Vouchd
A platform I founded to provide meaningful volunteer opportunities for high school students while simplifying the tracking process for counselors. I led a team of six to pilot the platform and secured a contract to expand school-wide.
Visit vouchd.us
90+
students12
nonprofits
200+
verified hours
6x
expansion securedRole /
Founder & CEO
Skills /
Team Leadership
Product Roadmapping
Pricing & Business Model
User Research
MVP Design (Figma)
GTM Strategy
Timeline /
September 2024- September 2025
Location /
Evanston, IL
Team /
Mikayla Goldsmith
Maria Chebli
Medini Chopra
Leilani Kulkarni
Lucy Gallun
Founder & CEO
Skills /
Team Leadership
Product Roadmapping
Pricing & Business Model
User Research
MVP Design (Figma)
GTM Strategy
Timeline /
September 2024- September 2025
Location /
Evanston, IL
Team /
Mikayla Goldsmith
Maria Chebli
Medini Chopra
Leilani Kulkarni
Lucy Gallun
The Problem: Many high schools require community service to graduate, but there is no simple way to find, complete, or verify those hours.
Finding the right opportunity is hard.
Service hours are required to graduate, but students struggle to find meaningful opportunities that fit their interests and schedules.
One-time volunteers create more work.
Organizations need volunteers, but high student turnover requires constant training, making it hard to build lasting programs.
Manual tracking is time-consuming.
Counselors help hundreds of students find opportunities to meet service requirements, often using paper forms to verify hours.
The Solution:
Vouchd brings students, schools, and nonprofits into one platform on app and web.
Vouchd brings students, schools, and nonprofits into one platform on app and web.
Coun
Bringing Vouchd to life:
I designed the experience across all three user groups and built the first working version utilizing Claude Code and Lovable.
To bring Vouchd from product to launch, I recruited and directed a six-person team across product, design, engineering, operations, and marketing.
The bigger challenge was volunteer retention.
Across 100+ conversations with students, nonprofits, counselors, and administrators, the larger problem became clear: nonprofits could find volunteers, but struggled to get them to come back.
83% of public high schools require or facilitate community service
*Department of Education
Turning the product into a business.
Counselors and school administrators were already coordinating community service for hundreds of students, making schools the natural buyer.
Schools were already spending ~$11.4K per 500 students to support community service. I used that as a benchmark for Vouchd’s tiered pricing, starting at $10K annually.
Vouchd went live!
In May 2025, we piloted Vouchd at Chicago Math and Science Academy where we onboarded 90+ students, 2 counselors, and 11+ nonprofits.The Vouchd team presenting the pilot at CMSA.
CMSA High School class.
Pitching Vouchd.
How the pilot went:
100%
students signed up in the first 5 days
10%
actively volunteering
200+
verified service hours
100+
completed opportunities
The pilot led to a schoolwide commitment.
After the pilot, CMSA committed to purchase Vouchd for the full school for the following year, expanding from 90+ pilot students to all ~600 students and four counselors.
The pilot opened a few more doors.
The Garage Propel Program
Received funding
Google Startups Innovate Program
Accepted into the program
1. The person using a product and the person paying for it are rarely the same, and the buyer sets your price. By creating a product that centered around the buyer, Vouchd found a true market fit and a scalable business model.
2. The importance of starting narrow. Cutting the ideal user from all volunteers to specifically high schoolers with a graduation requirement is what made the product specific enough
3. One volunteering event means something different to each user. A completed volunteering shift is an achievement to a student, a verified hour to a counselor, and a retained volunteer to a nonprofit.