we don't pretend it can.

The other four decisions cover how wellbeing check-ins are logged, who decides what happens to a volunteer's request for support, how sensitive information is protected, and what a volunteer can always do for free. Every one has a cost, and we say what it is.

Want all six, plus five questions to ask any volunteer platform? Our white paper, Why We Built It This Way, sets them out in full. Download it via the resources tab,