Post a session once. Get the right volunteers, vetted and background-checked, booked in minutes instead of days.
New York City
Your impact
Brooklyn Reading Project
VerifiedAfterschool Reading Tutor
Tue, Apr 28 · 3:30 PM
5 spotsFive Boroughs Food Rescue
Food Sorting, Brooklyn
One tap to book. No reply-all chains.
Sound familiar?
Manual outreach, reply-all chains, spreadsheets, no-shows. Every week.
Coordinator
to: Volunteer list (87 recipients)
Hi all,
We're still short a few volunteers for next week's afterschool sessions:
Reply with which session works and I'll confirm by end of day.
Outreach eats your week
Drafting emails, sending follow-ups, updating your spreadsheet, responding to replies. For every session.
No-shows happen
People say yes, then forget. There's no built-in confirmation, no automated reminder, no waitlist to fall back on.
Verification is its own project
Background checks, language requirements, and skill matching all happen by hand, after the fact. Slower for you, slower for the volunteer.
You recruit from your existing list
Email blasts go to the people who already know you. New volunteers in your area never find your sessions.
How it works
Here's exactly what your session looks like to a volunteer in the cūro app.
Title, date, time, spots, any skill or language requirements. Two minutes total.
New session
Title
When
Spots
Requirements
Pre-verified volunteers see your session and book directly. No replies, no back-and-forth.
Sun, Apr 26
Brooklyn Reading Project
VerifiedAfterschool Reading Tutor
Tue, Apr 28 · 3:30 PM
4 spotsYou're booked
Calendar invite sent
Automatic reminders, calendar sync, and check-in. You see your full roster in real time.
Tuesday, Apr 28
Starts in 2 hours · 0.4 mi
Brooklyn Reading Project
Afterschool Reading Tutor
Roster auto-syncs to your dashboard
Your view
Booked
4 / 4
Fully booked
Verified
4 / 4
Background checked
Waitlist
2
Auto-promote on
Replies needed
0
Booking is direct
Volunteers booked
Emma C.
ConfirmedBrooklyn · she/her
Marcus T.
ConfirmedWilliamsburg · he/him
Priya S.
ConfirmedPark Slope · she/her
Jordan K.
ConfirmedCobble Hill · they/them
Waitlist
2 readyAnika R.
Joined 2 hrs ago
David C.
Joined yesterday
Auto-promotes the moment a confirmed volunteer cancels.
Recent activity
Jordan K. booked a spot
23 min ago
Anika R. joined waitlist
2 hrs ago
Reminder sent to all volunteers
Yesterday
Session published
3 days ago
Demo preview · actual dashboard launching with pilot partners
Beyond the booking
A confirmed booking is the start, not the finish. cūro covers what comes before, after, and in between, without piling on more tools.
The moment a volunteer books, you get a private 1:1 chat with them. Send a training video before the session. Drop your donation link after. Skip the personal phone trade.
Send pre-session training: videos, prep guides, parking notes, whatever they need to show up ready.
Surface your own donate link. Your donor relationship, not ours. We never see, route, or take a cut.
Phone numbers stay hidden, chat auto-deletes 48 hours after the session ends.
Five Boroughs Food Rescue
1:1 nonprofit chat · auto-expires 48h
Phone numbers hidden · auto-deletes 48h
Five Boroughs Food Rescue
Before Saturday, please review this quick training video: fiveboroughs.org/training
Yesterday, 6:40 PM
Five Boroughs Food Rescue
Thanks again for joining us. If your group found it meaningful, you can share this optional support link: fiveboroughs.org/donate
Today, 2:05 PM
Message nonprofit coordinator
Because this session involves vulnerable populations, Haven House NYC asks every volunteer to read and acknowledge their mandated-reporter agreement before booking.
Haven House NYC agreement
By volunteering with Haven House NYC, you acknowledge that you may be a mandated reporter under New York Social Services Law §413 if you witness or learn of suspected child abuse or neglect during your service. You agree to report to staff immediately and to comply with the organization's confidentiality and safety protocols.
I've read and agree to the Haven House NYC mandated-reporter agreement, and I understand my obligations under it.
Your acknowledgment is timestamped and shared with Haven House NYC. You can review it later from your profile.
Shelters, youth programs, survivor services. Some sessions need a layer of care a checkbox can't carry. Require volunteers to read and acknowledge a custom agreement before they can book. Mandated-reporter language, confidentiality terms, anything you need on the record.
Required before booking, not buried in fine print they'll never read.
Timestamped and archived for your records, and reviewable by the volunteer from their profile anytime.
Your language, your rules. We give you the flow; you provide the agreement text.
Liability stays with you, as it always has. cūro records the acknowledgment. Your existing volunteer agreements and insurance still apply.
Every QR check-in and check-out feeds an hours ledger for your org. Export by volunteer, by session, or by quarter, ready for board reports, grant applications, or corporate matching gift programs. No more "what did we tell the funder last year?"
Auto-tracked from check-in, so the numbers in your report are real, not estimated.
One-click export as CSV or PDF, formatted for board decks, IRS Form 990, and grant applications.
Volunteers get receipts too, for employer matching gifts, school service requirements, or licensure renewals.
