The Word is a new local community platform that brings residents, students, businesses and nonprofits together to turn good intentions into real-world action — and members are rewarded for their efforts. Your neighbours are on it, looking for something worth doing this weekend. The only thing standing between them and your organisation is a post.
This is the whole product. One need, posted on a Tuesday, and what it turns into by the end of the month.
You post the need
Eight volunteers. Saturday. 9am.That's the whole post.
Create the event, set the number of volunteer slots and the time. Import it straight from your Facebook or Instagram page if it's already there.
Four minutes and nothing else. No ad spend, no boosting, no begging a platform to show your post to your own followers.
Eight neighbours find it
Not an audience. Neighbours.
Your event appears in the local feed of people nearby who already chose causes like yours — residents, families, and students from local colleges looking for exactly this.
They are not being interrupted. They opened the app to find something to do.
They sign up
Your slots fill themselves.
Volunteer profiles and history, a waiting list when you're oversubscribed, push reminders before the day, and skills-based matching when the job needs something specific.
The spreadsheet, the reply-all thread, and the four people who said yes and forgot.
They show up — and the hours record themselves
Check in. Do the work. Check out.Nobody chasing a sign-in sheet.
Check-in and check-out are in the app, so hours are tracked automatically and attached to your organisation. Background checks and onboarding run through the same system when you need them.
Volunteer hour reports you can export straight into a grant application, without reconstructing the year from memory.
They share what happened
Their friends discover you.
Photos, Moments and impact stories go out to their people — and local businesses reward the hours they put in, so the morning ends somewhere good. Your name is attached to all of it.
This is the part a mailing list can't do. Eight volunteers each have a circle, and the circle is local.
Some volunteer again. Others donate.
One event becomes a community around your mission.That's the whole idea.
Followers who see your updates, a feed you own, recurring donations from people who met you at a folding table, and a roster you can call on next time instead of starting from zero.
You stopped renting attention and started keeping a community.
Every nonprofit we talk to has the same problem, and it is not that people don't care. It's that the people who would help have no way of knowing you need them this Saturday. Goodwill is everywhere and it is almost entirely unrouted.
Social platforms made this worse. You built an audience and then had to pay to reach it. Your post about a food drive competes with the entire internet, and loses, and the neighbour half a mile away who would have come never sees it.
The Word is small on purpose. Everything on it is anchored to a place, so a need posted in your town is seen by people in your town — and their effort is rewarded by the businesses in it. That's the loop, and you are the reason it exists.
The story is the point, but the tools underneath it are real. Everything here is built and running.
Same mission, same eight volunteers needed. A different amount of work to get them.
| How it works now | The Word | |
|---|---|---|
| Being found | A post that competes with the whole internet | A local feed where people are already looking for something to do |
| Reaching followers | Pay to reach the audience you built | Free — your followers see your updates |
| Sign-ups | Email threads, spreadsheets, no-shows | Slots, reminders and a waiting list |
| Hours | A paper sheet somebody has to type up | Tracked automatically at check-in and check-out |
| Grant reporting | Reconstructed from memory in April | Exportable the day you need it |
| Donations | One payment method, one-off gifts | Six methods plus recurring giving and auto receipts |
| After the event | Everyone goes home and it's over | Volunteers keep following you — some come back, some donate |
| Local businesses | A sponsorship letter you have to write | Already on the platform, rewarding the hours people give you |
You have been pitched enough nonprofit software. Here is what this is not.
Not another database to maintain. Volunteers create their own profiles and their hours record themselves. There's nothing for you to keep tidy between events.
Not a replacement for your donor relationships. Your major gifts still come from people you know. This is for the wide end of the funnel — the neighbour who has never heard of you yet.
Not a national audience. It's deliberately local. That's a limit and it's also the entire point: the people who see your post can drive to you.
Not magic. We can fill your slots and track the hours. Running a good event that people want to come back to is still yours.
Create your charity profile with the basics about your organisation. Free.
An event with volunteer slots, or a donation campaign. Import from Facebook if it exists already.
Neighbours nearby find it, sign up, and check in on the day.
Post what happened, grow your followers, and call on them next time.
Registering your organisation and posting events is free. Standard payment processing applies to donations, and donors can cover fees.
Residents, families, students from local colleges, and the businesses that fund the rewards. Everyone is local — that's the design.
No. Plenty of organisations start with a profile and a donation page, then add volunteer events once they see who's following.
Yes. Auto-import events from Facebook and Instagram, and bring existing volunteers in by bulk CSV or magic-link invitation.
They're recorded at check-in and check-out against your event, and exportable as reports — which is a good deal more defensible than a clipboard.
Register anyway and tell us where you are. We're rolling out town by town, and knowing where organisations are waiting is how we choose the next one.
Somebody two streets away is looking for something worth doing this weekend. The only reason they aren't coming to you is that they don't know you need them.