How I Started My Own Nonprofit Organization Amidst Quarantine

As quarantine has seemingly become our new best friend, the concept of “pandemic productivity” has arisen amidst the chaos. This new term commonly refers to the pressure faced by people to constantly do something with their time in quarantine during this COVID-19 pandemic. Although everyone is coping with this new sense of “normal” differently, I wanted to share some tips on how I started my own nonprofit tutoring organization amidst quarantine.

For some quick statistics, I founded Just For You Tutoring on June 25, 2020, and since its establishment, have garnered 3.5K + Instagram followers, made 150+ tutor and student matches, recruited 150+ tutors, published 28 edited blogs on the website, impacted youth from 30+ countries, and spoke in two webinars regarding the creation process. 

At the start of the pandemic, I recognized that I would struggle with online schooling, but I never realized how common this problem was among students all over the world. When my social media platforms constantly presented me with empowering and inspiring stories of youth all over the world who were contributing to helping those in need during the pandemic, I wanted to do my part. As a student in good academic standing, I experienced unprecedented difficulties in my schoolwork, so I took off with this idea of decreasing the stress other families and students like me by providing free tutoring.

After coming up empty-handed with virtual volunteer opportunities, I started brainstorming an idea and then an organization name. I came up with Just For You Tutoring as the official name because I strived to provide free one-on-one virtual tutoring so this created the impression of personalization. Once this was set, I designed the logo using a website called CANVA. 

Once the logo was set, I immediately set out to create a free website using WIX along with an organizational system, creating Google Sheets, Google Forms, numerous Google Documents, and email templates to send to tutors and students. This entire process took two weeks as I was working solo on this project since I couldn’t easily reach my friends as a result of COVID-19. The most taxing part of this project was the time commitment involved from start to finish. I worked on the website, social media posts, and background management tasks for hours every day and when everything launched, I still needed to reach out to students, which was difficult because most people won’t trust a newly founded youth organization. 

As I slowly recruited family and friends to tutor or sign up as students, I began seeing success on Instagram as well. I primarily use Instagram to recruit tutors and students since it’s extremely popular among youth and I was the most familiar with this platform. 

Running this organization went from spending a few hours a day to gradually only spending one hour a day by the end of the first month, a direct takeaway of a smoother organization system and my increasing familiarity with all working procedures. Thankfully, I had also thought of solutions to most of the problems I would encounter prior to launching, so when it came to solving these problems, I already knew what to do or I had simply prevented these problems beforehand. 

After I had a working procedure, I decided to incorporate an academic blog that focused purely on youth providing youth with tips/insights or personal stories to be shared on Instagram and the website. This was originally met with little success but as I promoted on Instagram more intensely, I received a lot more entries than I anticipated and now, the blog features a weekly post every Monday. 

As the organization continued to grow, I knew that with the school year starting, I wouldn’t be able to continue spending the same amount of time, so I began recruiting an international executive team. This was a long process of waiting for applicants and then selecting the ideal candidate because there were so many more applications than I expected. In fact, there were around three people vying for every one role within the organization. 

With the new executive team in place, the organization was able to grow larger than ever before because there were more people designated to a specific role and hence, they do a much more extensive job than when I did everything on my own.

After going through this entire process, the biggest lesson I learned was that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. If you asked me if starting an organization was something I would do a year ago, I would’ve told you that it was impossible but through this experience, I’ve gained so much confidence in myself and my passion for inspiring youth has grown exponentially. 

My tip to those who want to start their own nonprofit organizations is to go for it. Even if you don’t immediately achieve the success you may have wanted, you’ll gain so much valuable experience. It is also alright to not have done anything “productive” during this pandemic. Above all, you should take the time to self-heal and self-love. Your own mental and physical health should be your number one priority but if you do aspire to conduct any entrepreneurial pursuits, I encourage you to pursue them and see where it takes you!