The Challenge
When crises hit, skilled volunteers want to help. But matching supply with demand is hard. After the 2016 election, lawyers across the country wanted to contribute their expertise to civil rights causes. Nonprofits were overwhelmed with offers they couldn't coordinate.
We The Action (now part of Civic Nation) set out to solve this coordination problem. They needed a platform that could match legal professionals with projects that needed their specific skills—and scale to handle moments of peak demand.
What We Built
We partnered with We The Action from their founding, building the technology that powers their volunteer network.
Volunteer matching. Lawyers have different expertise, interests, and availability. Nonprofits have different needs and timelines. The platform matches these automatically, reducing coordination overhead on both sides.
Project management. Structured ways for nonprofits to post opportunities and track progress. Clear enough that overloaded organizations can use it without training.
Rapid deployment. During moments of activism, the platform can scale to handle sudden demand. Election protection efforts, immigration crises, civil rights responses—each brings traffic spikes.
Network effects. The more lawyers join, the more valuable the platform becomes for nonprofits. The more nonprofits post, the more lawyers want to participate. We designed for this compounding.
The Result
The numbers tell the story:
- Over 42,000 lawyers committed to volunteer
- More than 500 nonprofits receiving support
- $112 million in pro bono legal work mobilized
Beyond the metrics, the platform has been deployed in key moments of activism—from election protection to immigration response to civil rights advocacy.
Technology alone doesn't create change. But the right technology makes change easier to coordinate.