Work for Impact - a Freelancing Platform for Meaningful Projects
About Work for Impact
Freelancing currently owns the lion’s share (30%) of the US specialist job market. It is getting more important for specialists to use their skills and expertise working for a cause that matters to them.
Work for Impact is an innovative platform that brings together talented freelancers, who want their job to make a difference, with socially or environmentally responsible organizations and nonprofits, enabling them to work together on impactful projects.
The goal
The client manages an NGO by himself, he’s constantly in touch with other organizations and knows the industry’s needs like no one else. As he had experienced lots of problems with finding the right specialists for his organization’s projects, he decided to create a platform for qualified freelancers and non-profit organizations to work together on the projects they care about.
The challenge
Naturaily, arm in arm with other specialists from Work for Impact’s team, had a serious challenge to face. The goal was to develop a huge, scalable system with complex business logic. The need to match freelancers with suitable job offers was demanding, as there were various categories, skills and other variables.
Work for Impact is also meant to connect the organizations with the best professionals who will help them fulfill their mission. That made the team seek a strong skill verification system that would let us ensure the quality of the service.
Solution
Project’s issues
Clean architecture
- isolating business logic from technical details, such as frameworks and a database
- separating business classes from technical classes
- using the Ruby on Rails framework as the application infrastructure for the technical part of the platform, with dry-rb libraries in a part of an app called a domain for a business logic part
The application split into subdomains
- logically splitting the domain into a few subdomains, such as recruitment, negotiations and work log
- each subdomain is dedicated a certain business process, sharing the common naming between business and technical classes
Identity and skill verification
- basic user identity KYC verification with an external provider
- confirming freelancers’ qualifications by education and skill verification via external systems (online competency tests)
Technological stack
-
Ruby on Rails
(backend) -
Nuxt.js
(frontend) -
Elastic
(search engine) -
Electron
(desktop app)
External services
-
Talk JS
(chat) -
Jitsi
(video conferencing) -
Sumsub
(identity verification) -
QCheck
(education institution search) -
Interview Mocha
(skill verification)
The results
As a result, Naturaily helped develop a complex and scalable system that connects clients - organizations and non-profits - with the selected skilled freelancers best for their projects. The MVP involves the frontend, the backend and a desktop application for time tracking for use by freelancers who work in an hourly system.
Work for Impact in numbers
-
5
External services integrations
-
8
Months to implement the MVP
-
40k+
Freelancers signed up for listing
-
20k+
Organizations signed up for listing
Testimonial
The quality of Naturaily’s code and documentation has been exceptional.
Geoff Hucker
CEO Work for Impact
We started with hiring a frontend developer from Naturaily to work on
tasks that involved Vue.js. We were so happy that we hired some backend
developers to come in and build in Ruby on Rails and Elastic search.
Naturaily also helped us integrate interview software and
telecommunications and messaging software.
We’re very particular on code and documentation, so we do a lot of work
on the architecture and the application so that they’re focused. The
quality of Naturaily’s code and documentation has been exceptional.
The quality of their development stands out. I also appreciate their
ability to communicate and understand quite complex tasks.