Total verified hours
8 volunteers · 23 sessions
Jan
Feb
Mar
By volunteer
Top 3 of 8Emma C.
28 hrs
Marcus T.
22 hrs
Priya S.
19 hrs
All hours verified by QR check-in
What makes cūro different
We're a booking tool for nonprofits, not a middleman trying to own your relationships.
Every volunteer who books with you becomes part of your contact list, not ours. Export anytime, no lock-in.
No subscription, no posting fees, no premium tier. The plan is to monetize through corporate partners who route their employees' paid volunteer hours to vetted orgs like yours.
Shelters, youth programs, and survivor services need privacy. Choose who sees each session: anyone, link-only, or your existing volunteers.
Public
Anyone on cūro can find it
Link only
Hidden from search · share via direct link
Members only
Past volunteers from your org only
Background checks, ID verification, skill confirmation. Done once by us, valid across sessions. You see who's cleared before they book. No more duplicate check fees.
Reach the Gen Z and Millennial volunteers who want the booking ease they get from ClassPass or OpenTable. They're ready to help. They just don't find you through email.
How we compare
Emails and spreadsheets
Cost
Hours of staff time per session
Idealist
(VolunteerMatch merged in Sept 2025)
Cost
Free for volunteer posts
cūro
Cost
Free for nonprofits. Forever.
Comparison reflects publicly available features as of April 2026. Enterprise platforms like Better Impact, VolunteerHub, and Galaxy Digital exist too, but typically cost $150 to $600+ per month and require multi-week setup.
cūro is launching with a small group of NYC nonprofits. Pilot partners get hands-on onboarding, direct input into the product roadmap, and free access to every feature we build. In exchange, we ask for your honest feedback and a 30-minute call every few weeks.
Free forever
Built to be funded by corporate sponsors and grants, not nonprofits.
White-glove setup
We post your first sessions for you.
Shape the product
Your feedback decides what we build.
Who's behind cūro
Hi, I'm Lydia. I'm building cūro because volunteering should feel like volunteering. Coordinators run their programs out of email and spreadsheets and end up doing more admin than mission. That's the part I want to fix.
Right now, cūro is me, a working prototype, and a growing list of NYC nonprofits I'm talking to weekly. There's no big team yet, no investors, and I'm intentionally building this slowly with real coordinators rather than against a fundraising clock. If you're reading this, you're early. That means your input genuinely shapes what gets built next.
If anything on this page resonates or rings false, I want to hear it. You can reach me directly at [email protected].
Questions we hear a lot
No catch for nonprofits. Our plan is to fund cūro through two sources: corporate partners (large employers) who'd pay us to route their employees' paid volunteer hours to vetted orgs, and civic-tech grants that exist specifically to support tools like this. Think of it as the CSR budget and grant ecosystem subsidizing your coordination tools. Nonprofits never pay, no ads, no data sold.
No. Every volunteer who books with you becomes part of your own database, which you can export at any time. We think of ourselves as the booking layer. Your org name is front and center on every session, not ours.
No. We never see, route, or take a cut. After a session, you can choose to share an optional support link with the volunteers who joined, through the private 1:1 chat. Your donate link goes directly to your platform (Donorbox, Givebutter, your own site, anything). cūro is a coordination tool, not a fundraising middleman.
Yes. The moment a volunteer books, you get a private 1:1 chat with them. Send a training video, prep guide, parking instructions, anything they need. Phone numbers stay hidden, and the chat auto-deletes 48 hours after the session ends. No new tool to learn. It's right inside the booking.
Hours are auto-calculated from QR check-in and check-out at each session, which means they're verified rather than self-reported. Export by volunteer, by session, or by quarter as CSV or PDF, formatted for board decks, IRS Form 990, grant applications, or corporate matching gift programs. Volunteers also get verified hour receipts they can share with employers, schools, or licensure boards.
Your existing volunteer agreements and insurance still apply. cūro doesn't change any of that. What we add is a trust layer: background checks, identity verification, and reliability history visible before you confirm a volunteer. For sessions involving vulnerable populations, you can also require a custom acknowledgment, including mandated-reporter language, before a volunteer can book. Acknowledgments are timestamped and archived for your records.
Yes. Every session has a visibility setting. Public shows it on the map and in search. Link only hides it from search and only loads for volunteers who have your direct link, which is useful for shelters, youth programs, and corporate service days. Members only restricts it to volunteers who have served with your org before, perfect for your recurring core team. You can change the setting at any time.
Of course. cūro is additive, not replacing. Most partners use us to fill last-minute spots, run open sessions for new volunteers, and take the load off coordination. Your newsletter and core volunteer program keep running as they always did.
You can tag any session with skill requirements (Spanish-speaking, licensed therapist, etc.) and only qualified volunteers will see it. Volunteers self-declare skills and you can flag any for additional verification.
About 10 minutes from signup to your first posted session. We can import your existing volunteer list if you want, or start fresh. Pilot partners are typically posting their first real session within an hour.
Post your first session in 10 minutes. Or grab a quick demo to see it in action.
Self-serve. Free. Go live in 10 min.
We'll walk through your specific use case.
Building for NYC nonprofits. In active conversations with our first cohort of pilot partners.